Desert in Bloom
Yesterday Steve and I along with our friends Joanna and Rob, went on search of the flowering desert. In my head I pictured fields of flowers in the middle of the desert. We didn’t find that, but we had a fun time trying. We drove up north for a few hours at first following the coast, and then headed inland. After a while, we took this dirt road back out to the sea, through a Chilean National Park. The only misfortune we had on our 10 hour drive, was that a rock got kicked up into our windshield and cracked it. Oh well, easy to fix. Anyways, more about our drive. On the way up I saw Chilean road kill, mainly cows. I thought it was pretty funny and wanted to take a picture, but it was deemed too gruesome. The desert was beautiful. It had splashes of green with some occasional flowers- mainly yellow, purple, periwinkle and white flowers. While we were driving through the park we saw at least 12 dust devils, which I had never seen before. I had the bright idea that I should stand in one and get a picture, but I think Steve thought I was crazy, and we decided that I would probably get too dirty, maybe next time 🙂 (that would have been a great picture though). After driving through the national park we ended up in this small little fishing village, where I found a cool sea urchin shell- purple with purple spikes, nestled in the rocks on the beach. We then drove south along the coast and ended up back home. We had a wonderful time, and Steve and I are thinking about going up north again in the next couple of weeks in search for my fields of flowers.
Comment by Mom
I think it’s just so amazing that in such an arid land of dirt and dust you found any flowers. And blues and yellows, awesome! Happy hunting in a few weeks.
Mom
Posted on October 24, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Comment by Steve
I should point out that these dust devils weren’t the typical ones you see in the plains. These were about the width of a car and the dust plumes extend quite far up. As we were driving down the dirt road (that was considered a highway) you could just see these things all around you. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’d like to find out (presumably by going back some day) if those are common in that area because of the weather and geography or if we saw something special. Either way, it was quite a site and made the drive worth it by itself!
Posted on October 25, 2005 at 3:46 am