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Highs: Sunset over the valley of the moon. Perfectly mirrored lakes. Moonset over the Salar de Uyuni
Lows: Our tour group changing plans in Spanish and not telling us (despite speaking perfect English). Mild altitude sickness. Having to spend 2 nights in Uyuni.
Food: 2x steak, chips, salad and rice with 2L of coke for less than 4 quid. EMPANADA WATCH: Probably the best empanadas of the trip so far were from San Pedro, with rich cheese, fresh tomato and Basil - num!
Blog: Our journey to San Pedro de Atacama was perhaps our most epic. The first bus to Santiago, crossing the Chilean border was a mere 6 hours. Probably the most scenic bus journey we slept through! We managed to then get an onward bus from Santiago to San Pedro that same day, a further 26 hours, arriving some 40 hours after leaving Mendoza!
San Pedro de Atacama is a sleepy touristy town, full of charm, that was built up around an oasis in the Atacama desert. Wattle and daub houses, dusty streets, and stunning mountains in the distance. The driest desert on earth, San Pedro is reputadly the best place on earth for star
gazing. Sadly, we arrived on the first day of Full Moon, meaning any stargazing was out of the question for the next 5 days - sad face. We did however, take a tour of the spectacular "Valley of the Moon", a bizarre landscape of red rock stained white with salt brought to the surface with recent (and rare) rain. Despite having very comfy dorm beds, and a dorm room to ourselves, we were both really struggling to sleep. It was only when we were leaving that we realised we were at an altitude of over 2400m, double the height of Ben Nevis. The thin, dry air is not ideal for sleeping when you´ve come from sea level.
From San Pedro, we took a 4x4 tour to Uyuni in Bolivia, via the saltflats. What an amazing 3 days and a great introduction to Bolivia. We were greeted in Bolivia with a burnt out bus, a shack of an immigration post which had run out of immigration cards, backed by an impressive mountain with multi-coloured minerals spilling down the sides.
Our tour took us through a beautiful National Park, where we visited colourful and reflective lakes, active geysers, incredible rock
formations, saw llamas, vicunas and more flamingoes than flamingo land. Our first night was spent in a basic accommodation in the park itself, the only interesting thing about which was that it was at 4700m above sea level - cue headaches all round and some severe altitude sickness for a couple of Dutch guys on a similar tour. The weird thing was, despite being 4 times higher than the peak of Ben Nevis (which was snow capped even when we went in the height of summer) we were on a flat, rocky, dry expanse with 25 degree daytime heat - total headfuck!
After yet more lakes, tons of rocks, and more flamingoes than we'd ever cared to see, we arrived at the train graveyard, just outside of Uyuni - a bizarre playpark of abandoned, rusting locomotives. A perfect opportunity to take lots of silly photos and play! After the Train Graveyard, we pulled into Uyuni to find our accommodation. I think we both had the feeling that we were "not in Kansas anymore". Uyuni is an armpit of a town - dirty, rundown, impoverished and wanting for investment. Sadly, none of the money from the Salt flats tours seems
to make it back to the town or its residents.
Our final day started with a really early morning drive to the salt flats to watch the sunrise. The Salar de Uyuni (salt flat) is an ethereal and awe-inspiring white expanse, stretching to the horizon in shimmering haze. The sunrise itself was nothing compared to the setting orange moon we witnessed only moments before - really quite incredible.
Once the sun was up, it was, of course, time for taking lots of perspective-illusion pictures. Frustratingly, although we both spent lots of time and effort crawling on our bellies in order to take the perfect pictures for the other people in our tour-group, they seemed unable to grasp how to manipulate a camera, and some of our pics came out a bit pants.
It's so easy to get caught up in the fun of creating intricate pictures, but the best thing we did was take the opportunity to head away from the jeep, from the group and the chatter, and walk hand-in-hand into the deep, silent, nothingness - engulfed by the endless brilliant white, under a perfectly blue, cloudless sky, to gaze into eternity.
Lessons Learnt • Check the moon-cycle if you want to go star gazing
• The desert is so dry that you won't get condensation on even the coldest of bottles
• Dutch people can't handle altitude
• If you're feeling ill, don't try and wait for the next 'clean' toilet. There won't be one and you'll end up shitting in the desert
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