At the end of May, seven of us from VE traveled up north to San Pedro, Chile, a town alongside the Atacama Desert, then continued on to take a Jeep tour that would finish in the world's largest (4,086 square miles) salt flat in Uyuni, Bolivia. I flew up to San Pedro with my friends Annie and Ashton, where we met up with the other four of the group who had opted for the cheaper 24-hour bus. Although the Jeep tour was our "final destination," we took our first day in San Pedro to explore the famous Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) in the Atacama Desert. Here are Annie and Ashton and I at the first stop of the tour in the tour of the Desert:
The tour took us to various famous locations in the desert and concluded with watching the sunset over the Moon Valley. At this point we met up with the other half of our group, then watched as the sunset reflected an incredible set of colors on the mountains surrounding the valley.
The next day we were off on the tour, which brought us immediately to the Bolivian border and 4800 meters (15,748 feet!), so it was coooold. Here's the Bolivian Migration building in the middle of the desert:
After some questionable interchanges in the migration building, we piled into our Jeeps and were off! Because we were a group of seven, and only six could fit into a Jeep, we had to separate into two vehicles, but met a cool couple from Scotland and one from Germany as a result. The first day we drove until about 2:00 in the afternoon when we arrived at the first refugio, which was an unheated, very simple building with beds and a large room with tables for eating meals. This location was at 4370 meters (or 14,337 feet), so the drivers told us to rest up to avoid getting headaches, etc, from the altitude. On the drive to the refugio, we stopped at incredible place after incredible place. There were a few lakes with distinctively colored water, geysers, and this hotsprings:
At the refugio, we ignored the advice of the drivers and went exploring. Although most of us felt fine aside from minor headaches, we found walking up even the smallest of hills extremely difficult. The place was too incredible not to explore, though--it was one of those places with huge sky and landscape like nothing I've ever seen before. When the sun set, I realized I hadn't ever seen a 360 degree sunset. It wasn't too bad.
That night, though, was one of the only nights in my life I've ever had trouble sleeping because of the cold. In long johns, sweats, my L.L. Bean down sleeping bag, and the bedding on the bed, I was still freezing. With my face outside my sleeping bag I seriously feared for frostbite. With my face inside my sleeping bag, at an altitude with so little oxygen, I just couldn't breath. I was glad for the early morning wake-up call just for the excuse to get into the heated Jeep.
The second day of the tour brought more and more incredible sites. It became comical, almost, each time Ruben, our driver, would stop and say "Foto, foto," with slightly less enthusiasm each time. We started off at Laguna Colorado (Colored Lake) where we saw lots of flamingos!
There were more incredible lakes, an oddly beautiful stone tree, a volcano, and non-stop photogenic scenery. For the second night of lodging, as we neared the salt flat, we stayed in a hostel made almost completely of salt. The picture below is of the dining area--all the tables and stools are made of salt, along with the walls. It was salty (I licked it).
The next morning we drove to the salt flat. On our way in, while trying to wrap our heads around what we were looking at, we drove past a man on a bicycle with a baby on the back. The surreality was thick. Here's a photo I snapped of the other Jeep while we were driving quite closely to each other on the salt flat:
The classic tourist activity on the salt flats is to take goofy pictures because something about the seemingly endless salt makes playing with perspective extremely easy. We took lots of pictures such as this one:
The tour also stopped by the first ever salt hotel, outside of which were these piles of salt:
The Jeep tour ended at Uyuni's one other attraction: a train cemetery. After three days of unbelievable natural sites, ending at the resting place of a bunch of antique trains seemed strange, but interesting nonetheless. The trains were used mostly by the mining industry, apparently, but when the industry collapsed in the 1940's, the trains became obsoletes. For us, exhausted at the end of three long days of riding in Jeeps, the trains were simply a cool place to climb around for a minute before we moved on.
After the tour ended, our group went separate ways. Annie, Ashton, Madinah, and I continued on into Bolivia for a few days. After discovering that juice-in-a-bag was the best thing Uyuni had to offer beyond the salt flat and the train cemetery, we decided to take the next bus to Sucre, a beautiful introduction to Bolivian cities. Sucre has, in my opinion, an excellent balance of beauty and grit. The main square, pictured below, is charming, filled with manicured gardens and surrounded by gorgeous buildings.
There seemed to be a fair amount of tourism, but there were also plenty of opportunities to see the vast differences between Bolivia and Chile. Living in Santiago, I sometimes forget what South America is really like. With it's big business and Wi-fi everywhere you go, Santiago is very much a modern, developed city. Sucre, although a beautiful city with everything you could need, was a reminder of a different way of life. A large percentage of the Bolivian women we saw, for example, wore traditional dress. Street stalls such as the one pictured below were much more common than grocery stores and seemed to be the way most people purchased all of their goods. It was difficult to find a soda or bottle of water that was refrigerated, but very easy to purchase fresh, unpackaged foods on the street. We were there on Bolivian mother's day and on the night before, it seemed that one in every twenty people was carrying an uncovered cake amidst the crowded streets.
On our last full day in Sucre, we took a half-day hike along a portion of the Inca Trail. The four of us had a private tour with a Bolivian guide who, along with being fascinated by his first all-female tour group, told us lots of interesting information about Bolivian culture and history. Bolivia's current president, Evo Morales, has declared himself to be the first indigenous president, for example. He's also apparently known for the striped sweater he always wears, which has become a popular style in Bolivia since he took office. The trail itself, which dates back to pre-Columbian times, was incredibly beautiful. The colors of the landscape were unlike colors I've seen elsewhere--the greens were almost muted, the dirt and clay orange-y and purple in places. Along some parts of the trail we walked on new paths but in some places we walked on the original stones that has been placed there thousands of years before. Here's a photo that shows a new dirt road which we later drove up to get a view of the valley, which includes a massive crater in which you can see original dinosaur prints. Nutty!
For the last two days of my trip, I travelled alone. Madinah headed further north to La Paz, while Ashton and Annie headed to another Bolivian city, PotosÃ, where they took a tour of a grim operating silver mine. Because of limited time, I needed to head back down to San Pedro to catch my flight back to Santiago. Transportation in Bolivia is much less efficient that in Chile, we learned, so I wanted to leave myself plenty of time. Although I was initially a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of traveling by myself, even just for two days, I found it quite relaxing and got a lot of reading and writing done, which was lovely.
Bolivia was a fascinating place and definitely one that I'd like to revisit. Perhaps I'll WWOOF there, who knows! Regardless, the trip was well worth going a bit further into debt for.
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