Laguna Miscanti
Interesting facts
- Its name comes from the Kunza word miscanti, meaning 'toad', from the language once spoken around the Salar de Atacama.
- In the past the lake stood about 29 metres higher than today and covered roughly 38 square kilometres, almost three times its present area.
- The lake dried out between about 22,000 and 14,000 years ago and only refilled around 3,600 years ago; people resettled the area soon after.
- With about 5 grams of salt per litre, Miscanti is the least salty of all the lakes in its region.
- Meadows of the green alga Chara globularis cover most of the lake floor.
- Mud settles on the bottom at about a millimetre a year, and sediment cores up to 10 metres thick preserve a record of past climate.
- The mean annual temperature is only about 2 °C, and nights can fall to between −10 and −20 °C.
- Visitor numbers to Miscanti and Miñiques rose from about 5,000 in 2002 to 75,000 in 2015.
- The area is managed jointly by the Atacameño community of Socaire and Chile's national forest service, CONAF.
Why it is worth it
High on the Chilean Altiplano, at about 4,140 metres, Laguna Miscanti is a sheet of water so intensely blue that it looks painted onto the land. Its shape is often compared to an arrowhead, with a small peninsula pushing in from the north, and it lies in an open basin of ochre volcanic slopes. Behind it rise two volcanoes that give the scene its scale: Cerro Miscanti, about 5,620 metres, to the northeast, and the even higher Cerro Miñiques to the south. On a still morning the cones double themselves in the water, and the contrast of cobalt lake, ochre slopes and snow is the reason photographers cross half the Atacama to stand here.
The lake is young in geological terms. Roughly twenty-two thousand years ago tectonic movement and volcanic rock dammed this basin, and since then it has filled a hollow of some 13 square kilometres, though rarely more than about ten metres deep. A lava flow separates it from its smaller sister, Laguna Miñiques, a kilometre and a half to the south and about ten metres lower; the two are almost always seen together, as one landscape of twin lakes beneath twin volcanoes. The water is brackish rather than fresh, which shapes the life around it.
That life is the second reason to come. Both lakes belong to the Los Flamencos National Reserve, and true to the name, three species of flamingo feed in the shallows: Chilean, Andean and the rarer James's flamingo. Horned coots, Andean geese and even Darwin's rheas live here, and vicuñas and guanacos move across the open slopes. In the thin air the light is hard and clear, colours are saturated, and sounds carry a long way, so the place feels both vast and very quiet.
Getting there
The nearest village is Socaire, about 20 km away, and San Pedro de Atacama, the usual base for the region, lies about 90 km to the north-west. The closest airport is El Loa Airport (CJC) at Calama, roughly 180 km away in a straight line; from Calama the drive leads first to San Pedro de Atacama and then south via Socaire. A road branching off the international route to Paso Sico climbs to the lakes. Most visitors come on a day excursion from San Pedro; the altitude is considerable, so it helps to spend a few days acclimatising in San Pedro first.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Laguna Miscanti is a brackish lake in the Altiplano of the Antofagasta Region in Norte Grande, Chile. It has an area of about 13 square kilometres (5 sq mi) and the shape of an arrowhead. The lake has no permanent surface inflows or outflows apart from several springs, and is primarily fed and drained by groundwater flows. Laguna Miscanti is located among the volcanoes of the Central Andes. The smaller Laguna Miñiques lies immediately south, separated from Miscanti by a lava flow.
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