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It's an 8 o'clock start after some lovely lemon cake for breakfast. It's an odd thing, the South Americans' having cake for breakfast, I'd managed to avoid it most of the way round the continent, but today I succumbed and boy was it worth it. I even nabbed a couple of bits to take as a snack.
Whilst we waited for our mini bus, Paul in his dog whispering ways managed to accumulate a large number of dogs around our bags. Although they weren't overly menacing dogs, they were still trying to play with one another within a confined space. I made the mistake of trying to disperse some of them and ended up with widdle down my leg - not impressed.
The border crossing out of Chile was fairly standard, but we then had to drive for 40 odd minutes to reach the border entry for Bolivia. I wondered on these very long no-man's lands as to whether there was someone out there, just wandering around feeling the freedom of not being confined to any one country's laws, but I guess it's probably not something people do on a day to day basis - just hang out in no-man's land for the sake of it.
The Bolivian border was literally a shack in the middle of nowhere, with a burnt out bus just to add that touch of desolation. Although the sun was out, the wind ripped through us like sheets of ice and we all huddled around the jeep and what little shelter it provided.
We were split into two jeeps, Jill, Paul, Steve and Andrew (an American, who we didn't know previously) and then an Aussie, two Swiss, a German and a Welsh/English man on the other.
Our driver's name was Oscar and his English was fairly limited, to non-existent, but luckily for us, Andrew was fairly good at speaking Spanish and he translated the running commentaries. I understood 40% of what was being said, but it was nice to have the gaps filled in.
The Altiplano is no ordinary place and it doesn't have conventional roads or street signs - in actual fact it's pretty much a big open desert area and it wouldn't be hard to get lost into the wildness without local help.
The scenery was absolutely stunning and I'd never seen anything like it before. The barrenness contrasted with volcanic rocks, strewn across the way. It was like we were on a different planet.
We visited several lakes that gained their names because of their colour (well their known names as opposed to their real names!). The different colours are caused by the chemicals in the water. Some contained sulphur, Bosporus, arsenic amongst others.
First up was the White Lake, we then had the green lake, which was a pale pale green. The lakes all had varying numbers of flamingos at them and I have an enormous array of flamingo pictures to go along with each lake, it was like I'd never seen a flamingo before - but at least I should have one decent shot out of the millions I took.
After the first couple of lakes, we stopped at some hot pools, for a quick dip. Only Andrew took a swim and even then he only went in up to his knees.
Next, we drove over some geysers and mud pools. There was no barriers between us and the various pools as is the Bolivian way - health and safety is not high on South American policy.
By mid afternoon we arrived at our accommodation for the evening. I think the word I'm looking for is sparse……The room was basic, there were several beds (made from concrete slabs with mattresses on top) and not much else. We did a re-con and stole the other rooms' blankets because it was freezing. The dining area where we had a late lunch was pretty much just the hallway down to the toilets and shower - we were surprised to have a shower, but only Paul was big enough to brave it, because there was no hot water and if the outside temperatures were anything to go by, that water was not going to be tropical.
After lunch, we took a drive down to Lake Colorado - the Red Lake, so aptly named because of the plankton that lived there. Lots of plankton means lots of flamingos - which also get their appearance from all the plankton that they eat - young flamingos are white/grey in colour and as they grow older, their colours darken with the amount of plankton they eat.
All of the lakes were surreal, to know that they were made from dangerous chemicals, yet wild life still existed, to see the varying coloured lakes only a few kilometres away from each other - it was definitely a fantastic day - and miracles of miracles I think it was the first time in four months that I hadn't even wanted to put my head down and sleep in a moving vehicle.
Dinner was fairly basic - veggie soup, spag bol of sorts with a pear in syrup for dessert.
With not much to do at night - no cable tv - we played a few rounds of cards and then everyone was in bed by about 8ish…..what a wild life.
The next day our first stop was at some volcanic rocks, these were huge and you definitely would not have wanted to be standing there those thousands of years ago when they exploded out of the mountain. One particular rock was formed in the shape of tree, it had eroded this way over time because parts were volcanic rock whilst others were made from softer forms like sand stone. It was fairly interesting, but the little fence around it didn't make for a good picture.
We spotted out first quinocs that day. Quinocs are related to alpacas and llamas but are only found at over 3000m. They are a protected species and the fines and prison terms associated with killing these creatures is phenomenal. They aren't to be mistaken for quinoa, which is a type of wheat product and is found on most menus throughout Bolivia. After been told about the punishment, I was surprised to find you could have quinoc in the next restaurant that we stopped at - someone had to point out to the blonde, what the difference was - quinocs/quinoa - doh!
