Wow, I Think This is Weird! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Salt

How strange is this, an area that looks like something out of a science fiction movie? Everywhere you look all you can see is salt - salt mounds, salt cubes, salt crystals, salt, salt, and more salt. Pablo said that it was a pity we didn't arrive during the rains.

Then, a thin layer of water would sit on the surface and the entire lake would look like a mirror--you would almost feel like you were standing on the clouds. This salt flat is approximately 4,000 square miles (10,500 square kilometres) in area which makes it the largest of its kind in the world. Pablo also informed me that it was formed when a giant prehistoric lake called it quits and dried up. Apart from its salt this area is also home to nearly half the world's lithium reserves.

Answer: Yes

It sounds weird but the story goes that a Belgian missionary had named the place Valle de Marte, which means Mars Valley. He did this because the red dirt and the strange rock formations gave him the sense of being on the Red Planet, however, the name was mispronounced and came out as Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley).

The valley is a part of the Atacama Desert and whilst the Mars reference fits nicely, Death Valley is not out of place either. This is what is called a sterile desert. It is so dry here that nothing grows, nor does anything decompose in a hurry.

The dunes though are great for sand surfing. Pablo made it look easy but for me, it was a pain in the rear engine block. I wiped out that many times that I swallowed half a dune. And then there was the constant waxing ... ok, rant over.

Answer: Sanctuary

We are at the base of a canyon through which the Guaitara River flows staring at a piece of architecture that took over 200 years to build and it looks like it was taken straight out of a storybook. Yes, you heard correctly, we're at the bottom of the canyon, not the top. The latest construction, the new church, was finalised in 1949 and took 33 years to complete. A fifty-metre bridge connects the church to the other side of the ravine.
As stunning as the building is, the story of its coming into being is even more incredible. In 1794 Maria Mueces and her deaf/mute daughter were making the trek from their village in Potosi to Ipiales when a storm gathered.

A powerful force is said to have drawn them to a cave in this canyon which gave them "sanctuary". It was here that her daughter Rosa saw the image of the Virgin Mary holding a child on the wall and shouted to her mother that there was someone else in the cave with them. The inference is that the apparition had cured the little girl of her affliction. Further stories of miracles have since surfaced including that of a blind man who had been going from village to village collecting donations so that he could start building a church on this site to honour the Virgin Mother. He too was cured of his blindness.

The cave still exists and the image of the mother and child is still clearly visible. The images are present due to the natural colourings of rock in the walls of the cave. There has been no painting involved and no dyes or pigments have been used.

Answer: Guyana

It shouldn't have but it certainly felt weird. Here we were staring at a major tourist attraction, witnessing the awesome power and beauty of Mother Nature at work and we were in the middle of an area that was as undeveloped and pristine as any that we could recall. In many ways, the sense that we felt like we were in an older world added to this waterfall's beauty.

The falls are fed by the powerful Potaro River which, at the falls, will drop 741 feet (rainy season measurement). At 370 feet (rainy season again) the falls are also quite wide. These dimensions make this one heck of a waterfall. It should bear a lot more fame than it does however, it doesn't quite have the height of Angel or Yosemite and, whilst it is taller, it doesn't have the power of its more illustrious cousins at Iguazu, Victoria and Niagara Falls. Then again, perhaps this is what is keeping this area as pristine as it is and providing Kaieteur with a quality the others cannot possess.

Then Pedro and I got into a friendly argument. The plateau that these falls sit on is known as the Guiana Shield with rocks estimated to be 2.99 billion years old. Pedro got quite excited claiming it was the oldest layer of rock in the world. I had to point out to him that the Narryer Gneiss Terrane, in my home state of Western Australia, was aged at 3.3 billion years and that there was an even older formation in Greenland. In a toast to one-up-man-ship I told him his rocks were still in nappies (diapers).

Answer: The glacier was named after Domenico Peridotto

Linking South America with glaciers seemed a little incongruous to me (I was thinking South America/tropical jungles) until Pablo pointed out how close certain parts of the continent are to the South Pole. As for the glacier, it is huge. For those who are imperially minded it is 97 square miles in area and it is still growing though scientists are still debating as to why this is so.

As we got closer to the glacier I heard a noise that sounded like an aircraft taking off. What a treat, it proved to be a piece of the glacier breaking off with graceful inevitability and dropping into the sea. Stepping onto the mass itself I noticed streaks of ice that were in various shades of blue, which I was informed was related to the levels of oxygen within the ice. Apparently, the less oxygen there is in the ice the brighter the colour will be. If you were to travel down into the glacier, the compression would be greater, the oxygen decreased and the colouring so much deeper. The fresh water here is amazing. You can have a free sample if you're game enough to take your gloves off to dip a bottle into one of the many pools on the trek.

There is no such explorer named Domenico Peridotto but the glacier does bear the name of prominent Argentinean explorer Francisco Moreno.

