Advertisement
Published: October 18th 2009
Edit Blog Post
This 4 day tour was a real experience. Far more driving around in a jeep than any of us expected, but it got nice and cosy in there with Huan Carlos our driver and guide and Mama our cook, the three of us and Mike and Jared, who we met in Salta and were also in our jeep. The major themes of the tour, mountains, llamas, lagoons and flamingos, being at high altitude as well as sitting in a jeep, trying to sleep, the cold outside, the heat in the jeep and the driver only ever addressing the girls: "hola chicas!" This may have had something to do with the fact that only Franki really spoke Spanish so Huan only spoke to her really!
The Salt Flats Tour starts in Tupiza in Bolivia and ends in Uyuni.
Day 1: started at 9am, the most respectable time we started at during the whole tour, and drove up into the mountains. We saw some natural rock formations and many mountains, the scenery was beautiful. Whilst in the car we also saw many llamas, which started a joke as the word for call and the word for llama are the same so our
driver would constantly say "me llama llama" every time we saw a llama, for the whole trip, it was funny though! We also stopped off in a couple of small towns one of which had a lot of children who were facinated with us, whilst waiting for some other groups to appear, one other from our hostel and some that we kept seeing whenever we stopped. Then we went to find our lodgings. Dinner was lovely but as we had found out at afternoon tea, there was to be no sharing of food between groups, even if they had bread and you had biscuits and you were also not allowed to sit with a different group, which we all found very amusing and all swapped everything anyway. The accomodation was very basic and freezing cold once the sun had gone in so we were glad we had sleeping bags as well as blankets. The boys on the other hand had not asked how hot/cold/other it would be so didnt have sleeping bags, but they did have the comfortable beds because, stupidly, me and Franki had given them up before realising that the other beds were basically a plank of wood
on top of some stones (not actually but they might as well have been). So the boys were comfortable but we were warm, that´s a compromise.
The next day we had to be up at 5am having not had very much sleep at all, for breakfast, which wasn´t worth it because it comprised of hot drinks and rock solid bread. I did see the sunrise over the mountains though which was pretty cool. We then went to see an old colonial town that was now in ruins and we were just going to take photos from the car because it was cold as it was still very early in the morning and we were all tired and lazy. We did end up having a bit of a wander though, but only a short one. Then the tour of the lagoons began. The first had lots of calcium carbonate on the surface so it had patches of white all over it and the second was the white lagoon covered with borax (photos from the car). Before we had lunch we went in some natural hot springs, stunning scenery, surrounded by mountains and nice to be submerged in water even though
it has sulphur in as there were no showers until the last day! After lunch we went to see out final lagoon of the day and the best of all the lagoons/lakes we saw. It was green, had really diferent textures on the surface and was in front of a volcano. It was beautiful. There was no wildlife here though because the lake was toxic - hence the green colour. After we collected Mama (our amazing lovely cook) from the hot springs where we had had lunch and went to see some geysers. They absolutley stank and we were far too close for comfort to them, especially when you consider they spit molten hot mud at you but they were good to see and marvel at. We stayed at a much warmer and far more comfortable hostel that night and at afternoon tea we had llamas wandering past the window. Went stargazing after dinner, which I love even if I dont know what half of them are and you could just about see the Milky Way. Franki and Jimmy (a guy from the other jeep from our tour company) were making up constelations: shining, starry, mum at home, dad at
work, son at uni over in that part of the sky.... It was freezing cold though so didn´t stay outside very long.
Day 3 was a slightly later start 6am and went to laguna colorado. Had so many flamingos in that lake and it was red because it has lots of the same type of algae that flamingos eat which makes them pink. It was very pretty but the green one was still my favourite. Then we went to see 5 lagunas, with lots of "famencos" and some that were "amigos de touristicas". We also saw some rock formations that were some inspiration for Dali and visited a tree rock and took some fun photos of us jumping off rocks here. Had a lovely lunch sitting on some rocks with a funny rabbit looking animal watching us and then we looked at a volcano that is still active that luckily didn´t erupt while we were in the vicinity. Our final hostel was a salt hotel, the entire building is made from blocks of salt. We all had hot showers and mouturised our poor dried out skin and had dinner with some entertainment - traditional Bolivian music played by a
family, it was very nice then and someone even said it was like having tea at the Ritz, i don´t think they have ever been to the Ritz.
We were up at 5 again to watch the sunrise over the salt flats it was just beautiful. Then we had some time to take a couple of perspective shots before going to an island in the middle of the salt planes that was covered with cacti to explore before Mama gave us breakfast. Best breakfast of all we had frosties and cake! We must have then spent about 2 hours taking photos, there is no point of reference so we took lots of photos with different perspective. Our 3 cameras decided this would be the point that they would die on us! but we still got some gooduns.
This was a brilliant tour, if you´re ever in Bolivia I´d recommend you go!
xx
Visited Countries Map
Advertisement
Tot: 0.102s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 34; dbt: 0.0327s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sarah F
non-member comment
From an envious friend!
Yay im finally getting your blogs! And i just read all of them and they're so interesting and insightful ('i am called llama' - brilliant!). Sounds like you're having an incredible time and im so pleased you're getting to do everything you want to. Missing you loads and (as much as i don't want to wish your time away) can't wait til you're back on home soil to tell us all about it...i feel another reunion coming along! hehe. Love you and miss you loads sweetie. Take care. Can't wait for the next instalment Love Sarah xxxxxxxxxx