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We headed out of Tilcara, passing Humahuaca and onto La Quiaca for the border crossing. This was fairly straight forward and we were in Villazon the Bolivian town across the border where people would be trying to sell you their buses like street vendors. There was a train option here, however since the IMF came into Bolivia and encouraged privatising everything, their train system has practically collapsed. Now there are only 4 trains a week from Villazon passing through to Tupiza- our next stop. The train takes longer than the bus and although trains for me would always win over a bus, it meant having to wait around for a few hours. We decided to go by bus, but managed to watch the train come in a good bit later by the time we had checked in to our hostel, showered and were going out for food in Tupiza. We found an awesome Mexican restaurant which for £8.50 got us 2 full main healthy meals (complete with lots of veg) and 2 litres of drink!! Tupiza itself is nestled in between a similar landscape to Tilcara, although there appears to be more vegetation here, which may account for why it is
warmer here in the evenings compared to Tilcara. It is quite European in parts such as the main square but very different to Argentina with it being poorer than Argentina- that change was really obvious just by simply crossing the border.
In Tupiza we had a day to relax, plan our Salt flats trip and check out the town. The town itself was quite desert like with large red mountains towering over it. We stopped off in a Mexican restaurant purely for something light and veg based and was amazed to find that for around £4 could get you a decent main meal complete with a litre of drink!! We checked out the site of the town from the top of a hill before booking our Salt Flats and Eduardo Avaroa national park.
The tour started early the next day with most of the day driving from 2870m or so to over 4000m, something we’ll learn is not a good idea!! The tour picked us up in Tupiza where we met the rest of our group and the other 3 people we would be sharing our land cruiser with- 3 lovely people from Australia and Argentina. We were
then left admiring the views of the mountains whilst our tour guide went back to Tupiza to pick up someone who had got stuck in a protest and didn’t manage to get to Tupiza until after the tour had left. Most of the day was spent driving south west to the Reserva Nacional de Eduardo Avaroa where the trip starts. On the way we past a ghost town, aptly named as the Spanish colonised it and when they left, the town was left empty. The views were fantastic overlooking stunning scenery and crossing some pretty rough terrain. We had to get used to the cold pretty quickly as the height we were climbing turned temperatures down to minus 15 at night. We were delayed again with another flat tyre, the first time was ours then the second time was one of the other landcruisers.
After a shivery night of wearing all my clothes and not sleeping too well we set off again, the sun was coming up and although it wasn’t particularly warm at this time, it was still very welcome. We were around 4000m in altitude at this point and we were amazed to see in this very
desolate village where we had stayed the night, an astroturf football field!! This was surrounded by total desert landscape. Apparently the president is a huge football fan so has spent a lot of money building football fields in small communities. This day we saw the green lagoon, aptly named for its appearance next to a back drop of snow covered mountains. We were just about able to brave 5 minutes out of the landcruiser before squeezing back in after freezing. We then headed to some hot springs to warm up, which were fantastic, after the shock of having to get changed in freezing temperatures, the springs themselves were really warm and it was difficult to leave them. After warming ourselves up and a good lunch we headed to 5000m to the Geisers Sol de Manana, pretty much a volcano still spewing sulphurous smoke. It was pretty impressive to see these hot pools of grey/ blue liquid bubbling away whilst all around smelt of rotting eggs. Our last stop of the day was to the red lagoon- named due to its red appearance from the algae that grow there. There were also plenty of llamas and flamingos around this lagoon as
well. sadly due to climate change this lagoon is rapidly decreasing in size and our guide predicted that in 10 years time it may not be around anymore. Our base for the night was just below 5000m (4895m) and the temperature dropped to minus 18. Unfortunately many people in our group suffered from altitude sickness, something these tours are dangerous for due to the speed at which you ascend to such high altitudes. It is certainly worth taking note if anyone is looking to do these at some point.
Our third day was spent still at altitude but visiting a series of stunning lagoons, mountain ranges and even an active volcano. Later we crossed into the beginning of the dried up lakes that make up the salt flats, here the old lakes have large old coral rock formations that last for miles, this area is very sandy just after you cross the Uyuni to Chile railway line, this area is known as Salar de Chiguana. One of the other drivers decided to go off course as he thought he knew a short cut and got stuck in the sand. The rest of the group had to wait 2.5hrs whilst
our guide and the 3
rd guide went back to try to rescue them. This meant we were again late in getting to the last nights accommodation- a hostel made from salt. Amazingly it was warm inside and even better was there were hot showers. Due to the long cold wait at Salar de Chiguana quite a few people were not doing too well with tiredness from the cold nights before and the high altitude, although we were now below 4000m we were still very high.
Our last day of the tour started at 5am heading out to Salar de Uyuni- the salt flats. The salt flats were part of the dried up lakes that had at one point made up most of the area just outside the national park and before Uyuni. We watched the sunrise on an island full of cactus then did some great photoshoots on the salt flats- the pictures will do the talking for this bit. We also passed the Dakar car race statue- which showed that Bolivia had been the place for this event for the past couple of years. Finally we headed to Uyuni and the last place on our trip- the cemetery
of trains. Traditionally in South America when governments change, often policies from the last government aren’t carried on. Here was one great example where a load of steam trains were going to be sold to Chile, but there was a change in Bolivian government and the sale ceased, leaving these beautiful trains to be left to rust just outside Uyuni.
We then headed straight to Potosi- a mining town that was still 4000m above sea level, so didn’t hang around for long before heading to Sucre, the countries capital and a UNESCO world heritage site.
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