Lagunas Miscanti and Miñiques, Chile
Visiting the alpine lakes of Lagunas Miscanti and Miñiques is a great way to spend a day trip from San Pedro de Atacama. The lakes sit about two hours south of San Pedro via Highway 23 and form part of the Chilean national park La Reserva Nacional Los Flamencos (Flamingo National Reserve). The two deep blue lakes sit right beside each other on top of the Antofagasta Altiplano (the highest plateau in the world besides the Tibetan Plateau).
Many centuries ago, the two lakes were just one, big lake. During the Pleistocene Era, the nearby Miñiques Volcano erupted, spewing a cloud of ash, dust, and lava. Today, splitting the lakes in half is a half-mile of lava flow from that ancient eruption. Because of their proximity, it’s an easy walk from one lake to the other.
Getting There
From San Pedro, drive south on Highway 23. This long drive is a great chance to admire the desert. On our drive, we spotted miles of flat, salty terrain, sandy dunes, volcanoes, and blue mountains. As we climbed higher into the plateau, we started to see the earth changing from rock and dirt to sagebrush and cacti. Every now and then we even spotted some desert wildlife.
On your way to the lakes, you’ll pass right through the Tropic of Capricorn. Here, be sure to jump out and take a photo! If you’re wondering (I was), the Tropic of Capricorn is the circle of latitude that corresponds to the southernmost part of the world where the sun sits directly overhead during the summer solstice, June 21.
Next, consider making a pit stop at Socaire, a village that sits just 12 miles from the lakes. The highlight of the village is its 300-year-old church.
When we visited right after Christmas, the church still boasted a nativity scene appropriately modeled after the Atacama Desert: pink flamingos, salt flats, and alpacas greeted the baby Jesus. The church overlooks the basin of the Salar de Atacama, or the Atacama Salt Flats (more to come on those in later posts).
At the turnoff for the lakes, you’ll want to be sure your car has high clearance and 4WD. Rough, golf-ball sized gravel paves the road to Miñiques and Miscanti. Because they sit at alpine level, the route to the lakes from the desert is mostly vertical, with steep climbs and tight turns. Our sedan had trouble getting up the plateau, and we saw several tour vans broken down on the side of the road.
Once at the top of the plateau, you will pay the indigenous community members who steward the park. We encountered this setup at every site we visited in Atacama, where it was more common to see indigenous men and women asking for admission fees rather than a government ranger. We definitely appreciated that indigenous communities seemed to be reaping the benefits of tourism in these locations, which are traditionally located on Atacameño lands.
After paying a small fee, you’ll travel along a dirt road to a parking and rest area in front of the first lake, Laguna Miscanti. Miscanti is the larger of the two lakes. From its parking lot, you have spectacular views of the lake, Cerro Miñiques (the volcano, at 19,000 feet), and Cerro Miscanti. If you turn your back, you will spy the salt flats lying flat and crinkly out behind you.
The Lakes
Laguna Miscanti, the first lake, is quite shallow, at only 30 feet deep, and heart-shaped. We were thrilled to see some of its natural residents make an appearance on the day we visited: flamingos, horned coot (a big, black bird that nests in the shorelines), rheas (a huge flightless bird that’s a distant relative of the ostrich), and vicuñas.
Rheas
To my eyes, vicuñas are half-camels, half-llamas.
Vicuña
Helpful signs at the visitor’s center indicated that vicuñas are the wild ancestors of domestic alpacas. Unlike alpacas, however, vicuñas don’t produce much wool. In Inca culture, their wool was so rare and highly-valued that only royalty could wear vicuña garments. Today, vicuñas are the national animal of Peru.
We were lucky to spot a frisky group of vicuñas playing near the shoreline.
After watching the wildlife, we turned to Laguna Miñiques, the smaller lake, and admired the view from a higher vantage. When we finished, we treacherously descended the steep alpine roadway and headed into the Salar to visit flamingos. More on that to come!