Answer: Guitar

The picture on your left, which was a clue, is that of an "E" string on a guitar.
The initial story here is tragic - Pedro's young wife, Graciela Yraizoz, 25 years old and carrying their fifth child, suddenly collapsed with a ruptured cerebral aneurysm and then passed away a short time later. The rest is beautiful. Previously Graciela had spotted what looked to be the shape of a milk bucket in the topography of a neighbour's farm whilst flying over it. She commented to her husband that they should try and create a similar geographical feature in the shape of a guitar, which was her favourite instrument.

After his wife's passing Pedro and his four children set about creating their forest that would stretch to over a kilometre in length and would be visible from the air and even satellites. There were over 7000 trees used in the construction with a large copse of cypress used to create the image of the sound hole, and blue leaf eucalypts were planted to represent the neck and the strings. Pedro's farm is located in General Levalle, in Argentina's Pampas region at the eastern end of Buenos Aires province.

Answer: Moon

Valley of the Moon is so appropriate. One would almost feel like they were in an alien world here, the landscape is so haunting, so strange. So much so, the word ethereal comes to mind. The rocks across this stretch of land were once lava flows that cooled and then left themselves at the whim of the Rio Sao Miguel which has obliged us by carving out a mesmerizing sculpture of dips, hollows, rock slides, pools and cut-outs over a series of eons. The Vale de Lua sits just outside the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park. This is private land but visitors are welcome.

There is a warning there because the river is not always friendly. It can flood quickly and violently so, if it looks like clouding over and growing a bit stormy, it might be a good day to spend the hours learning how to tango.

Answer: False

In addition to giving the right of way to the uphill drivers, those coming down hill must move to the left of the road. This is not only contrary to the side of the road Bolivians normally drive on it also puts our "downhillers" on the dangerous edge of the road. This forces them to slow down so that passing can be negotiated with a degree of safety.

After watching the television programmes and documentaries about the so-called "Death Road" I figured the best way to negotiate this sixty odd kilometres of road was by helicopter but not our Pablo. "Nooooooo" he said "we're going to mountain bike our way down". I have to admit that the scenery here is spectacular and, to enjoy it, there is no better way than by bike. You will start off at around about 12,000 feet in height, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and plains, and you will descend through steaming Amazonian jungle. Along the way you will encounter massive cliff faces, gut-churning drops, incredibly green vegetation, some small villages, llamas, cascading waterfalls and a drug checking point. By the time you reach the bottom you will be exhausted, you will be hot and tired, you will also be covered in dust but you will definitely be exhilarated.

Money has been spent to widen this road in places, asphalt has been put down and a new, two-lane carriageway has been created to divert traffic away from the most dangerous parts of the road. The latter has dramatically reduced the number of cars that use the road, which may put the "most dangerous" adjective a little at risk.

Answer: Bedsheets

"Pablo" I said "you're showing me another desert, man". It was the dry season I was informed and during this time it would certainly look like a desert but it most definitely isn't. A desert, by definition, will get less than ten inches of rain in a year, this area receives an average of forty-seven inches a year. During the rainy season (January to June) this entire landscape is dotted with temporary lagoons of bright blue or green water, some as long as 300 feet and as deep as 10 feet (By clicking on the picture it will enhance your view). These lagoons will support fish, some of which migrate from the nearby Rio Negra while others, such as the wolfish, are able to live in the mud during the dry season and then surface in the wet. The reason for this phenomenon is that a layer of rock exists just below the sand that the water cannot penetrate. During the dry it will evaporate rather quickly.

There are small groups of people that eke out an existence here by fishing during the wet season and raising chickens or livestock or growing cassava and beans when it becomes dry. Alternatively, some may seek some other employment elsewhere while the rain has gone.

Answer: Algae

"We're here at the right time." says Pablo "and you're in for a treat". For the majority of the year, the Cano Cristales does not look too different from most other rivers. Certainly you'll see a bit of colour from the rocks and the dark green mosses around the place but you will also see that on most other rivers. For a very short time between the dry and the wet seasons, in this case September to November, the Cano Cristales puts on a fabulous display of colour. The reason is that the river's floor is blessed with algae called Macarenia clavigera which generally turns into shades of red when exposed to sunlight. These colours don't show during the wet because the river is too fast and too deep for the sunlight to penetrate and activate the algae and, in the dry, there is not enough water for it to thrive.

I pointed out some rather amazing pits (Pablo called them "kettles") on the river where the water produced some spectacular cascades and was advised that these would have started out as small pools. Every now and then a pebble or piece of harder rock would tumble into it and the speed of the river would cause the rocks to spin vigorously, slowly eroding the pool into the "kettles" that we see today. "These rocks are all part of the western end of the Guiana shield" proclaimed Pablo "the oldest exposed rocks in the world". "Not that old chestnut again Pablo" I said "there's exposed rocks in Canada that are older than these..."

"Where do we go next?"