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Published: August 26th 2012
Day Two
Overview of LagunaUp at 6.30 and finished the last of our packing before grabbing a quick breakfast. When we checked out the lady running the place was so lovely it was hard for us to leave, and when the minivan turned up at 8.10 to pick us up she ran out the front and waved us goodbye. We were driven around town picking up others till there were 12 of us in the minivan and after a short stop at the tour agents office we were off to the Chilean Immigration office. This was just a small building located on the edge of town and strangely enough a short walk from our hotel. There was only one man processing passports and the queue was huge as a couple of tour buses turned up when we did so it was a bit of a wait. Thankfully the guy doing the work didn’t mess around with stamping passports so we were underway within 20 minutes.
It was a 40 minute drive up hill across the Atacama Desert to the Bolivian border where we could get stamped into the country. Unfortunately being Australian means we can only get a
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Laguna Blanca 30 day visa when we wanted a 60 day, but at least we didn’t have to pay $135 like the Americans. Here we had our second breakfast and transferred to our jeeps, here the group was split into two and we were with an Italian couple Francesco and Laura and 2 German girls Sophia and Lea with our driver “Bloody” (a few of us asked and all heard the same so we are not sure how it is spelt or if it is a nickname). The only potential problem we can see is our driver speaks no English, despite our agent in San Pedro promising he would.
Only a short drive down the road we stopped at Laguna Blanca and it was from here that the scenery became spectacular. The Lagoon is white as it contains borax and also is partially iced over it is in the
Sur Lípez Province, Potosí Department and has an elevation of 4350 m, its surface area is 10.9 km². We had a 15 minute stop to take photos and walk around to enjoy the fresh but icy air. From here the beautiful scenery kept coming about 10 minutes later we were at Laguna Verde, which
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Bubbling away is an amazing green colour, its colour is caused by sediments, containing copper minerals. It was here that we started to see flamingos but only a few and again we walked around for about 20 minutes taking in the views. Termas de Polques is where we stopped for a swim in the hot springs which are 29.4 degrees, we opted out of that as some of the others did and just strolled around the area for 30 minutes. The idea of going from the cold into the warm water and out again with no proper change rooms did not appeal plus carrying wet bathers for the rest of the trip, maybe we are just soft.
At Sol de Manana we were at 4850m and saw the geyser basin with steaming and bubbling mud pots ranging from grey to latte colours. The whole area has a strong sulphur smell that at times gets a bit overpowering, but it does not stop you as the site is so interesting. The only downside is you have to be very careful where you stepped as the ground is unstable and areas that are damp or cracked could easily land you in a vat
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The red Laguna Colorado of hot mud. As we were leaving one of the larger mud areas started acting up and spraying boiling mud everywhere and very close to where we were standing so we had to hot foot it out of there.
Drove onto our accommodation for the night which is near Laguna Colorado, it is basic with no showers and 6 to a dorm room. We got settled into our room, which is freezing and we all grabbed a bed each. At 4pm we had lunch which included mashed potatoes and frankfurts, thankfully there was also salad. After our bellies were full we were back into the jeep and headed off to the nearby Laguna Colorado that is a vivid red colour caused by the algae and plankton with the shoreline edged in white from minerals. The lake also contains hundreds of flamingos which are a bright pink from eating the red plankton. We spent over an hour watching the flamingoes and the sun setting over the lake it was truly magical as was the whole day. As the sun dipped so did the temperature and the wind picked up so it was a hasty retreat to the jeep and back
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Flamingo flying over Laguna Colorado to the hotel. At the hotel there was hot tea and coffee waiting for us but when we were finished we were shooed out and had to hang around our room for a while. At 7.00pm we were called out for dinner which seemed early considering we only had lunch at 4.00pm, but it did not stop anyone from tucking into the hot soup and veggie pasta with tinned peaches for dessert. After dinner and before it got too freezing we all went out to take photos of the stars, we could not get our camera to take good photos and needed to check the settings again but not outside where we would freeze. The room was cold so it was to bed fully clothed and in our sleeping bags even though the beds had sheets and blankets it was so cold everyone tossed and turned all night. I thought about how wonderful today was and was eagerly awaiting tomorrow s adventure.
Day 316 Wednesday 22nd August We were all up at 7.00am to pack before 7.30am breakfast, when we entered the dining room there was ice covering both the inside and outside of the windows.
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Arbol de Piedra After a scrambled egg roll and a hot drink it was time to get our packs on the roof of the jeep and ourselves on the road. The bags on the roof are covered by a tarp which so far has kept the dust out of our bags which is good as the tarp always finishes the day covered with an inch of dust. The drivers did a full check of the vehicles while we had breakfast so the maintenance seems to be constant which is good to see and the drivers are both sober which is also great. Today we are seeing three lagoons, but the first site is Arbol de Piedra (stone tree) 18 km away in Desierto Siloli. This is a rock formation that appears out of the flat desert although this is the most photographed formation there are others that surround it but this one is such a distinctive shape.
Next were a series of lagoons all beautiful and with flamingos these were Lagunas Honda, Hedionda and Canapa and although similar it would have been a shame to miss any one of them. At the last laguna we stopped for lunch which was not the
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Close up of flamingos prettiest one and the area surrounding it was covered in rubbish even though all the drivers while we were there seemed to take the rubbish with them. Our driver set out a good spread on the tailgate of the jeep which included veggie fritters, rice with veggies and salad. After lunch we wandered around while the driver packed up and then it was off to see the more rock formations with the smoking Ollague volcano which is on the border with Chile in the background.
