Piedras Rojas is a landscape that looks assembled from another planet: a field of deep red rock set against a turquoise lagoon at over 4,000 metres. The colour contrast is almost too vivid to believe until you are standing in it. From there, the route continues to the high plateau lagoons: Laguna Miscanti and Laguna Miñiques, two volcanic lakes framed by cone-shaped peaks. Flamingos feed along the shores. The air is thin, the sky is enormous, and the silence is complete. You spend the day moving between these sites, with time to walk, photograph, and simply take in the scale of the landscape. The drive itself is part of the experience: long straight roads across open desert, with the Andes visible in every direction.