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In San Pedro de Atacama we booked a 3 day jeep tour of the Bolivian Altiplano, starting from Chile and crossing the border on the first day.
On the first morning of the tour we found out the border between Chile and Bolivia was closed because of heavy snow the day before.
We spent all morning waiting in a restaurant in San Pedro for the border to open and we left in a minibus at midday.
In about 30 minutes we went from San Pedro de Atacama (2500 metres above sea level) where it was very hot and sunny, to the Bolivian border zone (4000 metres above sea level) where it was snowing.
When we got near the border the driver of the minibus turned off the paved road and started driving across barren lands that we covered in snow and ice. For some reason, he drove faster across the snow and ice than he did on the nice paved road and he also started laughing to himself.
Only 3% of Bolivia's roads are paved.
The Bolivian border consisted of a hut in the middle of nowhere. There were no roads or anything, at least we couldn't see any under all the snow.
At the border we were put into jeeps for out 3 day tour of lakes and mountains and salt flats.
There were only 4 tourists in our jeep including me and Katie. In the front was our driver, his wife, and their 2 year old son. Only the 2 year old spoke English.
We saw loads of really high up stuff on the first day like 4800m high geysers, 4500m high lakes, 4000m high deserts. To put this into perspective, Mount Blanc is 4300m high and we skydived at 4500m above sea level.
It was so cold that when we drove to one of these incredible sights we ran out of the jeep, took a really quick photo, and then ran back into the jeep again and spent 10 minutes rubbing our thighs to warm up.
At the geysers I had to take a pee but it wasn't too bad because I stood above somewhere where loads of steam was coming out of the ground to keep me warm. Someone told me later that we were not supposed to step over the steam because boiling water could shoot up at any time and kill us instantly. Apparently our driver told us this but none of us understood his Spanish.
We got some really cool photos so check them out. For example, the photo of us standing at the 4800m high geysers and the photo of me standing in front of a desert with a snowball in my hand. It�s not an optical illusion, it really was snowing in the desert.
At night time we stayed in a hotel with no heating at 4200m high. It must have been the most remote hotel in the world. There was nothing around the hotel but more barren lands and, because the skies were clear, when the sun went down the temperatures plummeted.
This was probably the worst night of sleep I've ever had. After dinner at 8pm there was already ice on the inside of the windows and everyone in our room including Katie and I were wearing all our clothes at the same time.
At 9pm we were already in bed because we couldn't stand the cold. I was wearing two vests, 3 tee shirts, 2 jumpers, fleece, hat, scarf, gloves, trousers, and 3 pairs of socks, not to mention underpants. I was in a sleeping bag liner inside a sleeping bag with 3 blankets and a duvet over me and I was still cold. Apparently it was minus 20 degrees celcius outside. Only 9 hours earlier we had been eating lunch outside with shorts and tee shirts on.
On top of all of this, we were all suffering from altitude sickness. I had a headache and really bad wind. Katie kept thinking she was going to vomit but never managed it. All 6 people in our room were up all night going to the toilet, vomiting, and hallucinating (but that was probably the coca they put in our tea). I had about 2 hours sleep that night despite being in bed from 9pm to 7am.
Aidan.
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