San Pedro Chile to Uyuni Bolivia. Salt Lake Tour
Trip Start
Feb 16, 2006
1
10
38
Trip End
Feb 16, 2009
San Pedro,
Chile
Sunday, April 16, 2006
The day was slow to get going as we needed to do all our paperwork to leave Chile and enter Boliva. After all the formalities it was onto some amazing sites.
The day consisted of visits to:
Laguna Blanco (white lake)
Laguna Verde (green lake)
Decierlo de Rocas Del Daly (Desert Daily Stone)
Aguas Termales (hot Springs)
Geyser Sol De Manana
Laguna Rojo (red lake with Flamingoes)
Overall the geysers and the red lake were just amazing
Another blanco laguna
. They geysers smelt like matty on a good day but were still fascinating. The red lake was just mind blowing it stood out so much against the desert. The altitude had kicked in a little and I felt very woozy and had a slight headache. Not to bad considering just over 24 ours before I was at sea level.Day 2:
Was a little disappointing but still good fun. I mean we were at over 4000 meters in the Andes who can complain.
The day consisted of visits to:
Abrol de Pierda (desert stone tree)
Lagunas Altiplanicas (highland lakes)
Salar de Chiguana (Chiguana salt flat)
Nights stay at Villa Martin (the salt hotel)
The stone tree and the salt flat were definitely the highlights from day 2. The lakes were really nice but they were all similar so we ended up being lazy and just sitting in the car when we stopped
Beans Beans the musical fruit
. Lazy gringos. The amount of driving got to us a little and we struck cabin fever by about 11 in the morning. We ended up playing a famous person game where you have to say a famous person then the next person has to say another starting with the first letter of the persons surname. This game went on for over 5 hours and definitely did my nut in. Thanks goes out to James and Suzie who started the bloody thing.The salt hotel was rad. The whole place is made out of salt bricks which you can lick if you feel inclined. Make sure you pick somewhere obscure because Im sure your weren't the first to try it. The tables we ate our dinner off and the chairs were all made of salt very cool.
Day 3:
We were supposed to be up and gone by 5:30am on the final morning to see the sun rise over the Uyuni salt flat but we weren't woken by our guide until after 5:35. We got up to find that every other group had all ready packed and left for puesta del sol (sun rise). So we quickly packed in the dark staked the car and headed off in dust ball. About 10 minutes down the road the car started to wobble a bit. Sure enough our luck with automobiles struck again and we had to stop to change the tyre.
We still made it out to the salt lake to witness one of the best sun rises I have seen it was beautiful
Being a Goose
. Again the pictures dont do it justice.After the sun rise we head4ed to Fisherman Island to have breakfast. It was a small island sitting in the middle of the Uyuni salt lake. The island was made mostly from coral (very weird at 4000 meters) and was covered in cactus some which were over 1200 years old. Being tight asses we decided no to pay the 8 Bolivianos to walk around on the island and instead walked around the edge of it. Some how this lead to 3 naked aussies running back and forth on the freezing salt flat to set the timer on a camera stacked on rocks. We got back to breakfast to find we had had an audience up on cactus hill. One of our mates James who had a large zoom lens had some classic photos.
The day consisted of visits to:
Puesta Del Sol En El Salar (sun rise over the Uyuni salt flat)
Salar De Uyuni (more of the Uyuni salt flat)
Isla De Los Pescadores (fisherman island)
Cemeterio De Trens (train cemetery)
All in all the tour was fantastic and I recommend it to everyone
Bunch of Geesers
. This was such a small chunk of SA there is still way too much to explore. The tour left us in Uyuni which was a small town much like San Pedro. We decided to travel north to La Paz as there wasnt much left to do in Uyuni?and there was supposed to be transport strikes in the next few days so best to get moving now. We booked a bus with some friends who knew of our luck with buses and told us if we crashed we would be the ones to blame.
Getting on our first bus in Bolivia was nuts. There were people going everywhere shoving bags of produce and who knows what into every crack of the bus. It was very overwhelming. After about 2 hours bouncing up and down on a crappy bus on a crappy dirt road the bus started to make some very strange noises. Sure enough the noises got worse and the bus broke down in the middle of the desert where there was no mobile service. We had to wait for to flag down a car for help then wait another 2 hours before another bus turned up. Man I love buses. Anyway we arrived in La Paz alive in one piece.
