Atacama Desert and Salar de Uyuni

We decided to take a tour to get into Bolivia (way more interesting than just taking the bus, right?). So, we made our way to San Pedro de Atacama, to take a 3 day drive across the desert and salt flats to make our introduction to Bolivia something truly special.

As soon as we entered the tour bus, a split became apparent...the Spanish speakers and the English speakers. Luckily, this worked out quite nicely into one group of 5 and one group of 6 (as a maximum of 6 people could fit into one landrover). So, Joe, Megan, Deirdre, John and I took the bus to the desert border crossing into Bolivia where we had breakfast and moved into the 4WDs. The border control was hilarious - literally just a shack in the middle of the desert. The Bolivian flag was half missing, worn ragged by the desert winds. That said, it was also one of the most painless and speedy borders I have ever done. During our breakfast (think white bread and sugar, sugar, and more sugar, and you´re about right) we spotted some seagulls. We wondered if they were a bit lost. Also, we saw a fox, prowling around for scraps and, possibly, seagulls.

Jumping into our landrover (once called a Toyota, now an oyot) we bumped our way across the sands. And, man, do I mean bumped (I still have bruises on the outside and probably also on the inside). Our guide/driver spoke no English and we spoke little Spanish which made for some interesting miming. Drove past some pretty lagoons and flamingoes, resting at some hot springs. Luckily for us the car decided to conk out at this point so we got an extra long bathing session in the spring. It was all going, oh, I don´t know, one could say, swimmingly - until the wind blew my towel into the spa. Doh! The sun and the strong wind speeded up the drying process.

I haven´t mentioned how cold it is in the desert! The wind was ferocious, ripping through layers of clothing like they just weren´t there. I truly wished I was wearing 3 layers of trousers. But as it was, I had only one pair on and we had to make do. Our next stop was some stinky sulphurous geysers - no safety barriers this time! Ha, take that, New Zealand! We wandered around for a bit, watching the bubbling mud and steam. I briefly considered making myself another impromptu mud facepack, but there wasn´t anywhere safe to scoop. Plus I remembered the trouble I had washing it all off last time.

The higher we got, the worse the headaches got. I was extremely tired as well so unfortunately I missed some of the scenery by nodding off. I was grateful to arrive at the hostel for lunch and some recuperation. Slept for an hour or two, woke up with the thumping headache still knocking around on the inside of my skull. A combination of aspirin, neck massage and cinnamon tea did wonders (apparently aspirin is the best for high altitude, because it thins the blood and all). The English speakers went out to climb a hill to watch the sunset - true to form, with beers. The beer was extra fizzy owing to the high altitude which made for a novel experience (personally I preferred it this way). Slightly drunk and high on aspirins, tea, altitude, oxygen deprivation, I giggled my way down the hill and decided to hang out with some llamas. They made the most wonderful cooing noise, very cute. Didn´t seem to afraid of me so I crouched my way closer. Tried to get some good pictures but unfortunately it was too dark. Went back inside to read and eat dinner, did a quick 10 minutes of stargazing (no light pollution, gorgeous) and was in bed by 9pm!!

I had the responsibility of setting the alarm for the following morning. This I did, most dutifully. However, I had forgotten one tiny detail. In crossing the Bolivian border we had moved forward in time by one hour. Whoops. So, everybody was up an hour early, which I thought was a most excellent excuse for a brisk stroll to watch the sunrise. The others didn´t seem to agree.

Spurned by my group, I set out alone, the intrepid llama hunter in a desert wilderness. As it was, I didn´t really get very far, as sunrise came pretty fast, and I was very achy and out of breath. I did get some cool pictures though. The whole area is so beautiful and alien, it was very hard to not waste my camera battery and memory every 2 seconds (no electricity or internet in the hostels, surprisingly enough). Once again, a sugar overload left me jittery and didn´t really help the headache. Felt quite sick. Vowed never to eat caramel for breakfast again.

Jumped into oyot at 7am to jostle our way to the Red Lagoon. Red water, blue sky, hundreds of flamingoes! There were 3 different species, apparently, not that I could tell the difference. Poor oyot kept breaking down and overheating, but our trusty driver Ishad kept hopping out and fixing her up. We probably had 8 break downs over 3 days, but luckily none of them required more than 15 minutes of maintainence. I´m not suprised that we had breakdowns; massive dust storms, gusts of wind (even small tornadoes), sand and incredibly bumpy terrain do not a happy car make. The tornadoes were a little disconcerting - you´d hear this whirring noise and then you´d see this small but still very powerful looking tornado dancing about in front of the car. ´Er, is that okay?´ I ask Ishad. He nods and looks pretty relaxed so I try to follow suit. It´s the whirring noise that kept getting to me. That and the unpredictable weaving around that the tornadoes seemed to like.

