Ayarza, a scenic double caldera filled by Laguna de Ayarza, is seen here from the ESE. The peninsulas of Punta el Picacho (left) and Punta el Picachito (right) lie across an 800-m-wide channel separating the two halves of the 5 x 7 km wide, figure-8-shaped caldera. Both calderas, whose steep walls rise nearly 600 m above the lake surface, were formed within several thousand years of each other during major rhyolitic explosive eruptions in the late Pleistocene between about 27,000 and 23,100 years ago.

Photo by Bill Rose, 1980 (Michigan Technological University).

This image is made available under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license terms.

Ayarza