A pinch of salt

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A mere 12 hours after leaving white sandy beaches, and two bus changes later, we arrived in the driest desert in the world, the Atacama Desert. Our destination was a town called San Pedro De Atacama, and at a height of 2440 metres above sea level, it was our first experience of being at altitude so far. Now San Pedro makes its claim to fame as being the tourist, archaeological and astronomical capital of Chile and we soon realised why. Valleys, geysers, sand dunes, mountains, lakes, and everything in-between are all features of the surrounding area. So after a quick nap, we signed up for an afternoon of sand boarding in the nearby “Death Valley” (sounds promising hey?). Having never done it before, we had a blast trying to surf down 120 metre sand dunes, tumbling, flipping and falling flat on our butts in the process. Exhausted after having to climb back up the dunes countless times, we were taken to neighbouring “Moon Valley” for a beautiful sunset over a landscape which gets its name due to it close resemblance to the surface of the moon. Due to the regions lack of water, wind and atmospheric condition, this particular valley is also one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

The next day we rented mountain bikes and peddled out to “devils gorge”, a stunning winded roadway through beautiful mountains. Forgetting completely about the effects of being at high altitude, we hired them out for 5 hours and planned a big days ride, however after 3 hours we handed them back absolutely drained. The higher you go above sea level, the thinner the air gets, so the harder it is to breathe, hence making you feel like you are the un-fittest person in the entire world. We slept well that night and woke early the following day ready to start our 4x4 tour into Bolivia.

We had signed up for a three day, two night tour starting from San Pedro and ending in a Bolivian town called Uyuni, located next to the famous Salar de Uyuni (the worlds largest salt flat). On our first morning, we farewelled Chile and crossed the border into Bolivia, instantly noticing the difference in wealth between the two countries by the state of the Bolivian immigration office (see picture below) and the lack of toilet paper and toilets in general. But we entered a national park and spent the next two days exploring lakes, geysers, admiring volcanoes, mountains, swimming in thermal pools and snapping wildlife such as flamingos, foxes and llamas. Some of this was a fairly new experience for me so I was job smacked, especially staring at the mud gurgling geysers which looked like something out of Ghostbusters. Watching a flock of about 20 flamingos “dancing” together would now also be up there with one of the most beautiful acts of nature I have ever witnessed. Crossing the terrain we reached altitudes of 4,500 to 5,000 metres, so a thumping headache was pretty constant for all of us, but it was well worth it.
Now they say to save the best for last and our tour certainly did so. Our third and finally day was what we had been waiting for, a visit to the salt flats. After a quick stop at a train graveyard (dirty but actually pretty cool), we turned a corner and WAM…there it was in front of us, a blinding white horizon. The salt flat covers an area of over 12,000km2 (larger than the whole of Tasmania) and is the remnants of a dried up salt lake which covered a quarter of the entire country once upon a time. Due to it being the rainy season in Bolivia, the salt pans are partially underwater at the moment, but still accessible by 4 wheel drives so we drove out at few kms to a point where you could see nothing but bright white horizon from every angle. After overcoming the initial thrill of being in such a surreal environment, we turned into your typical tourists and started thinking up the craziest photos possible. Due to the terrain, it’s a perfect place for hilarious perspective shots (once again…see below for evidence).
So after an incredible three days, we finished it off by finding a pub to celebrate St Patty’s day with our new found friends.

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