There's only one thing I love more than writing: Traveling. And I've been lucky enough to do so constantly.
There's no hierarchy or actual order to these fragments - they are simply bits and pieces of places that have stirred words within me. This...
I feel a sudden lack of confidence when writing about the Atacama desert in Chile. I'm afraid I won't do it justice. Because, after all, how could I? In what way could I ever explain the surreal landscape, the otherworldly sensation that slowly makes its way up our spine from the moment we land, the beautiful contrast that creates the sensation of fiction, or the feeling that we can no longer trust our eyes, because what's in front of us defies logic, space, and time?
Ups! Tento obrázek porušuje naše pokyny k obsahu. Před publikováním ho, prosím, buď odstraň, nebo nahraď jiným.
I like to think of Atacama as the proverbial land that time forgot. It almost feels the surreal landscape is what nature settles into when it thinks we aren't looking. And in Atacama, eyes fell so seldom on the sights, nature convinced itself it wasn't worth morphing into something convincing or realistic anymore. As a result, we find ourselves in an eerie place, magically beautiful.
The Atacama is the driest non-polar desert in the land, so arid, in fact, that a team of researchers duplicated the tests used by the Mars landers to detect life, and were unable to detect any signs in the Atacama Desert. It may be one of the oldest deserts in the world, and its strange elements have created a landscape unlike that of anywhere else.
The journey to the desert takes us over the Andes mountain range, which may in fact be partially responsible for Atacama's aridity.
Ups! Tento obrázek porušuje naše pokyny k obsahu. Před publikováním ho, prosím, buď odstraň, nebo nahraď jiným.
The region, apparently, had been populated even before the Spaniards reached America, albeit quite sparsely. It was part of the Inca route, and caravans of merchants with goods loaded up on llamas and alpacas would set out to cross this inhospitable desert.
Having heard all this, I expected that I would find myself in a land somewhat similar to Namibia: dunes, sand everywhere, intense heat, practically no vegetation or animal life. Instead, I stood shivering, eyes on snow in the horizon, volcanoes rising in the distance, huge lagoons everywhere, geysers in the distance, while I lodged in an large oasis.
So, what gives? Atacama is drier than Namibia, but it's concentration of salt means the water in the lagoons doesn't evaporate, and it's cold climate brings about random snowfalls that may never melt.
Ups! Tento obrázek porušuje naše pokyny k obsahu. Před publikováním ho, prosím, buď odstraň, nebo nahraď jiným.
