6-3
Got up early to head to the desolate border with Chile and Bolivia that wasnt too far from San Pedro for our 3 day 4wd Salar de Uyuni trip. The border crossing was high, about 4000m (13,000m), and cold. We had breakfast there and met our Bolivian guide and the other 5 people (4 isrealis...Tom, Shai, Nir, and Isha as well as a brazilleno named Isabella). We were supposed to just have 6 people on the tour and we told the chillean guys dropping us of this, but they said it would be okay and that we would all have seats in the land crusier. This trip is notorious for having issues partly because of it being run by very 3rd world bolivia and partly bc companies are trying to undercut prices as much as possible to get more tourists. Problems have included people not having seats in the land cruisers up to having drivers that were drunk and got in car accidents. Actually several tourists had died on the trip before bc of drunk drivers. Laura and I had read and heard all of this so we paid a bit extra to try and ensure a better tour. We were frustrated to see that there were 7 people instead of the 6 promised, but it seemed okay bc we had enough seats in the land cruiser.
We could tell we had arrived in a 3rd world country right away. Since Bolivia doesnt particularly like the USA for some reason (we probably had some shenanigans at some point with their govt), Americans are the only nationality required to have a visa (and a steep one at 135 USD). Well, bc the border post at this area was so small, they are unable to give you a visa. So what they do is write down your name, take your passports, bundle them up in some cardboard stapled together, and give them to the driver. After going through immigration, we hopped into our red landcruiser and set off. The "road" into bolivia can hardly be called a road. At times it was a rough dirt road, at others a 4wd road, and much of the time you just kind of drove over sand or dirt or rocks with no tracks or hundreds of tracks spread out everywhere. The scenery was of course stunning. It was high, high barren desert with red mountains and towering snowcovered volcanoes everywheds, often rising above salt lagoons. Vegetation was sparse. Occasionally we did see some vicunuas (the little wild llama like animals). It was like another planet. Bc of the altitude, it was cold and some of the lakes were covered in ice. Luckily the Israelis had brought a memory stick with music that could plug into the radio in the land cruiser, so we got to rock out to music (a lot of 80´s and current dance music) during the whole trip.
On the first morning, we drove by and stopped at Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde. The names white and green of course corresponding to their colors. We also stopped by a small lagoon that smelled like sulfur.
Around mid day we stopped at another lake (laguna chaiviry) which had hot springs along its edge. They were marvellous, being the perfect temperature and having an amazing view of the lake and the snowcapped mountains in the distance.
After the soak, we continued on the trail. We passed by a valley, called Valle de Salvador, bc the valley and hills were completely smooth except for these giant weird shaped rocks, which someone thought looked like things from paintings of Salvador Dali. As we continued driving, we descended upon Laguna Colorado, named of course bc its waters were red. Here we stopped as we would be spending the night here in a tiny, tiny 4 building settlement. We were there pretty early which seemed suspicious, and I saw on our itinerary we were supposed to stop at a geyser field. Isha, who had done the trip before and was re-doing it bc her first trip had been such a bad experience also knew we were supposed to go to the geyser field (named manana del sol) and drive past Valle de Mars. We told our driver this (his name was Sebastion and he spoke no English), but he said we couldnt bc since we had 7 people instead of the normal 6, we didnt have enough fuel to go on that trip. This caused all of us to get quite upset bc we had been told there would only be 6 people and we had all paid the full price, and I had an itinerary of where we were supposed to go. It was clear that the company and maybe even the driver to an extent were trying to pull a fast one on us to make some extra money in unused gas. Unfortunately for them, however, they had picked the wrong group to mess with. Israelis are notorious for getting everything they can out of every penny. They are ferocious bargainers and hagglers, and are not afraid to get a bit crazy. So you had 4 israelis, plus 2 Americans who had made sure to get an itinerary and everything that was included written down in writing, and then on top of that we had 2 good spanish speakers (Isha and Laura) and one expert Spanish speaker (isabella), so we could easily communicate and the driver couldnt play dumb. There was a lot of arguing and discussion amongst us, during which a couple of the israeli boys, fresh out of the army were going so far as to say they were going to steal the land cruiser or at least break some windows of it at the end of the trip. I of course thought this was a bit too far, but eventually we worked out a thing with the driver where we would buy some extra fuel there so we could go see the geysers and the rest of the sights. We all agreed that we wouldnt mind paying a bit more so that we could see everything.
