Advertisement
Another day, another city and oh so much to tell. I guess I will pick up where Troy left off, and fill you in on the adventures of San Pedro de Atacama as briefly as possible.
First thing was the sandboarding, we met the company at 4 and along with 8 other guys we loaded the van to be taken to the valle de muerte (valley of death)...I wasnt worried at all! Upon reaching the valley of death, it did not resemble death at all... rocky mountain formations on one side, snowcapped mountains on the other, and the soft sandy dunes (but like no dunes at home, they were big!) in the middle, it was beautiful. But I guess the death part came from the hike up the hill.... it was tough going, the acent itself was bad enough let alone being in sand. But if the downward rush didn't make the hike worth it the views definately did, I noticed some people even gave up on the boarding, or skiing, just to take in the views (whimps!). Anyway we boarded for about 2 and half hours, then went to watch the sunset at valle de la lunas, I think
you can guess what that means- valley of the moons, which was apparently where Thelma and Louise drove the car over the edge.
The following morning we woke at 3.30am to be picked up at 4am to go and see the geysers high in the mountains during sunrise. Luckily we had spoken to a few people and they had told us that is was about -5degrees so make sure to wear lots of clothes...thank god we did, it was freezing.
When we arrived our driver got out and told us that he was just going to prepare the breakfast in one of the geysers, Troy and I laughed, he wasn't joking! He put the eggs in a bag, and hard boiled them, and just put the milk in its cartons to heat in there as well! For those of you who are like me and don't know what geysers are, very basically they are holes in the ground, with steam or boiling water erupting out of them, they are caused by the volcanic magma undereath...or somehting like that! After this we were to swim in a 'hot' spring, which turned out to be a warm spring, especially when going
from below zero temperatures. We were later to see some really impressive geysers, that made these look a little whimpy!
We had met up with an English couple that we had met in B.A and decided to do the salt flat tour with them and another couple of pommy blokes they knew, which worked out really well. We left early Thursday morning, in a cohort of about 5 or 6 vans from different companies, all congregating at the border crossings of one desk, luckily they just stamped and sent you on your way..no questions asked, unless ofcourse you were American!
Our driver Feliciano (safest driver in Bolivia) loaded our jeep and we set off, excited like little kids going on summer holidays. The first day we checked out three or four different lagoons, all of different colours, one white, (which we may have ruined for those after us by trying to skim rocks and ice along the top ice layer, making holes in the once smooth flat ice), one green and one red.. all equally as impressive as each other, actually no thats a lie, the green one was nowhere near as good as the rest. As we further
climbed in altitude people started to feel it, amongst our group two of the guys were sick and few of us had headaches, but nothing too bad. I think it was this day that we also saw the muddy bubbling geysers which looked like we had stepped onto another planet or into a childrens sci-fi fantasy movie. It absolutely stunk too...like egg farts, it was pretty gross, but incredibly impressive, again like nothing I had ever seen before.
The following day we drove quite a bit and stopped at many different rock formations which again just appeared in the middle of no where, so we climbed them, Troy was like a little kid again, climbing everything he could see.
The scenery was really amazing, changing so dramatically every few hours, I didnt want to sleep while we drove incase I missed something.
So the last day was what we had secretly all been waiting for, the salt flats...and they did not disappoint...such vastness of white for as far as the eye can see, it makes the mountains in the distance look like they are floating, and like there is no end to the world... it's something everyone should see,
as you can't really believe until you experience it.
That pretty much ended our trip, our clothes hardened and white from lying down in the salt trying to get the best photo.
After this we stayed one night in the town of Uyuni, and went on to Potosi (the highest city in the world of 4090m above sea level.) There's not a whole lot to do here except the mining tour into a working mine...far from a glamorous tour, but a good insight to the working conditions of a mine. We had to crawl and scrabble through the winding tunnels, where the temperature was changing dramatically. An intersting tour to say the least, but I can tell you now I will definately not be doing any work in a mine for as long as I live...and our guide told me that if Troy gave me any trouble just to send him to him to work in the mine and that should sort him out!
So now we are still with all the poms and are in Sucre, unfortunately this will be a departing point, as we are staying on to do some more spanish lessons, and they will
leave us here.
I apologise for the length of the email, but I have really only scratched the surface of the past weeks events.
Bye for now, hope everyone is well,
Linz and Troy xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0454s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb