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San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
The trip starts in San Pedro where we boarded a mini van to take us the short trip to the Bolivian border 4 - 6 Abril 2009
In a taco shell… A 3 day Jeep journey across the desert and salt flats of Bolivia, at times upwards of 4000m above sea level, featuring steaming sulfur pits (geysers), hot springs, cacti, brightly coloured lagoons, flamingos, llamas, vicuñas (littler llamas), salt hotels and just too much amazing scenery to give you any true indication in this little accumulation of words and pictures of just how unbelievable this region of the world is!
Add to this, that our driver and his wife brought along their (nearly) two year old son for the journey (and every tour they take without weekends or holidays, ever!) to up the entertainment, and that we were lucky enough to have some awesome Swiss and NZ jeep buddies along for the ride, it was a truly amazing and memorable experience!!!
In transit… The whole thing was one big amazing journey!
Digs… Hmmmm... the two places we slept along the way were poles apart:
1- First night Refugio- cold (although we were prepared! Slept in everything we owned and then some) and not exactly comfortable, especially as at over 4000m above sea level it is very very hard to sleep
Chile/Bolivian Border
The dodgiest looking border crossing we have come across so far! And we´ve seen dodgy! (constant thirst, breathing difficulties, insomnia and a constant need to wee - you wanted to know that!). On that note - The bathrooms were pretty gross! No flush mechanism, instead a bucket that you had to fill yourself from a large drum outside the cubicles and then pour down into the bowl- this generally can work ok, but with the 2 Refugio toilets it was far from effective, nothing really flushed if you know what we mean - nice - and usually resulted in the floor being soaking wet with water and anything else that decided to splash out. Not the kind of place you want to find yourself vomiting at 3 in the morning... oh... hold on... nasty altitude god...poor Will!
2- The Salt Hotel- An amazing structure built from salt bricks. At just over 3000m above sea level, it was warm, cosy and it had running water and hot showers (for us folk at the front of the queue anyway)! A bit of a relief after the first nights "sleep".
We came we saw… ... see the photos!
In addition to those amazing sites- toilet stops along the way had to be taken behind the jeep. With
Chile/Bolivian Border
We enjoy breakfast at the border before being shuffled into one of the many waiting Jeeps (hoping we don´t get a dodgy driver or vehicle - luck of the draw really). no bushes or rocks in some parts, privacy was not an option. Needless to say, we were all quite close and comfortable with each other by the end of the trip... a sense of humour is compulsory!
City highlights… ... see the photos!
City Lowlights… Menacing gods of high altitude... AGAIN!!! grrrr... this time Lauren was fine and it was Will´s turn to feel the wrath, Will got hit hard with altitude sickness and spent a fair bit of time with his head over the smelly toilet!
Mental State… WOW! It was as close to scensory overload as we have been! We had so much fun and everything really was just so amazing! Afterwards we were all tired, and probably not wanting to get in a jeep again for quite some time, but it was totally worth it!
Soundtrack… Great as he was, our dear driver only had 2 tapes to play in the jeep. Over, and over and over again. We could have sworn that one of the tapes only had one song on it: one 40 minute Bolivian song... it was hilarious! Those who have heard Bolivian music will understand.
Once we arrived in
Day 1 - Laguna Verde
Our first two stops are Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde Uyuni, however, we were treated to a local radio station where, despite the DJ playing music, she believed that it would be even better if she sang her version of the song and then talk over the top of the music. I feel sorry for the poor Bolivian kid sitting at home trying to make a mix tape...
Flavours… We were treated to an array of Bolivian foods, as well as pastas, chips and eggs- we were well looked after in the food department 😊 Lulu even unknown to her tried a local delicacy- vicuña. Avid readers will remember what vicuña is (like llama, but littler, and cuter... probably more innocent...and endangered.....OH GOD!!!!!).
No comprendo… Thank god the Swiss couple on board spoke both fluent Spanish and English, otherwise the rest of us would have had no idea what we were seeing, where we were going or how long we would be.
It was also difficult, even with the translations coming through loud and clear, to discern our drivers concept of time: at one stage, 2 minutes until our destination was in reality 30 minutes (interesting when you are busting to use the facilities), and then at another,
2 hours until our evening stop was actually only 40 minutes.
His difficulty with time also spilled over to our wake up time to catch the sunrise over the salt flats on our last morning of the tour- Why on earth were we told to be up and ready to go by 4am, when our driver wouldnt be awake until 4.30am and we were not leaving until 5? Ahhh Bolivia time!
Finally, eating an endangered animal and not being told until after is one hell of a NO COMPRENDO and Lauren may be suffering from psychologicando disturbiando for some time!
But seriously, we had a perfect journey. At least we did not break down a million times and not make the salt hotel like another group...
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