So we hopped into the land cruiser and set off. The geysers were cool with lots of bubbling mud pits. They are supposedly the highest geyser field in the world at 16000 ft. The drive was amazing as well as we climbed up through a martian type landscape. Bc of our tardy departure for the geysers, we were rewarded with an amazing sunset over the laguna colorado and then an absolutely stunning full moon rise over the mountains and lake. The colors at dusk, with the moon rising, were just unreal!
We arrived back at the little place we would be staying, very happy and glad that we had been able to convince Sebastion to take us on the trip. We found out that petrol was about 5 bolivianos per liter (about 80 cents), so we were glad that for just a bit more money we had been able to go. When we asked Sebastion how much we owed him, he said that we had used 30 liters (7 gallons)!!! of petrol. We immediately knew this was bogus as we had driven about 10 to 15 miles in one direction at the most. And we knew that the landcruiser got better gas mileage than like 2mpg. We knew he was just trying to get some money. So we called a meeting of just us tourists in our dorm room and discussed what we should do. Should we just pay him for how many liters we thought we used, should we give him nothing and say we will deal with it with the company in Uyuni, or should we give him a small tip for being nice and taking us and tell him the tip was just for him and that we would deal with the money later in Uyuni with the company. It was funny bc it was a big discussion and we didnt know exactly what to do. We knew if we paid the full price, which was way too much, we would never see the money again. We also knew that we didnt want to upset Sebastion too much or the rest of the trip would be bad. We ultimately decided that we would pay for how much we thought we would have used. We called Sebastion into the pow wow (it felt like some council from survivor) and told him what we had decided. He of course countered, in a way we had predicted, that he had no money to pay for all that 30 liters so we had to pay it. Luckily, at the border, I had seen the Chillenos give him at least two 100USD bills, so I knew he had lots of money. We also figured he must have emergency money in case of a break down or some problem with the vehicle. He wouldnt accept our money and we argued some more and finally we got through to him that we knew he had enough money to pay the petrol and that we would discuss it with the company when we got into Uyuni and pay for it then.
We appeared to have everything settled when we asked him about the itinerary for the next day. Of course it was different that what we were supposed to do. Again it was bc we had 7 instead of 6 people. This time he told us the normal route would take to long bc with 7 people, the car was too slow. It was true that our car was slower, as we got passed by others, though not that much slower. But we convinced him we would start earlier and that we would take less pictures and less time (the israelis took a BILLION pictures at every stop). He was okay with this and of course even with the israelis taking lots of pictures the next day, we still got there 2 hours earlier than he claimed it would take us. Luckily that night they served us wine with dinner as we had had a pretty crazy afternoon and evening. But after this we would have no more issues with the driver and he actually lightened up a bit and became more fun. I think he realized he wasnt going to get money out of us. When we did arrive in Uyuni, there was never any mention by him to come to the travel agency and pay for the fuel, although he had talked to them on the phone, so it was obvious that he had had the fuel to do it as part of what we had all paid.
6-4
We got up early and our first stop were the shores of the large Lago Colorado. After that we continued on the scenic and gorgeous high desert road (like I said, not really a road at all, ust some occassional dirt tracks) until we came to an area with some giant rocks just sitting in the middle of the desert. They had unusual shapes, and one was called piedra del arbol (stone tree). We had some fun climbing up and playing on the rocks. We continued along the track with a cool viewpoint of disierto de Siloli which looked like it had been painted in varying shades of red, orange, and yellow. We visited several lakes today including Laguna charcota, Laguna Honda, Laguna Hedionda, and Laguna Cañapa, all with great mountain views and all teeming with pink flamingos Further along we had another nice view of Volcan Ollague which was active and steaming. In the foreground were more unique rock formations, similar to rocks you see around Moab and Capitol Reef. It looked ripe for some exploration via mountain bike.
