Lakes, lakes and more Lakes (geysers and hotsprings too)

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Ready for something a little more extreme than star gazing, we set off on a three day, high altitude trip to Uyuni, Bolivia. It started with a 6.30am get up. On arrival at the meeting point we were expecting to find two other English and two French tourists, but Julio informed us that they had had to drop out and go on a different day. Instead we were accompanied by a 30 year old Bolivian guy named Pablo (no, really), a resident of San Pedro. We set of to the Bolivian border, which took surprisingly little time, and found our 4x4 waiting at quite possibly the smallest immigration office I have ever seen. Here we ate a good breakfast out of the back of the truck which would soon become our transport around the Bolivian Altiplano at 14000 feet. It included my new favourite chocolates “Bon-o-Bons”, hot coffee and bread. Pablo managed to devour an entire packet of Coconut creams

With the Bags strapped to the roof and 80’s music blaring out, we set off with a new, Bolivian driver, who we have forgotten the name of. Although Pablo had even struggled to remember it, so it wasn’t just us. First, was one of many lagoons “Laguna Blanca” which got its name surprisingly, from the white coloured salt surrounding the lake, now at an altitude of 4350m I was beginning to feel a little unwell.

We stopped for a while and enjoyed mate and an altitude sickness relief concoction of coca leaves and a black sweet solid thing to counteract the taste of the coca. At this point the our driver had decided to give Amy, Pablo and I names. Amy was called Mama Ocllo who was an Inca Goddess, I was Inca Mayor, who is the highest ranking Inca, and Pablo adopted the name Inca Chilean. As with all things it was not just the places, but the people you are with that make your time memorable, and so it was on our tour. We became great friends with Pablo, and our driver too. Even with the language barrier, we shared stories, laughs and of course, mate and cocoa leaves.

Moving on after a second lake “Laguna Verde”, we happened to see a lorry cruising along the gravel road we were using, over taking us at least 120 km per hour, later we find that he has ploughed into another tour 4x4 going the opposite direction. However it took 3 hours for an ambulance arrive from the Uyuni, the town which we would take 3 days to get to. We stopped and walked among the wounded to see if we could help. The best lesson in road safety a person could get. This happened was just before we were due to arrive at the hot springs, which was a geothermal heated pool at 4300m, but didn´t feel like enjoying ourselves knowing what other people were going through just around the bend.

5000m high geysers were the next stop, the altitude at this point was beginning to get to Amy and I, so we chewed frantically on cocoa leaves in an attempt to smooth our heads. A few hours later we arrived at a Refuge by Lago Coloradom where we would spent the night. Conditions were bare bones. There was no hot water and we spent the night shivering as we tried to sleep on concrete slabs beneath a thinly thatched roof. When we awoke, after a very restless and uncomfortable night, the window panes were swathed in ice and the water in our bottles had frozen. We learnt that the temperature last night had dropped to a spine-chilling -20 degrees C.

More photos to come, having trouble finding a way to upload them..

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Photos

Easy Geyser
Apparently the over-curious have fallen in...