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Published: November 1st 2008
(Catherine)
Border crossings are usually very boring affairs that inevitably involve filling in lots of forms, having your bags half-heartedly searched by a bored official and getting ripped-off by money changers because you can´t get your head around the exchange rates quickly enough. So when we discovered that our Bolivia/Chile border crossing could be tagged on to the end of a three-day trip crossing the largest salt flats in the world, passing numerous colourful lagoons and taking a dip in natural hot springs, we could hardly believe our luck!
We dutifully headed to Uyuni, the starting point of the trip and, after doing our research on the internet, visited a company that had received lots of good reviews. Learning from previous experience, we double-checked that we would actually be going with them and wouldn´t be grouped with some other lesser company to make up numbers. The travel agent assured us that that wouldn´t happen so we handed over our Bolivianos and made arrangements for the following day.
We ended up in a group with a Spanish couple (very lucky for us seeing as our guide didn´t speak a word of English!) and a couple from Australia. Once our
jeep was well on the way, we got talking and discovered that we´d all booked through different companies! We had no idea which one we´d actually ended up with until we asked our guide who he worked for. Of course, we weren´t with the one we´d booked with, despite our travel agent´s promise!
Although we´d been fobbed off onto another company and had been given the most disinterested guide in the world, we had a great time on the trip. After visiting a strange ´train graveyard´with lots of abandoned trains, we made our way to the salt flats, an amazing 12,000 sq km of blinding white. Here we sunburnt our faces (it was cold so we didn´t realise how strong the sun was!) and took lots of silly photos (as you can see!). We spent that night in homestay being ´entertained´ by three local children playing instruments and singing. One of them had an out-of-tune guitar so it was really hard to keep a straight face whenever he played!
Over the next two days we visited a number of beautiful lagoons (the vivid colours are apparently due to algae), saw hundreds of flamingos, walked through erupting geysers (no
Piles of Salt
They pile the salt up like this so it can dry in the sun. I don't know how they get them so neat though!health and safety issues here!) and bathed in a natural hot spring (a lovely, relaxing experience once you were actually in the water, rather unpleasant while you were changing into your bikini in the freezing cold!).
On the last morning, our jeep left us at the border while the others headed back to Uyuni. Chile is a much wealthier country than Bolivia which became obvious as soon as we passed the ´Welcome to Chile´ sign. The unsealed dirt track we´d been travelling along for the last three days suddenly turned into a beautifully smooth, road-marked road; the bus we boarded was modern and clean, and the bus driver was even wearing his seatbelt!
We got off at the dessert town of San Pedro where we spent a relaxing few days in the sunshine (I even got my flip-flops out for the first time in months!), ate in some lovely tourist restaurants and tried to get over the shock of Chile being about 3 times as expensive as Bolivia!
Our next stop is way down south in chilly Patagonia. Don´t suppose I´ll be needing those flip-flops for a while then!
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Rachel
non-member comment
funny rabbit creature
The funny rabbit creature isent a rabbit. Matter of fact its not even in the same family. Its a degue...a rodent. They live in rocky areas like the chinchilla does. The reason the degue is not in the same family as the rabbit is because its a rodent-2-4 incisors and rabits have 28 teeth (2 incisors and 2 peg teeth on the maxilla, 2 incisors on the mandable then a diastima, maxilla-2 rows of 2 premolars 3 rows of 2 molars, mandable-3 rows of 2 premolars 3 rows of 2 molars.)But I would like to see a degue..they seem quiet interesting...your trip looked fun by the way!