5.- H2O - The Molecule That Made Us
From Namaqualand in Africa to the Atacama Desert in Chile. For a couple of decades we have followed the rains to capture one of nature's most impressive events, the desert super-bloom.
For many years we have filmed the super-bloom in the Atacama desert, but our dream was to be able to film the bloom in the African desert south of Namibia and north of South Africa. Big was our surprise when we were asked to film the desert bloom in Namaqualand for the series "H2O - The Molecule That Made Us".
We traveled with all our equipment, cameras, drones, lenses, sliders, crane... everything we could carry. Six carts of equipment were waiting to be loaded onto the plane after clearing security and customs. The itinerary: Santiago-Sao Paulo-Johanesburg-Cape Town and then a trip of more than 600 kilometers in two vehicles to the border with Namibia.
Great was our surprise when observing the similarity of the climate and the landscape with the Norte Chico in Chile, the area located between Santiago and the Atacama Desert.
Here, contrary to what happens in the Atacama Desert, there is rain every winter, so it is possible to observe the flowering of the desert every spring, especially when the rains have been generous.
It caught our attention to see many plants in the wild that we can commonly see in the gardens of Santiago, but also to be able to observe other very unusual plants that only survive in this place, some forming fields of multicolored flowers and others only monochromatic.
We had to make two trips to be able to register the change produced by the rains that every winter cover this semi-arid region of southern Africa, two trips that were worthwhile and that we will happily repeat when we have the opportunity.
(Here you can see a short video of how we filmed the superbloom transitions in Africa and Chile and the final result)