Whilst driving through a gorge, we came upon the cutest wee thing. It was the cross between a rabbit/hare and a chinchilla. It was also nosey as heck. The jeep stopped and it had no qualms at all about hopping directly up to the jeep to have an enquiring look as to what the big metal thing was. It was also a bit of a poser, giving us several different views of itself, whilst we took some photos.
A couple of more lakes down, and yet again another million flamingo photos, we stopped at a view of one of the nearby (mmmmm, well nearby-ish) volcano. It was reasonably impressive, but not as much as Villarica, further south.
Continuing on, we came across our very first wild llamas - I was quite excited by the whole thing, I think they are fascinating creatures and to be honest, if I was stuck in a cold desert at night, a llama would be the best thing to cuddle up against.
Finally we came across our first sight of real civilisation - an army barracks. For some reason whether it was a bribe or Oscar was just a nice person, he handed over two large bottles of fizz.
Next was a small town (San Juan I think, can't quite remember), where we had our first taste of Bolivian beer and Paul was reunited with his Chips Ahoy. Paul had spent a couple of months of him discussing the virtues of these Chips Ahoy and possibly only because I was only half listening to him as I started to day dream about all the chips I was missing out on, (seriously, the entire of South America has two flavours - plain, or cheese - no salt & vinegar, no Sour cream and chives, nada!!), I had always assumed he'd meant chips, but in fact Chips Ahoy are chocolate chip biscuits - not quite Cadbury's chocolate chip cookies, but still not bad.
Our accommodation for the evening was in a salt hotel on the edge of the famous Salar de Uyuni. Everything was made from salt - the walls, the beds, the tables, chairs - I would even say possibly the kitchen sink. It was a quirky wee place, with a straight view out over flats. Even with the moon out, the stars were amazing that night. Over the last week or so I'd gained a real appreciation for the stars. Some one once said to me that there were more stars in the southern hemisphere than the north. I don't know if I ever particularly believed them, but I would say there's probable more isolated /less polluted places in the southern hemisphere to view them from.
We had hot showers at the hotel, which was very exciting - again, it's the little things in life on this trip that you really come to appreciate, for that's things like hot showers , chocolate and tv.
It was yet another early night, I think we made it to 9ish this time around though. Tomorrow we were going to be up for a 5am start, to ensure that we got the wonderful sunrise pictures over the vast salar. This early start had to be taken as a group decision and it took a couple of them some convincing to start so early.
After breakfast, we jumped in the jeeps and headed out into the dark, once we arrived at some various point in the depths of the Salar, we stopped for the rising of the sun. One of us had thrown a strop about having to get up so early and decided to go and have some alone time. It did make for some quite good pics, but I've been banned from putting them on any social networking site.
The Salar itself is 12,000 square kilometres and 90% of the time we felt like we were the only ones there. It isn't ice skating rink smooth, for some reason, where we stopped, the ground was covered in diamond shaped patterns. It was truly spectacular and was everything that I had imagined it would be. It had originally been a lake that dried up and then the rains came and formed another lake, which also dried up - this happened 11 times over hundreds of thousands of years and final result was the salt flats you see today.
Unfortunately, the salt lakes contain lithium and the Bolivian government are in discussions about creating large lithium mining areas, especially if someone perfects lithium chips for phones and computers and the like. This will mean the end of the beautiful Salar.
After taking the compulsory depth perception photos that work so well in the Salar (where you can make far objects look like they are the same distance as near objects), we carried on through the Salar as if we were the only ones on the planet.
Although the Salar is completely flat, it does contain various islands, one of which we visited - Fish Island, named after it's shape rather than it's content - which was hundreds upon hundreds of cacti. An odd thing to see in the middle of the salt flats.
We drove for a while longer and after stopping for some more depth perception photos, we headed out of the Salar.
Just outside of Uyuni, we stopped at an old train graveyard, many of the trains here were from the 1800's and some of which were robbed by the famous Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid. It's an odd thing, to keep old rusty trains, just hanging around, but it made for some fab photos.
That was the end of our three day trip from San Pedro, we just had to spend the rest of the afternoon, contemplating our navels, whilst we waited for the bus to La Paz.
Uyuni, isn't an exciting town to do much contemplating, so it was a long afternoon, but eventually time went by and we caught the bus. I say we, what I mean was Paul got on the bus, but then just as quickly got back off the bus. He decided to opt for a bus to Potosi the next day and catch up with the Dragoman trip there, instead of spending 12 hours on a bus to La Paz. This meant that I got two seats to myself, although that didn't necessarily make the trip any easier
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