Don Sotero leaned on the stable door that led into his yard and squinted into the searingly bright sunlight of the dusty street. “No one lives here except old people and children,” he said. “They’ve all gone to work in the copper mines. I’m the only one around who can guide you to the canyon.”
Architecturally, Talabre is not the most prepossessing of Chilean villages. It was rebuilt after a volcanic eruption in 1993 – the inhabitants deciding that their original village, tucked in the shadows of Quezala canyon, was a prime target for deadly pyroclastic flows. This was a reasonable assumption since the canyon was formed as a crack on the chin of the 5,600-metre volcano, Lascar, a dangerous brooding giant and the most active volcano in the Andes.
The villagers have erected three rows of sturdy stone dwellings with tin roofs up on the shoulder of the volcano, but it was the adjacent canyon that I wanted to visit, because I’d heard about the petroglyphs carved by ancient inhabitants all along its walls.
Don Sotero agreed to show the place to me and my translator, Juan. We drove half a mile down the hill to save the old man’s legs, then got out and started walking.
As locations go, Talabre cannot have many rivals in the world. At an altitude of 3,500 metres, it looks down on the Atacama desert, the driest place on earth, and on each side snow-capped volcanic peaks stretch away for hundreds of kilometres to the north and south. The tourist centre of San Pedro di Atacama is an hour’s drive away, but only a handful of visitors ever venture up to Talabre.
“Those two mountains are the sons of our volcano, Lascar,” said Don Sotero pointing to the north where a handsome cone sat with a smaller one beside it, “The big one, Licancabur, fell in love with Quimal.”
His finger moved westwards, pointing across the pale haze of the Atacama to a low peak. “But she preferred his brother, Juriques, and fired a bolt of lightning to keep Licancabur off. Unfortunately, it hit the brother and took off his head – that’s why he is smaller.”
The people here have good reason to keep a close eye on the volcanoes around them. Earthquakes are a regular occurrence and eruptions not infrequent. In 1993 Don Sotero himself was caught on the high plateau east of Lascar, where he had been rounding up his lamas. Miraculously he survived with no more than cuts and bruises.The ash cloud later hit Buenos Aires, almost 1,000 miles away.
We came to the edge of the canyon and started down, a descent of about 50 metres into a narrow gorge with red rock walls. As soon as we were at the bottom we began spotting the rock art: strings of llamas, giant flightless birds (rheas) and, all alone on a separate crag, a puma.
“Just like in life,” said Don Sotero. “He keeps himself alone.” In 63 years he had never spotted a puma, though tracks and attacks on lama herds reveal the big cat’s presence.
One carving showed shamans wearing strange square masks and dancing. In another, flamingoes and rheas stalked across the surface. Some rocks had split away and fallen upside down with their pictures intact. Other surfaces were covered in petroglyphs to a great height. No one is sure how ancient the carvings are, but most of them probably date from around 800AD, when llama caravans started to cross the Atacama.
As we walked up the gorge, Don Sotero pointed to where the recent rains had swept sand and gravel down the gorge, burying much of the best art. Then, over our heads, came the soft swoop of a Magellanic horned owl, a glamorous giant of a predator, which seemed unperturbed by our presence in his fiefdom. Further along, a barn owl sat snoozing on a ledge while the finches around went crazy.
The narrow but hugely extended gulch that snakes down from the lifeless upper reaches of Lascar and finishes in the Atacama desert is a thin vein of life where many creatures find sanctuary. The locals once tended tiny fields of fertile soil down here, but now the copper mines have lured all the able-bodied men and women away.
“My sons are both working in the mine,” said Don Sotero. “I doubt if I will do the floramiento this year without their help.”
The floramiento is a ceremony, traditionally held in February, where everyone brings their llamas down from the high-altitude plateaux and gives thanks to Pachamama, the Earth Mother, then decorates the animals, adding floral adornments to their necks and ears. The possibility that he might fail to perform this annual devotion clearly troubled Don Sotero, but the economic draw of the vast copper mines in the western Atacama, among the biggest in the world, was difficult for his sons to resist.
I was keen to carry on up the canyon to explore this lost world but Don Sotero was tired, so Juan and I left him sitting by the church back in the village and pressed on up the mountain, rejoining the canyon higher up. A herd of llamas eyed us warily, and a flock of Andean geese circled, then decided to land. From among the rocks peeped the peculiar inquisitive faces of vizcachas, large golden rodents with long tails.
Juan teased out from the spines of one particular cactus a tart little fruit, like a sour kiwi, deliciously refreshing in the thin dry air. We were approaching similar altitudes to the highest European mountain, Mont Blanc, at 4,800m, and the lack of oxygen was starting to bite. At this height the vegetation was becoming sparse, but even here there were tracks of vicunas (wild llamas), and a large hawk swooped overhead. In the shadows the temperature was well below freezing while out in the sunshine it felt hot. From every angle the sky was an impossibly deep blue.
At the snowline the canyon petered out. Much as I would have liked to carry on up to the summit of Lascar, we didn’t have the right equipment, so we headed back down to the village to rejoin Don Sotero.
Right behind the little church was a building site where, he explained, they were putting the finishing touches to a small guesthouse. “If we can get the tourists to come and stay, maybe I can persuade some of the younger men to become guides.”
It seemed like an excellent plan. All around Talabre are other canyons, like Quezala, little ribbons of miraculous life burrowing down the Andes for over 2,000 metres into the desert. A few days exploring them would be fascinating and, what’s more, it might help Don Sotero to get his family back home.
Way to go
The trip was provided by Sumak Travel (020-3642 4246, sumak-travel.org) which promotes community tourism initiatives in South America. A private 15-day tour of the Atacama, Huasco coast (for whale-watching), Santiago and Valparaiso, including accommodation, activities, some meals and internal but not international flights, starts from £1,985pp. Flights were provided by netflights.com, which has returns from London to Santiago from around £699
