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Published: June 18th 2009
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So much has happened since I last wrote and luckily it has been for a good reason. We have had too much fun and have moved so fast. After our fun time in Valpariso, Chile we headed north to San Pedro, Chile. San Pedro is a town that exists purely for tourism and has a lot of fun activities to do because of it. We chose mountain biking, geyser hiking, and an epic jeep tour into Bolivia.
The mountain biking journey was an exhausting and beautiful journey. San Pedro is roughly located around 7900 ft (2400 m) and has some very nice hills, valleys, and canyons. We spent the last few weeks at sea level so our altitude ability is pretty insufficient making the road more difficult than it should have been. We biked through Valle la Luna and saw some really beautiful desert highlights. We saw massive dunes, redrock spines (similar to those in southern Utah), salt flats, rock formations, and a very long highway we had to climb. The valley was such a beautiful place! The dunes are bigger and more pristine than any I have ever seen. A lot of people actually sand board on them. After
roughly 6 hours of biking and 5 hours and 59 minutes of burning muscles and burning lungs we called it a day. The ride was beautiful and bumpy but strenuous activity always gives you a sense of accomplishment!
The geyser hiking was incredible for so many reasons. We woke up around 4 AM in order to see the geysers go off around 6 AM. The temperature was around 6 F (-14 C) making it so epically cold! If you have seen the earlier pictures of the clothes I brought with me then you know I had every stitch of them on attempting to keep me warm. No matter how many layers you have on, the cold penetrates to the bone. As the day progressed the sun came out and layer after layer was stripped until only a t-shirt was on. The desert continues to amaze me! The geysers themselves were amazing. A field of steam rising from hundreds of different sources. An epic site and a phenomenal experience. Breakfast was provided by the tour and we ate it in the frigid cold. I have never been so happy to have a hot coffee! It was really novel to see
the tour company heat up the milk and water in one of the geysers. Natural heating is sweet! Some individuals thought they would join the hot milk in a bigger natural hot spring. Dylan and I passed on this opportunity due to not having a towel (not because we are not bad asses). The remainder of the geyser tour took us around the Atacama desert and we saw some really great scenery, small villages, and ate llama empanadas. A great experience overall!
The epic journey that will be unforgettable is the jeep tour to Uyuni, Bolivia! This experience is also going to be the most difficult to describe to you because it was 3 days of unforgettable sights and social activity. The tour consisted of 2 land cruisers with 6 people in each car and 2 awesome drivers. Dylan and I rode in the cruiser with 4 Brazilians, the other car was 4 Australians and 2 Irish. The whole group of people were absolutely fantastic! Currently it is several days after the tour and we are still with the 4 Australians and 2 Irish. We plan to meet back up with the 4 Brazilians before we leave Sao Paulo,
Brazil in early August. The 3 days and several hours spent driving with these individuals almost made the epic journey what it was. There was plenty of story telling, card playing, singing along, and laughing. It was great to share this experience with such interesting people.
Day 1 of the jeep tour we had to cross the boarder into Bolivia. Americans cannot get their visas there because they get to pay an exuberant amount of money when they reach Uyuni. Therefore we got a special 3 day permit that would give us time to complete the jeep tour. Moving on from the boarder we drove for several hours stopping often at interesting sights. Some things we saw are vicunas, llamas, a white lake, a green lake, several volcanoes, natural hot springs (which we swam in because we actually had a towel. This time proving that we are bad asses!), and o my hell we saw so much more that I could go on for days. Our driver, Ruben, was a great guide and a great driver. This man was incredible, he did everything. He drove, he guided, he cooked, he mechaniced, he chewed coco leaves, he had a girlfriend
in each city we drove by, and he shared his lolly pops with us. The end of day 1 was spent sleeping in a small structure with no heating, no hot water and was located at roughly 14,100 ft (4300 m). The oxygen was low and the temperature was extraordinarily cold. That night I slept in a room with six people and did not sleep a wink. But fortunately I had the pleasure to hear a wonderful symphony of fantastic noises the entire night. Snore, sniff, snore, cough, cough, sniff, snore, gasp, snore, pant, pant, motion, motion, door, door, snore, cough, and so on. So beautiful and wonderful! Because of this spectacular symphony I was inspired to spend most my night making a terrific playlist on my ipod. An ipod that has over 12,000 songs and a man that loves his music made the night surprisingly exceptional.
Day 2 we spent even more time driving and saw even more amazing sights. Just to remind you we are in the middle of the driest desert in the world in a third world country so there is no such thing as a road. Most of the time our fantastic driver would
swerve from tire track to tire track making the day surprisingly entertaining. Also I got to play DJ. It was a day of classic songs and sing alongs. The Brazilians where trilingual and had a fantastic knowledge of great music (ie. Bob Marley, Ben Harper, The Beatles, CCR, Elton John, and so much more). All this fun occurred in the car. The times we left the car we got to see a red lake, flamingos, more llamas, thermal sulfur/tar pits, more volcanoes, a rock shaped like a tree, more rocks to climb on, a small salt flat, a hotel made of salt that we stayed at, and o my hell I could go on again for another few days. Dylan is a man that loves his salt so he couldn´t get enough of this place. I caught him licking the wall a few times. The salt hotel was not as cold so the group stayed up late to hang out. This was really fun! Interestingly enough do you know that some people travel with cocktail dresses and hair straighteners? I didn´t!
Day 3 was the end of the journey and much shorter in duration but not in wonder. We
saw the largest salt flat in the world! (Utah having the second largest) An object on the horizon that looked only a minute away took 30 minutes to reach. Perception on the flat expanse of salt was incredible. We traveled over one of the shorter distances of the flat which was 100 km. During this time we never even changed elevation by 1 m. I know this due to my wonderful watch! Something else other than the lack of perception that played with the mind and brought something mystic into the experience was Cactus Island. It is a very clever name because it actually is an island in the middle of the salt flat that is covered in cactuses. Crazy! After the salt flat the tour was over and our group reached the town of Uyuni, another town that exists due to tourism.
In Uyuni we needed to obtain our Bolivian visas. To get the visas we needed to pay 135 US dollars. Most other countries pay nothing. Americans are not the most loved people in the world. But in their defence the fees are usually reciprocal so we charge them the same amount to get into the US.
Little did we know that we also needed to have yellow fever inoculations that we did not have. Because of this we needed to pay more money and sign a waiver that says Bolivia is not responsible for us getting yellow fever. Oops! In total we spent more money getting into Bolivia then we did for an all inclusive 3 day jeep tour. I am having the time of my life so I still cannot complain.
The stories above barely touch how incredible this experience was but I did my best!
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Dad
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curious
Hey Randy, About this Driver you claim is " the best driver ever", I'm just curious, is it the same one that chews Coco Leaves ?.