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Whitneys on Tour
We left San Pedro de Attacama bound for Bolivia on the 19th December on a 3 day trip on a 4 X 4 vehicle, the highlight being a visit to the Salar de Uyini salt flats. Although we were excited about this trip as we'd heard great things about it we were a tad nervous too. This was due to stories we'd also heard about exhausted drivers falling alseep at the wheel and knackered vehicles blowing up!
Any way, here's how we got on.....
DAY 1
We made our way by minibus to the remote Bolivian border and met our travelling companions. Fortunately they were a really nice bunch, all Germans travelling seperately who naturally spoke excellent English. It got better, two of them spoke fluent Spanish
( wonderful as the driver sure wasn't going to speak English!) plus one was a doctor and another a pharmacist. Perfect for any potential Bolivian health problems. We couldn't believe our luck! However, the worries returned when we heard that the driver had been up all night driving plus the car had had serious tyre problems on the overnight drive. Hmmm....anyway, off we set into Bolivia.
Our first two ports of call were two lagoons in supurb mountain settings. The first was white in appearance giving clear mountain reflections and was populated with loads of flamingos. We were surprised at all the flamingos as you associate them with tropical settings (think Miami Vice opening titles!!) but here they were in remote mountain settings and most impressive they looked too. The next lagoon was of brilliant blue appearance which made for some cool shots.
Then we continued our ascent into some serious altitude at 5000m where we were driven to some geysers. These were even more impressive than the ones we saw at San Pedro and they spouted boiling mud and steam with serious venom and noise.
With car and driver holding up well we made our way to our final spot, the red lagoon so called because it is indeed red due to acid from the areas volcanic activity. Add in some pink flamingos to it and you have one amazing sight! It was on the edge of the lagoon that we stayed in ultra basic accomodation probably once used by the military. It had no running water and just a couple of hours of electricity use a night. The temperature in these parts can get seriously cold (like minus 20 or so) but we were promised a relatively balmy zero degrees and so it proved.
DAY 2
This didn't get off to the best of starts as all, bar Jo, had an awful nights sleep, no doubt due to the altititude. To make matters considerably worse Stuart and one of the Germans hadn't reacted too well to their first exposure to Bolivian food! The basic toilet facilities made it even more grim. Fortunately the problem was short lived and solved with some tablets and off we set a little groggily.
Day 2 wasn't as interesting as the first as it consisted of a lot of driving in increasingly hot conditions and last nights problems weren't helping. However, we saw some more lagoons, some interesting rock formations including one that looked like a tree, had lunch near an active volcano plus we saw some primitive villages sparsely populated. We were still enjoying ourselves as we made it to our second nights lodgings. This was in one of the famous salt hotels on the edge of the Salar de Uyini. It was pretty comfortable as it goes with decent hot showers and comfortable beds. We had a dinner of lama chops (yes, you read that right, NOT lamb but lama) then watched a spectacular electrical storm at night over the salt flats. This had an added benefit for our next days activities.
DAY 3
We made our way over the 12,000 sq km salt flats by vehicle steadily. Last nights first rains of the season hadn't soaked into the ground and this made for a spectacular viewing effect as it had made this part of the flats into a giant mirror. You could see the mountain reflections clearly and the effect went on for as far as the eye could see at times. Most surreal!!
As we drove on the flats had soaked in the rain and we got the usual blinding white view as far as you could see as we approached Fishermans Island in the middle of the flats. This was yet more surreal viewing as it's an island of rock covered by cactus slap bang in the middle of a salt lake.
The white backdrop makes for some amazing photo's as shots lose their distance perspective as you can see from the above and some of the photo's on the album. Stuart would like to point out that he isn't that strong!!
We left the flats and drove to Uyini around 2pm totally thrilled and enthalled by what we had seen.
Uyini is an odd little town and whilst catering for the tourist is distinctly 3rd world and at 3800m it's pretty high. Unfortunately, it was here that we had our first serious problem the day after we arrived and the day we were due out of here on a night train. Jo started feeling sick after lunch which we put down to the altitude. However, things started getting progressively worse and she got in quite a bad way so it was off to the local clinic sharpish. We had no idea what to expect in terms of how quickly they could see Jo and could we communicate with them. All Jo knew was that she never felt worse in her life.
Fortunately the clinic, despite being a little primitive were great. They saw Jo straight away and diagnosed the problem within half an hour. It wasn't altitide sickness but a bad case of food poisoning!!
A surprise given we'd eaten the same foods but thats luck I guess. We suspect it came from a greek salad from a pizza restaurant the previous might.
She was put on a drip and had to stay the night but fortunately improved the next day and was let out after 24 hours. A serious relief as the last thing we wanted was to spend christmas in Uyini!
We were very grateful to the doctors and nurses who couldn't have done any more and the bill was a little over 50 quid!
It was onto Lake Titicaca for christmas...
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