From there, we drove some more until we reached a large salt flat (salar chiguana). We raced across the salt flat. Of course here there were definitely no roads and you could just driver wherever you pleased on the completely flat surface. At one point we reached some traintracks that crossed the middle of the salt flat. They seemed to be just in the middle of nowhere. After we left the salt flat, it wasnt long before we came across a small settlement, though much larger than the first as this one had a cute little adobe chapel, built up into some hills above the GIANT Uyuni Salt Flat (Salar de Uyuni). In the hills were also giant Saguaro type cacti. They place we stayed here was a salt hotel....a hotel built completely out of salt. The floor was salt crystals and the tables, chairs, and walls were made from salt bricks
6-5
We woke up at the crack of dawn to witness the dawn and sunrise from the Salar de Uyuni. The sunrise was absolutely magical. We drove out to this shallow lake in the salt flat, so shallow that you could walk out into it in your shoes without the water rising above the soles of the shoes. This shallow lake created an amazing reflection effect. It reflected everything perfectly from the rising sun to the setting full moon, to the snowy mountains, to us. And as the sun rose, it lit up the water brilliant shades of orange and yellow. It was freezing, but we had fun jumping around in the shallow water and taking some photos. It was just amazing to me how perfect the mirror reflections were.
After that we just drove out to the middle of the salt flat. Being out in this huge and endless expanse of perfect white salt crystals with perfect blue sky above was surreal and amazing. It was perfect flat white as far as you could see. We stopped at various places to take pictures. Bc of the limitless flat and white expanse, you can take cool optical illusion photos where you can do such things as make it look like you are giant and eating the land cruiser, or small and climbing up a backpack or hiking boot. I will try and put up some pictures some time. I thought I was going to today, but I am having a bit of crisis in that my backup hardrive some how got some virus and I am trying to recover the pictures, but it is taking literally hours and hours.
We had lots of fun trying to come up with crazy photos and otpical illusions. Driving on the salt flast reminded me a whole lot of driving on the ice shelf in Antarctica. Flat white as far as you could see with mountains in the background with mirages and phantamorganas
Along the way across the humongous salt flat, we stopped at the salt museum. We also stopped at a place they were mining the salt and had piled the salt up into little hills. After that we left the salt flat and visited a place called the train graveyard which was full of old and ancient train engines left to rust in the desert
After this we arrived inthe town of Uyuni. you could tell we had definititely arrived in a non western country. Women dressed in cute colorful outfits with these crazy top hat things and all had pigtails. Lots and lots of streetvendors as well. Laura and I walked through a cool market and had some very tasty street food including llama meat. It felt like we had come to a much more exotic place. And of course everything was dirt cheap. After exploring the town a bit and having some food, Laura and I took the overnight bus to La Paz.
Got up early to head to the desolate border with Chile and Bolivia that wasnt too far from San Pedro for our 3 day 4wd Salar de Uyuni trip. The border crossing was high, about 4000m (13,000m), and cold. We had breakfast there and met our Bolivian guide and the other 5 people (4 isrealis...Tom, Shai, Nir, and Isha as well as a brazilleno named Isabella). We were supposed to just have 6 people on the tour and we told the chillean guys dropping us of this, but they said it would be okay and that we would all have seats in the land crusier. This trip is notorious for having issues partly because of it being run by very 3rd world bolivia and partly bc companies are trying to undercut prices as much as possible to get more tourists. Problems have included people not having seats in the land cruisers up to having drivers that were drunk and got in car accidents. Actually several tourists had died on the trip before bc of drunk drivers. Laura and I had read and heard all of this so we paid a bit extra to try and ensure a better tour. We were frustrated to see that there were 7 people instead of the 6 promised, but it seemed okay bc we had enough seats in the land cruiser.
We could tell we had arrived in a 3rd world country right away. Since Bolivia doesnt particularly like the USA for some reason (we probably had some shenanigans at some point with their govt), Americans are the only nationality required to have a visa (and a steep one at 135 USD). Well, bc the border post at this area was so small, they are unable to give you a visa. So what they do is write down your name, take your passports, bundle them up in some cardboard stapled together, and give them to the driver. After going through immigration, we hopped into our red landcruiser and set off. The "road" into bolivia can hardly be called a road. At times it was a rough dirt road, at others a 4wd road, and much of the time you just kind of drove over sand or dirt or rocks with no tracks or hundreds of tracks spread out everywhere. The scenery was of course stunning. It was high, high barren desert with red mountains and towering snowcovered volcanoes everywheds, often rising above salt lagoons. Vegetation was sparse. Occasionally we did see some vicunuas (the little wild llama like animals). It was like another planet. Bc of the altitude, it was cold and some of the lakes were covered in ice. Luckily the Israelis had brought a memory stick with music that could plug into the radio in the land cruiser, so we got to rock out to music (a lot of 80´s and current dance music) during the whole trip.
