Puna Zone Schematic The Puna zone lies between the cold desert western slopes of the andes, and the warmer, wetter, eastern slopes that fall down into the amazon basin. Because of this position, the cold air over the ocean picks up a lot of moisture and carries it up over the western peaks, until it meets warmer air from the east that can not hold this moisture. This is what brings the rain to the puna zone where these air currents meet. The amazon basin gets a huge amount of rain, both from the atlantic, and left over moisture that was not released onto the puna.