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Published: March 24th 2009
Boy was that a tough tour. I´m so exhausted - think it´s the altitude. I blame everything on the altitude these days :-)
The tour consisted of 2 jeeps, each with 5 tourists and 1 driver. In one jeep was a cook for the group of 10 (a lovely lady with few teeth, who insisted that vegetarian meal means french fries instead of meat).
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Day 1:
We started the tour at 9am from Tupiza, and drove in the jeep until 5:30pm. And by drive I mean crawl over majorly bumpy ´roads´ (i mean cliffs). Slept at 4200m. (COLD!! It was -1 deg C and I didn´t have any winter clothes!)
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Day 2:
Woke up at 4:30am since we were told we had a 12 hour jeep ride ahead of us. So, like an onion, I put on every piece of long sleeve clothing I had (5 layers in total) and we started off.
As soon as we left, it began to snow. The snow here is weird, they look like small marbles. We had about 6 inches of snow, which meant that the driver couldn´t see the cracks in the ´road´ properly. The ´road´ (and I keep writing
it with ´´ because it really wasn´t a road at all) was bearly the width of the 4WD. It was slippery, the driver couldn´t see which path to take and the cliff directly down the side was surely 20m deep. The driver had ´Barbie Girl´ by Aqua on full blast, which didn´t help. It made the girl behind me frustrated. After about 1.5 hours of this, we asked the driver to stop - I was so scared that I threw up.
At about 9.30am the sun decided she did want to wake up afterall, and melted the snow and cleared the skies (thank goodness). We proceeded to see some absolutely breathtaking scenary. We:
- visited the Laguna Verde with (extinct) Volcano Licancabur in the backdrop. The laguna really was turqoise!
- drove through Delhi Desert (yes, we went from minus 1 deg to 35 deg)
- swam in a hot spring!! (this made the 4:30am start worthwhile)
- saw Sol de Manana (Blow Holes) this was at 5000m (!!) These are fumaroles and releasing sulfur gas and water vapor with great pressure (it smells like rotten eggs).
The day was interesting, especially driving through the desert with snow
on it.
Slept at 4300m. cold cold cold!!
ps: I looked up at the night sky today... and wow ... the whole sky was covered in stars! you could see the milky way, and even 2 cloud like patches which are supposed to be 2 other galaxies that are viewable by the naked eye.
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Day 3:
Left at 7.30am, and visited:
- Laguna Colorada (this laguna really is a salmon colour!!) with beautiful flamingos
- mountain de coloures (can´t have been that good, because I don´t remember what that was now)
Slept at 3800m, just around the corner from the Salar de Uyuni (with view onto the Salar!)
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Day 4:
Woke up at 4.30am (grrrr) to see drive to the Salar in order to see the sun rise. The sun decided to be sneaky today and rose behind the clouds ..... so.
The Salar de Uyuni is the biggest salt flat in the world. It has an area of 11000 km2, and is considered the largest reserve of lithium. There are many islands on the salar, and we visited Island Incahuasi.
This island is an ancient volcano. It provided remnants of algae which promoted the
growth of cacti. The island is covered with cacti (which grow only 1cm a year. There are cacti about 10m tall, which means they are around 900 years old!)
The Salars was an absolute highlight. It is so huuuuuuge that we had it all to ourselves. 15 mins in the Salars equals 45 mins in the solarium. As soon as we got out to entertain ourselves making silly photos, the driver put the music on full blast (as always). For some reason, we started to dance to the latino music. It was beautiful - we were dancing in the middle of the salt flats. :-)
Notes:
1. I am sick of tours, and am really looking forward to being by myself.
2. I´m going to need a detox from french fries.
3. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SASCHA!
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Nigel and Margie in Australia
non-member comment
Oh to be young!
Glad you made it but, boy, what a schedule! You're amassing some amazing experiences. Keep safe, and yes, happy birthday Sascha from us as well! X