We continued, bombing across the gravelly desert, Ishads favourite Bolivian tunes blarring in the background (I believe we only had one CD for the entire trip). We stopped to climb some cool rock formations, very Dali-esque, but I was feeling quite headachy once again so didn´t climb as high as I would have liked. For lunch, we stopped at another lagoon full of flamingoes. These ones were really close and not at all bothered by the strange pink monkeys on the beach so we sat peacefully in the reeds watching them feed. It was quite sheltered and sunny so I even managed to feel warm for a few minutes before heading once again into the icy blasts of dustwind. The rest of the day was spent zooming across the desert and being bounced around like a bean in a beanbag, although we did stop to take pictures of a smoking volcano and to fix the car a couple of times.

Gradually, the landscape changed, became softer, and the mountains gained multicoloured stripes, reds, oranges, greens. We were heading towards the salt plains. Eventually we neared a village. We could see our hostel, its salt bricks glinting tantalisingly in the distance.

Louise: ´Why have we stopped?´
Ishad: (pointing) ´Urgle lurgle murgle flurgle Baños murgle lurgle´
Louise: ´Toilets? But there are toilets at the hostel and we can see it! Why would we pay to use toilets when we have free ones 5 minutes away?´
-confusion ensues in two languages-
Ishad: (laughing) ´Baños y museo!! Museo!!´
Louise: ´Museum??´

It didn´t look like a museum...there was a stone wall and some kind of garden with a few piles of rocks in it. And toilets of course. But, as it was only 5 Bolivianos, we thought we´d take a look. I seriously thought we´d been scammed into paying to see a rock garden until Joe shouted ´Hey guys, look at this!!´. You could tell it was something really interesting so we hurried over, wrapped up against the wind.

Joe: ´Look in there!´
Louise: (looks in hole) ´Aurrgheeeeee!!´

It was a human skeleton, hunched up and moodily eyeing us up with it´s sockety sockets. He didn´t look too impressed by this white chick squealing at him in a most undignified fashion. We looked for more holes; found more skeletons. One still had hair. Another still had an ear and most of it´s skin. Another one had been a bit unfortunate and his head had fallen off, leaving the pelvis and spine sitting in the original pose. We found rope, pots, hats and child skulls. Hadn´t the foggiest what this was all meant to mean, as the English boards weren´t very informative, but we managed to deduce that this was an ancient graveyard for desert kings, or something. Either way, gross and unexpected but also very cool.

We made our way to the salt hotel (which, perhaps unsurprisingly, was made of salt). I´d been imagining some tiny ice palace like the one in Narnia (but, you know, smaller), but it looked pretty much like a normal building, except salty (mmm). It was surprisingly cosy, with rug hangings on the walls and a free bottle of wine to keep us warm. Hot showers were available but my headache kicked in once again so unfortunately had to depart to bed. Wouldn´t have been much point in a shower anyway - as soon as you stepped outside you were dusty up to the eyelids. The 4am start the next day was another factor convincing me that early bed was a good idea.

So, off we went, still dark, very cold, twilight stars. Sunrise on the salt flats. Ishad was driving incredibly quickly, but professionally - it felt safe. After about an hour and a half of bumpy punishment we got to the plains - a vast, flat, white crystalline mass. The salt had formed hexagonal shaped slabs and you could see where the landrovers had been driving across, flattening the pattern. The sunrise was euphoric. Pink Floyd would have approved. We continued over the salty desert, stopping to take weird perspective pictures in the crazy landscape. We stopped for breakfast at Isla de Pescado (which, I believe, means Fish Island - odd because there are no fish and it´s covered in cactuses). The locals keep a rhea as a pet. The cactuses were huge - it takes 100 years for this species to grow 1 metre so you can imagine some of them, 12 metres plus, were pretty old. As we reached the edge of the desert we saw a salt processing factory and a small village where we could buy some cheap souvenirs. Our final stop was at a ´train graveyard´, where lots of old trains had been discarded and left to rot. We climbed on a few of them to take pictures and graffiti our mark. Someone else had decided to leave their mark by doing a crap in one of the engines!!

I could hear that now familiar whirring sound, and sure enough, there were a couple of baby tornadoes lurking about in the distance. I was glad to get back to the hostel; the town felt safer somehow!