Advertisement
In Salta we contacted two friends, Leander and Soumaya from Rotterdam who are also travelling in South America. They started their trip at the beginning of April, they travel by bus all around the continent. After calling we found out they were in Mendoza. We thought it would be nice to meet each other in Salta, so we stayed a few days longer and they adjusted their plan and took the night bus (it took 24 hours!).
While waiting for our friends we went horse riding at a little ranch close to Salta. We went over there in the afternoon so we could have lunch. The owner, Enrique, supplied us with big steaks and a vegetarian meal for Jura. He told us that he ate at least a pound of meat a day, for the last 40 years! After the lunch we climbed on our horses and rode them for almost four hours. Jura had a lot of experience, because she had two horses when she was a teenager. Bas did not ride a horse for 20 years, but we both did fine. For Jura it was pretty dull, although she had the wildest horse of the ranch. After the riding
we had dinner and lots of red wine. Enrique buys the red wine at a monastery, it is normally used during mass. He is their biggest client. It tasted very good till three in the morning, it would almost make you join the church.
Back in Salta Jura and I went around town to the post office to check the rates for sending stuff home and there we bounced into Leander who had the same idea!! They had just arrived in Salta in the morning. We went for a drink on the main square, Soumaya unfortunately got a cold in the bus so she went back to the hostel earlier.
Jura and I were planning the last things for our trip through the desert and the Andes to Uyuni in Bolivia, we had to buy extra containers for gasolina and some plastic for protecting the engine. Then Jura got an e-mail from KLM that her unpaid leave was prolonged by another month, very good news!! This gave us some extra time! We thought it might be fun if Leander and Soumaya would join us on our trip to San Pedro de Atacama and Uyuni, the car is big enough
for four people. They immediately liked the idea and we had only one more thing to do, improving the suspension. We found a place were they put improved suspensions at the back that could handle a load of up to 1000 kg. We agreed on 150 euro to fix the suspension, when we came back to pick up the car we had to pay only 110 euro’s and we also got two CD’s with Argentinean music! The mechanic was also a singer! We experienced before that Argentineans we met were very friendly and honest. We got pulled over many times by the police, but we never had any problems with them. No corruption at all.
Finally we started the trip we were already looking forward to for months, never thinking that we would go with friends from Holland! We could just fit all the stuff in and on top of the car, it was like a game of tetris.
First we had to drive over the Andes again. We arrived around 20.00 at the Argentinean border and found out it was closed! Fortunately Jura and I are always carrying enough food and drinks with us in our house on wheels
for unexpected circumstances like this, so we can sleep and eat everywhere. The immigration officers gave us a place to sleep in a little refugio, Jura prepared a nice meal and the evening was saved.
The next day the border opened and we headed for San Pedro the Atacama. We drove all day on empty roads and just as we turned on a road to a touristy lagoon with a bit more traffic, the waterhose of the radiator exploded. The car had to work hard on this high altitude with four people and all the luggage and supplies. Actually it was luck that it happened here instead of the Uyuni desert, it is good to get the weak spots out of the car. Within one hour Bas organized someone in the next town that could tow the car to San Pedro, 120 km away. Most of the time the guy did not have to tow us, the road went downhill. We rolled down with the engine off and no power steering and brake endorsement! In San Pedro we organised a guy that would drive the next day, on Sunday, to the next bigger city to get a new water hose
for us and install it in our car.
On Monday we drove to the Geysers del patio with the new water hose, the car did fine. We slept at the geysers in a refugio. The next morning at surise we saw the steam coming out of the ground and suddenly there were tourists busses everywhere. It was freezing cold, it would almost make you want to jump into one of the geysers. Actually four people died at the place because the ground they walked on collapsed under their feet and they were boiled within minutes.
In the afternoon we visited a copper mine, the second largest open pit mine in the world. It’s dimensions are 4 km by 5 km and 1 km deep. They have 75 trucks driving around, excavating 500.000 tons of ore and gravel a day. It is impressive to see what humans are capable of.
The next day we finally started our trip to Uyuni! We had enough groceries, water and gasoline for four to five days. The first stage was a climb for 50 km straight up from San Pedro (2300m) to the Bolivian border (5000m), it took us four hours!! The car got almost
overheated all the time, it was really working hard. We found out that the new waterhose was not tightened very well to the radiator, so there was no vacuum! We tried to tighten it, but without success. Later that day on the Bolivian side the hose got loose and there was a steam explosion under the hood again, we lost all the water from the radiator. Suddenly a sand storm started to come up and we had to repair the car with new water hose clamps that we bought at the beginning of our trip in Rio de Janeiro. We tightened the hose with two clamps instead of one. It worked out very well, since then we did not have any problems anymore with the temperature of the car!
The road was very bad, there were deep tracks that required high ground clearance. Everywhere there was sharp gravel on the road that could puncture the tires. There was no maintenance of the road at all. First stop was at the laguna Colorado, a red collared salt lake with flamingo’s. We were very happy that we finally arrived after such a stressful day. The whole trip was between altitudes of 4000
mini-IMG 3680
Leander en Soumaya zijn in Salta aangekomen en gaan een week met ons meerijden naar Uyuni in Bolivia.m and 5100 m, we also brought two oxygen bottles in case one of us would not cope with the height. It took us three days to drive to the salt flats of Uyuni, sometimes we could just drive only 14 km an hour! The salt flats were really the climax of our tour, it was a big reward. The salt flats are a quarter the size of The Netherlands and plain white. We could drive over 100 km here on this massive salt plain, it looks like you drive in the snow. We were glad that we made it and that we brought our friends safely to Uyuni in our car. It was a great experience, but sometimes stressful. The most amazing thing was that our 7 year old Michellin tires with almost no profile survived the trip and did not go flat! In Uyuni we said goodbye to Leander and Soumaya and brought them to the bus terminal, we had spend one week together which was a lot of fun.
Jura and I drove back in the dark to the salt flats. Jura had to camp here, so we did!
We drove for one hour to the middle
of the Salar de Uyuni until we did not see any lights anymore. We set up our bed in the car and drank a beer on the accomplished journey. Sleeping here was an unreal experience, the silence, everywhere the landscape is white and no place to hide the car. From the bed in the back we had a panoramic view all around the Salt plain, it was beautiful. The next morning we had breakfast with eggs and lots of salt!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 6; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0432s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Chris Magarian
non-member comment
What a trip!
I'm so happy that the two of you have been having such a wonderful trip! And, it sounds like you might get to stay an extra month due to Jura's leave extension. You'll have so many wonderful memories to share! I'm looking forward to seeing you both in person to hear more about your adventures!