It was now a long drive to the small town of San Juan which was a welcome relief for everyone as the last toilet stop was the Laguna before lunch which we did not know and did not use, so most of us where busting. Here after relieving ourselves we could pick up any last minute supplies before we went to our hotel for the night. The trip to the Hotel de Sal was another 45 minutes this hotel is made of salt bricks and has loose salt floors even the furniture including bed bases and chairs are made of salt. Here we had a room to ourselves and shared bathrooms with hot showers
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Shelley and Scott with the flamingos so there was an instant queue to get in. Before dinner Scott and I went outside to experiment with star photos again and one of the passenger’s from the other jeep came out. He had done a night observation tour in San Pedro and the guide setup everyone’s camera to take pictures and we were lucky he had a similar camera so we started to get better pictures. Before we perfected them we were called into dinner which was not as good as the night before especially for the one vegetarian as it only had soup, steak, chips and plain rice. The drivers had brought wine with them so we all had a glass of red before we headed back outside to get those elusive star photos. This time settings seemed to be right and we had more success please see attached photos. It was now really cold (we would guess about -5 to -10 degrees) and the wind had picked up so it was off to bed which did not bring warmth, we soon realised that a salt base for a bed is not a good idea. The base had cardboard, plastic, a mattress, a sheet and then our
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Night Skies sleeping bag and whichever side was against the bottom was like ice while the top was warm with all the blankets. Eventually we went to sleep but it was again a restless night turning so one side did not freeze.
Day 317 Thursday 23rd August We awoke to a beautiful sunrise view from our window before a repeat of yesterday’s routine of packing, breakfast at 7.30am and on the road. Today the road was on the salt flats to the Isla Incahuasi a bizzare land form in the middle of all this salt. We walked to the top of this large mound of earth covered with Trichoreus cacti and giving great view of Salar de Uyuni all around with only mountains off in the distance. One of the cacti on the trail down had a sign telling us it was 900 years old and it looked like it was still going strong. Near this cactus we spotted some viscachas which are rabbit like animals with long tails these are becoming rare and this was our second sighting on this trip. We have also seen lots of vicunas which are like a small llama but very shy
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Shelley and Scott at Isla Incahuasi hence I only got a photo of them running away. From here we headed to a spot where we could get a photo opportunity of the pristine expanse of hexagonal salt tiles, we all tried different trick shots some working and a lot not. The Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flats and covers an area of 12,106 sq km, and is 6 to 8 metres deep and it is blindingly bright white. It is a very surreal feeling standing in the middle of its vastness. We played around for about an hour having a great time and enjoying the warmth of the sun.
The lunch stop was at the Museo de Sal which was the first salt hotel but is now closed and contains a small shop, museum and dodgy toilets that do not appear to be environmentally sound. We ate lunch outside with the food set out on the tailgate. A short distance from here we saw where the salt is scraped into small mounds before it is collected, it is easy to see that if the hotels are not environmentally conscious the sewage would seep into salt plain and cause havoc. Our last destination
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Shelley has Scott in the palm of her hand was the Cementerio de Trenes (Train Cemetery) which is a collection of dumped steam locomotives and carriages from the past. It is great to climb all over these relics and they have even made swings and seesaws out of the parts. This is only a couple of kilometres out of Uyuni so we arrived at 3pm in the midst of a big festival in town. The jeep had to stop a block from their office so we had a short walk to finalise the tour which included a photocopy of our passports being taken even though no one could tell us why. Our trip with Cordillera Traveller has been fantastic and our driver “Bloody”, who is only 21 was a great driver and was sober the entire time, which from what we have read is the major problem with the tour drivers. We said goodbye to everyone hoping we would run into them later as we are the only ones staying in town the rest are getting night buses all over Bolivia. We booked into the Hostal La Magia de Uyuni which is overpriced for the tiny room we got, but it did have a hot shower. So after the
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Cacti on Isla Incahuasi shower and putting on clean clothes we hit the streets to watch the parades and all the crazy costumes. As we walked around we bumped into Jessica from the other group and she told us where everyone was hanging out. After a quick stop for money we joined them till 6.15pm when we all said our final goodbyes, we were so lucky this was a wonderful tour with a great bunch of people. From here we wandered down the road and had dinner it was now freezing and the restaurant which was like a huge barn only lit the fire after we arrived so it never really warmed up. We walked back to the hotel and on the way watched the continuing parades and dancing, so many of the girls had sleeveless dresses which gave them motivation to keep dancing to stay warm. At the hotel we discovered the central heating was not on but after asking we were given a heater so the room started to warm up. We sat in bed under all the blankets and went over the 860 photos we took over the 3 days trying to decide which photos to include on this blog. This
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Rusting Locos has been one of the best tours we have done and the scenery is beyond belief, a truly magical corner of the world. If anyone is considering do this tour all we can say is believe the hype and get over here and see this land first hand, this is a must see in South America.
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traudy glasencnik
non-member comment
fantasical!!!!
I'm not sure what to say, from the photo's and description of it all it looks and sounds incredible....how wonderful for you both. i love the different colours and the stars....look at all the stars, just beautiful. The cacti photo looks like something out of a mexican dream. xx be safe