The skies above the Atacama Desert in northern Chile sparkle as you board your vehicles for the two-hour, bone-crunching, drive over washboard dirt roads to the Geysers of El Tatio. Located at 14,000 feet in the Andes Mountains, the geysers (the third largest field in the world and one of the highest) are active only at dawn, greeting the rising sun with more than 80 geysers and fumaroles erupting to send huge columns of steam and boiling water into the frigid morning air. As the sun rises higher, the eruptions cease.

All around is a beautiful if at times bizarre, landscape where cones of crystallized silica and other minerals bubble and boil. Algae and bacteria thrive in the mineral-rich soup. The acrid smell of sulphur catches in the back or your throat as you walk around the geyser field, being careful not to get too close to the vents in the ground.

The area near the geyser is home to herds of graceful vicunas, llamas, desert ostriches and vizcachas, the wild Chilean rabbits with long tails that live in the boulder fields.

Scattered across the geyser field are the rusting remains of a 1960s Chilean government project to harness the geothermal power in the area. Over the past three years, attempts were made to resurrect the project. Environmentalists and the Atacameño people alleged that this would impact negatively on the geyser field, and there were calls for the area to be preserved. Following a high profile leak in an exploratory shaft, resulting in a 60-foot high geyser, the Chilean Senate voted to stop the project. The Chilean Government announced that it was abandoning any further attempts to exploit the geothermal resources of El Tatio. All that remains now is to name the Geysers as a natural monument and nature sanctuary and preserve their beauty for future generations.

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