Salar de Uyuni

Despedidas

DAY 1
The morning after our sad farewells at the school and with the team, Kate, Kate and I hoped on a plane that landed us in La Paz, Bolivia. From the airport we made our way to the bus station, and Kate and I went on a wild goose chase to try to find the place where we needed to pick up the bus tickets we had arranged. Seeing as it was a public holiday, everything was closed everywhere! We had a hard time finding where we needed to be, but eventually we got there, dropped our bags for storage, and went to get something to eat and kill time until our over night bus to Uyuni was scheduled to depart. The eleven hour bus ride was a bit rough...although the bus was fairly comfortable, it was a cold night and an extremely bumpy road. By 630am we had arrived in Uyuni, a small military town. We found a fantastic place for breakfast (which was a huge meal!), and hung out until our 4x4 jeep tour of the Salt Flats was ready to go. Day one of this three day tour was definitely my favourite. First we stopped at a train cemetary, where a bunch of old steam and coal trains sit and rust. The rest of the day was spent on the Salt Flats. First we stopped at the salt mines and went to a place where they showed us how they manually dried and packaged all the salt. For lunch we stopped at Fish Island (yes Kate, there used to be water around it...you won´t find water here anymore tehe), and had not enough time to play in the salt taking funny perspective photos. We were rushed off by our grumpy driver and our impatient car companions to our first lodging, where we sat around and did nothing, but wait for hot water for a shower and for dinner.

rollin´rollin´rollin´

DAY 2
The second day of the tour to San Pedro, Chile, was a lot of driving. Most of the day we rocked out to cheesy 80´s pop rock synth beats that our mullet bearing 4x4 chauffeur loved to blast. We had several stops along the way, mostly at lagoons that our blast from the past chauffeur told us nothing about. There were a few flamingos left, however most are now on vacation in Florida. Just past the last little town that we would run into until we got to San Pedro, we stopped at a cemetary called Necropolis. At first I thought it was pretty boring, but then I realised there were bones and mummies in the caved out rocks...freaky! We also stopped to see an active volcano, where you could see the smoke puffing out the top and you could just barely see some lava coming down the side. Our last stop and sleeping place for the night was at Colorado Lake aka Red Lake. It was such a FREEZING COLD day that each stop was pretty short, because we couldn´t stand to be out of the car for too long. Red Lake was pretty red I suppose, but because it was such a cold day, it was hard to appreciate. The sunset that night though, was worth suffering some frost bite for...it was really breath taking. At our very basic lodging that night, we had to sleep in all our layers to try an fend off the cold weather.

rude awakening

DAY 3
"Beep beep beeeeeeep bipbipbipbipbip" At 430am the next morning we were all woken up to one of the most infant punching noises known to man. I slowly and reluctantly sat myself up and log rolled my michelin man self out of bed, asking myself why I had paid to do this. At about 6am my question was answered...we had driven out to the geysers to see the sun rise. Very cool! The geysers were blasting strong and, although it was friggin freezing at 4000 something meters up, it was definitely worth seeing. Over the entire trip we got to see such a different landscape to what I am used to seeing. Salt Flats, all different types of desert landscape, cactie, and at the geysers, it felt like we were on the moon! We also stopped at the hot springs just before the end of the tour, which was incredibly beautiful with the sun just coming up and illuminating all the steam coming off the water. After waiting for our driver to finish his breakfast, he rushed us along through the rest of the tour, telling us nothing about any of the places we were meant to see, and then hurried us along as Kate M and I said a unfortunately quick farewell to Kate, whom was heading back to Uyuni to meet with her other friend Kate in La Paz (do you think we had enough Kate´s in the program last month??)

Kate M and I made it to San Pedro fairly early, and spent the day just relaxing and hanging out. San Pedro is completely a gringo, tourist town. It is composed of hostels, cafes, restaurants, tour agencies, shops, and nothing else. We did a tour of the Valle de la Luna the next day, which was cool landscape, but pretty uninformative once again. Yesterday, we went sandboarding in the morning and then did a space observation tour at night. Sandboarding was hard work! It was a bit scary to get started, but after that you just spend most of the time trying to figure out what your body is supposed to be doing for you to actually be able to ride the hill. I am still finding sand in my ears today after all the times I ate it in the sand. The space observatory tour was definitely my highlight of San Pedro. The guide was really really good. He was funny, and explained things in a way that was easy to understand, and I learned so much about looking at the stars. It was so beautiful (have I said that enough yet in this blog?!), and he had this wicked laser pointer that he could point out constellations and planets and stuff with. It was a tres cool experience.

After getting off at the wrong airport last night (and then being escorted by airport staff back onto the plane), we have arrived safe and sound in Santiago. It is kind of a nice "breath of fresh air" (although fresh air is hard to come by here), to be back in a big over-developped city again. Tomorrow I will do a day trip to Valparaiso, and Kate leaves to go back home to Australia. I will be all alooooooooooooooone :( Then I make my way to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil and the rest is a story to tell later. I appologize for having left you with so little updates recently and I hope to keep on top of them from here on out. I hope everyone at home is doing fantastically well and please keep in touch! See you all soon...ish.

---

---