Piedra Arbol

Day two in Bolivia. The first stop Piedra Arbol or Stone Tree. This is one of the advertised stops on the tour, but I was unimpressed by the initial pictures I saw of it and I was unimpressed when we were there. I couldn't understand what was so spectacular about this rock that would make it an advertised feature of the tour, whereas other stops that had impressed me greatly were barely, if at all mentioned, during the initial tour sales pitch. Now that I have looked at this set of pictures, however, there is one that has really impressed me and I see, how from the correct angle this is really an impressive "Stone Tree". I moved this picture to the top of this set (whereas most of the posts go in chronological order).

Sita being dwarfed by the Piedra Arbol.

Just before arriving at the Piedra Arbol, we saw some more wildlife. Once again these look like Vicuñas to me, but they could be Guanacos.
Sita in the foreground with a couple of the others that were in our jeep in the background.
Sita amongst the smattering of other random rocks that accompanied the Piedra Arbol.


This rock reminded me of Camel Rock. For those non-Northern New Mexican readers there is a rock on Tesuque pueblo (between Española and Santa Fe) that resembles a camel which they call camel rock (you can find a picture of it at Prabhu's Blog). This would be the double camel rock or the camel caravan rock. It probably looks nothing like a camel to those who haven't seen camel rock, it just happens that the head of Camel Rock is formed similarly to the upper right feature of this rock. It just doesn't seem to be as impressive from this angle.


The snowy red mountains that surrounded us. Anyone know what mineral would make these mountains red? Leave a comment if you do.

A backside view of the "Caravan Camel Rock".

Desert Landscapes

There are so many amazing things about Southwest Bolivia. One thing captured here is the presence of wildlife. I think these are Vicuñas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicugna_vicugna), but they may be Guanacos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanaco). I am pretty sure we saw both of these species of wild South American Camelids, but not having read up on them before we left it was hard to know which was which. (We also so domesticated alpacas, which you'll see in a future post).

These wild grasses are probably the food of the camelids. The next three pics are also our first glances at Laguna Roja.


I wonder how often it rains here to create arroyos this deep.
The road was a bit more defined here than it is in other places.