On the first morning, we drove by and stopped at Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde. The names white and green of course corresponding to their colors. We also stopped by a small lagoon that smelled like sulfur.
Around mid day we stopped at another lake (laguna chaiviry) which had hot springs along its edge. They were marvellous, being the perfect temperature and having an amazing view of the lake and the snowcapped mountains in the distance.
After the soak, we continued on the trail. We passed by a valley, called Valle de Salvador, bc the valley and hills were completely smooth except for these giant weird shaped rocks, which someone thought looked like things from paintings of Salvador Dali. As we continued driving, we descended upon Laguna Colorado, named of course bc its waters were red. Here we stopped as we would be spending the night here in a tiny, tiny 4 building settlement. We were there pretty early which seemed suspicious, and I saw on our itinerary we were supposed to stop at a geyser field. Isha, who had done the trip before and was re-doing it bc her first trip had been such a bad experience also knew we were supposed to go to the geyser field (named manana del sol) and drive past Valle de Mars. We told our driver this (his name was Sebastion and he spoke no English), but he said we couldnt bc since we had 7 people instead of the normal 6, we didnt have enough fuel to go on that trip. This caused all of us to get quite upset bc we had been told there would only be 6 people and we had all paid the full price, and I had an itinerary of where we were supposed to go. It was clear that the company and maybe even the driver to an extent were trying to pull a fast one on us to make some extra money in unused gas. Unfortunately for them, however, they had picked the wrong group to mess with. Israelis are notorious for getting everything they can out of every penny. They are ferocious bargainers and hagglers, and are not afraid to get a bit crazy. So you had 4 israelis, plus 2 Americans who had made sure to get an itinerary and everything that was included written down in writing, and then on top of that we had 2 good spanish speakers (Isha and Laura) and one expert Spanish speaker (isabella), so we could easily communicate and the driver couldnt play dumb. There was a lot of arguing and discussion amongst us, during which a couple of the israeli boys, fresh out of the army were going so far as to say they were going to steal the land cruiser or at least break some windows of it at the end of the trip. I of course thought this was a bit too far, but eventually we worked out a thing with the driver where we would buy some extra fuel there so we could go see the geysers and the rest of the sights. We all agreed that we wouldnt mind paying a bit more so that we could see everything.
So we hopped into the land cruiser and set off. The geysers were cool with lots of bubbling mud pits. They are supposedly the highest geyser field in the world at 16000 ft. The drive was amazing as well as we climbed up through a martian type landscape. Bc of our tardy departure for the geysers, we were rewarded with an amazing sunset over the laguna colorado and then an absolutely stunning full moon rise over the mountains and lake. The colors at dusk, with the moon rising, were just unreal!
We arrived back at the little place we would be staying, very happy and glad that we had been able to convince Sebastion to take us on the trip. We found out that petrol was about 5 bolivianos per liter (about 80 cents), so we were glad that for just a bit more money we had been able to go. When we asked Sebastion how much we owed him, he said that we had used 30 liters (7 gallons)!!! of petrol. We immediately knew this was bogus as we had driven about 10 to 15 miles in one direction at the most. And we knew that the landcruiser got better gas mileage than like 2mpg. We knew he was just trying to get some money. So we called a meeting of just us tourists in our dorm room and discussed what we should do. Should we just pay him for how many liters we thought we used, should we give him nothing and say we will deal with it with the company in Uyuni, or should we give him a small tip for being nice and taking us and tell him the tip was just for him and that we would deal with the money later in Uyuni with the company. It was funny bc it was a big discussion and we didnt know exactly what to do. We knew if we paid the full price, which was way too much, we would never see the money again. We also knew that we didnt want to upset Sebastion too much or the rest of the trip would be bad. We ultimately decided that we would pay for how much we thought we would have used. We called Sebastion into the pow wow (it felt like some council from survivor) and told him what we had decided. He of course countered, in a way we had predicted, that he had no money to pay for all that 30 liters so we had to pay it. Luckily, at the border, I had seen the Chillenos give him at least two 100USD bills, so I knew he had lots of money. We also figured he must have emergency money in case of a break down or some problem with the vehicle. He wouldnt accept our money and we argued some more and finally we got through to him that we knew he had enough money to pay the petrol and that we would discuss it with the company when we got into Uyuni and pay for it then.
