Behind Toconao, a gorge of red and ochre rock opens off the village and fills, improbably, with fruit trees. The Río Jere runs through it — one of the very few permanent watercourses left in this basin — and the villagers have been channelling it into terraces for centuries. Figs, quinces, pomegranates, pears and apricots grow in the shade of the canyon walls, at 2,500 metres, in the driest desert on earth.
The walk in is short and flat, an hour at most to the end of the cultivated section, past stone irrigation channels that are still the ones doing the work. There is an entrance fee collected by the Toconao community, who own and farm the whole gorge. In February and March you can buy the fruit at the gate.
It makes sense as a stop on the way south to the lagoons rather than a trip in itself. The contrast is the point: half an hour after walking through an orchard you are back out on a salt flat where nothing has grown for ten thousand years.