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Published: July 15th 2006
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The Bolivian Salt Flats have to be one of the most breathtaking places in the world. The scenery is absolutely amazing, to the extent that you almost feel you have landed on another planet. As Sass said while we were there, "It´s like God just decided to go mad with his paint box". I would never have thought it possible to have such bright, vivid colours in nature. The altitude, reaching 5,000m above sea level at one point, also adds an outer-worldly feel to the place.
We started our tour in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, piling into our black jeep, the ´Gato Negro´ (Black Cat), at the Bolivian border. We had a brief breakfast (the ever-faithful white bread), got our Bolivian entry stamps and set off. First stop was Laguna Verde, a lake with a beautiful volcano as its backdrop, which is greenish in colour due to a combination of high mineral content and high concentration of arsenic. From there, we stopped at a dusty, yellow expanse of nothingness, punctuated by some strange, isolated rock formations. These are named after Salvador Dali in tribute to the resemblance they bear to the artist´s work. We continued on to a hot
spring, slimy in the bottom, with incredible views across a multicoloured lake. It was absolutely freezing in the salt flats, and the thought of getting out after what would have been a gorgeous soak was too horrible to contemplate. I decided to just dip my hand in as a compromise!
We continued on to our refugio, our sleeping place for the night. It was basic, but not as bad as I had expected from tales from other travellers - we even had proper beds! After a late lunch, we drove down to Lago Colorado, a stunning red lake with flamingos living in it. This is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The lake was a deep, warm red and gradually changed colour as the sun went down. Ice fringed the edge of the lake and I, somewhat unwisely, decided to tap the ice to see how strong it was. The answer? Not quite strong enough. I managed to stick my foot right through it, all the way up to my ankle. When I managed to extract it, my foot was covered in a stinky, steaming, squidgy brown mud. Not good. As it dried, it turned
my walking boot bright white, so I had to attack it with an old tooth brush to make my shoes look like a pair again!!!! That night was absolutely freezing. I have never been so cold in my life!! Dressed in lots of layers and a sleeping bad, I managed to get a bit of sleep.
The next day was a big driving day, and we passed several lagunas. We also went to an amazing thermal site with lots of boiling mud and astonishing geysers. Pretty cool. Another jeep near us kept on breaking down, and our driver kept stopping to get their car started. Technical problems are far from unusual on the salt flats, and most groups seem to break down or bust a tyre etc at some point. This is unsurprising when you see how extreme the conditions are. In the evening we stayed in a salt hotel. Again, it was basic, but this time with hot showers. The whole hotel was made of salt, including the walls, the beds and the floor!
The next day we drove across the Salar de Uyuni itself. It is amazing, blindingly white and seemingly endless. We stopped at the
Isla de Pescadores, walking up to the top for a 360 degree view of the salt flats. There were huuuuuge cacti here, the biggest one is apparently 10 metres high and around 150 years old!! Having had a childhood cactus penchant, this was quite exciting for me!!
We ended up in Uyuni, having had a great tour with Corderrila Traveller. Uyuni is a strange place with no ATM - aaaaargh, so we had all kinds of fun and games trying to get any Bolivian money. We raced around and managed to find a tourist bus that would take us to La Paz, and luckily got the last few seats. It was the bumpiest bus ride we have done - I don´t know what we were driving over, but it was in no way related to road as you and I know it. We made it to La Paz in one piece, and spent the next few days relaxing and exploring.
It was great to be joined by Rich a couple of days after we arrived. He and I went mountain biking near La Paz with ´Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking. It was 77km of downhill road, over 45km of
which was on a dirt track dubbed the ´world´s most dangerous road'. It gained this name due to its very high death rate per km, a record which results from the frequency with which buses and lorries go over the edge. By the end of the ride, I could hardly hold on to my handlebars or use the breaks because of the vibrations, and my bum was beginning to suffer somewhat.
We are now in Peru on our truck tour. We had just spent the night on an Island in Lake Titicaca, and tomorrow we head on to Cuzco. One step nearer to the Inca trail. We have now done a couple of easy walks at altitude, and I don´t know how I´m going to make it up the trail. Altitude makes any kind of physical effort seriously tough. We start on Wednesday for 4 days, so we look forward to that with anticipation and some nervousness!!!
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