We appeared to have everything settled when we asked him about the itinerary for the next day. Of course it was different that what we were supposed to do. Again it was bc we had 7 instead of 6 people. This time he told us the normal route would take to long bc with 7 people, the car was too slow. It was true that our car was slower, as we got passed by others, though not that much slower. But we convinced him we would start earlier and that we would take less pictures and less time (the israelis took a BILLION pictures at every stop). He was okay with this and of course even with the israelis taking lots of pictures the next day, we still got there 2 hours earlier than he claimed it would take us. Luckily that night they served us wine with dinner as we had had a pretty crazy afternoon and evening. But after this we would have no more issues with the driver and he actually lightened up a bit and became more fun. I think he realized he wasnt going to get money out of us. When we did arrive in Uyuni, there was never any mention by him to come to the travel agency and pay for the fuel, although he had talked to them on the phone, so it was obvious that he had had the fuel to do it as part of what we had all paid.
6-4
We got up early and our first stop were the shores of the large Lago Colorado. After that we continued on the scenic and gorgeous high desert road (like I said, not really a road at all, ust some occassional dirt tracks) until we came to an area with some giant rocks just sitting in the middle of the desert. They had unusual shapes, and one was called piedra del arbol (stone tree). We had some fun climbing up and playing on the rocks. We continued along the track with a cool viewpoint of disierto de Siloli which looked like it had been painted in varying shades of red, orange, and yellow. We visited several lakes today including Laguna charcota, Laguna Honda, Laguna Hedionda, and Laguna Cañapa, all with great mountain views and all teeming with pink flamingos Further along we had another nice view of Volcan Ollague which was active and steaming. In the foreground were more unique rock formations, similar to rocks you see around Moab and Capitol Reef. It looked ripe for some exploration via mountain bike.
From there, we drove some more until we reached a large salt flat (salar chiguana). We raced across the salt flat. Of course here there were definitely no roads and you could just driver wherever you pleased on the completely flat surface. At one point we reached some traintracks that crossed the middle of the salt flat. They seemed to be just in the middle of nowhere. After we left the salt flat, it wasnt long before we came across a small settlement, though much larger than the first as this one had a cute little adobe chapel, built up into some hills above the GIANT Uyuni Salt Flat (Salar de Uyuni). In the hills were also giant Saguaro type cacti. They place we stayed here was a salt hotel....a hotel built completely out of salt. The floor was salt crystals and the tables, chairs, and walls were made from salt bricks
6-5
We woke up at the crack of dawn to witness the dawn and sunrise from the Salar de Uyuni. The sunrise was absolutely magical. We drove out to this shallow lake in the salt flat, so shallow that you could walk out into it in your shoes without the water rising above the soles of the shoes. This shallow lake created an amazing reflection effect. It reflected everything perfectly from the rising sun to the setting full moon, to the snowy mountains, to us. And as the sun rose, it lit up the water brilliant shades of orange and yellow. It was freezing, but we had fun jumping around in the shallow water and taking some photos. It was just amazing to me how perfect the mirror reflections were.
After that we just drove out to the middle of the salt flat. Being out in this huge and endless expanse of perfect white salt crystals with perfect blue sky above was surreal and amazing. It was perfect flat white as far as you could see. We stopped at various places to take pictures. Bc of the limitless flat and white expanse, you can take cool optical illusion photos where you can do such things as make it look like you are giant and eating the land cruiser, or small and climbing up a backpack or hiking boot. I will try and put up some pictures some time. I thought I was going to today, but I am having a bit of crisis in that my backup hardrive some how got some virus and I am trying to recover the pictures, but it is taking literally hours and hours.
We had lots of fun trying to come up with crazy photos and otpical illusions. Driving on the salt flast reminded me a whole lot of driving on the ice shelf in Antarctica. Flat white as far as you could see with mountains in the background with mirages and phantamorganas
Along the way across the humongous salt flat, we stopped at the salt museum. We also stopped at a place they were mining the salt and had piled the salt up into little hills. After that we left the salt flat and visited a place called the train graveyard which was full of old and ancient train engines left to rust in the desert
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