Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Well if you want to see amazing and diverse landscapes I highly recommend the jeep tour from Tupiza to Uyuni. Each hour passed in the jeep and it looked like we were in a different country. We saw mountains that were lush and green, some that were barren and bare and then desert flat plains.
Luxury is not something to expect however on this trip as a shower and electricity is not always guaranteed in your hostels at the end of the day.
One of the many highlights to this jeep tour was our driver (Phancito) and cook (Philomena) who were both extremely sweet and entertaining. We learnt that Phancito and Philomina have been married for 25 years and rather than wearing wedding rings have had their front teeth coated in gold. Sadly we also learnt that they never had children as Philomina had some sort of medical condition causing her to have a hysterectomy. This was really sad news as they both were very nurturing in their care for us. It was beautiful to see the love they had for each other. They spoke about each other with great respect and pride.
The first day we travelled up the mountains to approx. 5000 meters and stayed in a very remote town. Unfortunately the altitude finally took its fall effect and I spent all night vomiting.
The next day we did the volcano climb and all four of us were pushed well beyond our physical limits. We started the walk at 5500 meters and walked up a very steep and unstable path. It took approximately two hours to only walk 400-500 meters. We could only walk 5-10 steps at a time before needing to rest and catch our breath. Dan was the only one who made it completely to the top and in bloody good time. I think Dan was either an Indian medicine man or Inca person in his past life given his love of animals, alternative lifestyles and appreciation for mountains.
Philomena was very sweet and made us all special tea to drink on the way up. Given all the vomiting the night before I was by far the slowest at climbing the volcano but was well supported by Philo who stuck by my side the whole way. The moment of reaching the top (nearly) was not exactly celebrated as we all felt really sick. The air was so dry and all our lips were purple and peeling. It really was soooo hard. We can now say however that we have climbed higher than the base camp of Mt Everest!
Unfortunately I was still really sick and after returning to the hostel went to bed without being able to stomach the idea of food. The following day I was feeling a bit better and actually a little hungry so I managed to eat small amounts of food during the day which helped me enjoy the day so much more.
The other 3 days involved…
-Bathing in hot springs completely isolated from other tourist…or anybody for that matter. The water was warm but outside was freezing!
-Seeing Mirror Lake which as the name suggestions provides a mirrored reflection of the mountains set behind it and seeing the red, green and black lagoons. My favourite lagoons were the red lagoon home to hundreds of pink flamingos and the black lagoon which I can't really even begin to describe.
-and of course the salt flats.
The whole experience was fantastic, well maybe not the whole experience (i.e. vomiting) but most of it :)
- comments