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Atacama ‘ The Flowering’ Desert - 5/09/17



I managed to wake up at 3am mysteriously before my alarm had even gone off.  I presume this was due to a new sleeping place and an extremely wobbly top bunk bed. But never the less, I was up and ready to catch our flight to Atacama with our small university group lead by our tutors and local scientists. We got to the airport nice and early ready for our 7:20 am flight – I even managed to eat some pizza along the way!


The flight was relatively short along with all the usual ‘joys’ of planes. The landing was slightly more complex at Copiapó as we kept circling the airport waiting for viable conditions. Luckily this didn’t take long and we soon touched down, gathered our things and loaded a small coach ready to set off to Huasco our main base outside of our research base located in in ‘Llanos de Challe Nacional’ in the Atacama Desert. The coach ride was a rather long 5 and a half hours! We stopped twice and witnessed the most beautiful sight, a flowering desert; a phenomenon that only occurs once every 5-10 years. Lucky was not even the word of how I felt to see it in person. This trip was truly turning in to a once in a lifetime opportunity. The array of colour and the scents of all the flowers present just blows your mind! Everything was covered in splashes of purple, yellow, white and green plants. The usual desert of sand and rocks was nowhere to be scene but hidden beneath this spectacular blanket of life.


Once finally at Huasco we quickly left our stuff in our rooms and set off for lunch before heading down the coast line and taking in all the different sites and smells from such a unique location – the worlds driest place… He we saw an array of seabirds including a rather active group of pelicans presumably squabbling over food. We even headed out and found a small lighthouse that was rather artistically surrounded by a few stray dogs, one of which was unbelievably adorable! After our little wonder, Emma and me yet again headed back but this time slightly quicker than usual, as we were about to have dinner. We then called it a night ready for an early busy day tomorrow as we were beyond tired to say the least.


















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