High, Dry, and a pinch of Salt

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Wednesday, February 13.

After 17 hours on the bus, we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama around 1:00 pm. The scenery on the way in was like something out of a sci-fi movie about another planet. The landscape was so dry and red it looked like we were driving over another world.  As Michelle and Bryan had already booked a hostel (and we hadn't, because that's not our style) we decided to follow them to their hostel to see if they had extra space.  After walking around trying to find it for a half hour, we bit the bullet and got a cab to take us there.  There was no space for us there, but we did find another hostel just down the street and booked there for 2 nights.

We walked into the surprisingly, very touristy town and had a delicious burger platter and Chilean salad for lunch, and then went to look for a tour into the salt flats.  We found one almost immediately, as there were at least 6 different companies doing the 3 day tour.  We chose the one that left on the day we wanted; the 15th.

We retired to our rooms for a siesta, and a few hours later met up for dinner.  The tour operator had told us not to eat meat the next day, as we would be heading up to an altitude of close to 5000m, and a belly full of meat wouldn't be the best idea.  As such, we decided to have a nice steak dinner that night to satisfy our carnivore cravings.  The steak was a little thin and overcooked, but it did the trick.

We went back to our hostel, and before bed, downloaded no less than 15 movies off Bryan and Michelle's MacBook, and watched half of Star Trek before passing out.

Thursday, February 14; Happy Birthday Diana, and Happy Valentine's Day to All!

We woke up early-ish, and decided to put in some blog time, as we had been getting a little neglectful.  After that we went into town for lunch, but stopped on the way at a nice fruit market to stock up for our trip the next day.  We did some more stock-shopping and bought two 5L jugs of water, and various snacks, and then headed to the same restaurant as the day before for lunch where we had monstrous chicken and beef sandwiches.

We dropped off our shopping bags at the hostel and discovered that a few friends we had made at the hostel had decided to rent a car for the day to do a DIY tour of the area surrounding San Pedro. We offered to give them a bit of money to tag along, and they openly accepted.  So the four of us met them just outside of the town, and packed into the backseat of the pickup.

Our first stop was the Flamingo reserve, which was an hour or so drive from San Pedro.  It was a vast landscape of crystallised salt with a red lagoon in the middle, where the flamingos fed on red algae.  After spending a half hour there, we drove along to our second stop, another lagoon.  There wasn't much to write home about there, and we were in a bit of a rush, as we wanted to make it to the "valley of the moon" before the sunset.  After taking a few pictures, we rushed off to the valley of the moon, and made it there just as the park was closing.  It was a huge bummer as the valley was the main attraction of the excursion, but we made the most of it by snapping a few pictures of the sunset, and whatever we could see from the outside of the park.

We were back at our hostels by 8:30 pm and had a light noodle soup dinner as advised by out tour coordinator. While we were eating, we did some research on our altitude medication as we would be taking them for the first time that evening in preparation for our quick 2000m ascent the following day.

While packing up our bags and getting ready for bed, we got busy chatting with our room mates, two separate mixed Australian/German couples, about the tour and what we can expect from exploring Bolivia. One of the couples had already been to Bolivia and filled us in on how crazy it was there from the drunk drivers, to the very dangerous drinking water and fruit, to broken down trains and cheap Hotels for $10 a night. The other couple was going on the same tour of the Atacama Desert as us, but with a different company, and they said they had heard about a double decker head-on collision in north Bolivia the previous night where 15 people had died! All this excitement and anxiety made our sleep a little uneasy, especially with the side effects of altitude pills (like ringing of the ears, tingling hands and feet and nausea) setting in.



Friday, February 15.

Somehow, we managed to get a little bit of shut eye before our 7:15am alarm went off. We grabbed all of our belongings and headed to Mama Tierra's where our tour pickup was. We were taken to Chilean customs right away for our exit stamps, before we began our quick and intense drive up the mountains. We stopped several times on the way for pictures of the volcano, ostriches, Llama's and Alpaca's. An hour later we were at an altitude of 4300m, and eating breakfast at the Bolivian border. The air up there was significantly cooler than it was down in San Pedro, but thankfully the sun was still shinning and keeping us warm. Interestingly, though, we were the only people wearing shorts and sandals, and got "they must be Canadian" comments from other travellers.

After we were successfully stamped into our 8th country we were suppose to hop into the Bolivian jeeps that were going to take us the rest of the way, but they were no where to be found! When they finally arrived 45 minutes late, 6 Canadians (us, Winnipeg and Nick and Alex from Quebec) threw our bags on top of the jeep and watched our driver tarp and tie them up. We introduced ourselves to Martin, our driver, and we immediately came up with the name TEAM CANADA for our jeep. As we started our trek, we didn’t waist any time before we began questioning Martin about his age, how long he’d been taking tours out, and whether or not he enjoys drinking while driving! He eased our minds right away by telling us he’d been working with the company for 3 years, telling us to wear our seat belts at all times and he assured us that he only drank Tequila once in a while on his nights off.

We started off with a slow pace on the bumpy unpaved road following behind our sister tour jeep. Within the next 2 hours the weather went from hot and dry to cold and wet with hail and even some snow with muddy deposits on the terrain. We stopped at a scenic lagoon, and took a dip in a natural hot spring pool just as the hail was turning into rain. The hot water mixed with the altitude of over 4500m got us all a little dizzy but David took it the hardest as his face went completely white and he almost fainted right there in front of us. A little bit of cool air and water brought him quickly back to life though thankfully, and we were able to head to our next destination. We stopped to see these huge hot pockets in the ground called geysers, where heat from the earth literally shoots out of the ground in the form of steam. It was something out of this world that none of us had ever seen before.

Our last stop was at our accommodations for the night, where we were served a late lunch of salad, hot dogs and mashed potatoes. Almost right after they cleared our plates they came out with Coca tea and cookies. Coca tea is the traditional tea they make out of the Coca plant and it is said to help with the side effects of being at such a high altitude.  The boys played poker while Michelle coloured with the kids and Alice caught up on some reading. A few hours later they brought out hot veggie soup and pasta for dinner.

Being that we were at 4900m altitude now, we waited for it to get dark enough before we layered up all our warm clothes and headed out in the 0 degree weather to see the best stars we had seen yet on our trip. Dave played with the camera settings and got some great(ish) shots of the milky way! We didn’t last out there very long due to the cold so we soon curled up to watch a movie. But this was no ordinary movie, as we co-ordinated laptops with Bryan and Michelle to watch the movie "Ted" on two screens with surround sound!  We actually managed to watch the whole movie this time.

Saturday, February 16.

Martin knocked on our door to wake us up at 7am. Brian was in excruciating pelvic pain as he had decided not to take his altitude pills the night before. We were all very worried about him because he was curled up in a ball and was asking for a doctor or a helicopter  and telling us it felt like his intestines were going to burst! We quickly gave him an altitude pill and let him relax for about an hour for the pill to settle while we ate breakfast and packed up. Martin suggested we get him in the car and get going because our next destination was significantly lower in altitude and hoped it would make him feel better.

We stopped at another red lagoon full of flamingos, this time with a beautiful mountainous backdrop. We snapped thousands (hundreds) of pictures while Brian spent his time lying down in the front seat of the jeep. Then we drove into a national park and around the lagoon for a better view. The weather was much warmer and clearer despite the fact that we were still up at 4500m. We continued snapping photo’s of the gorgeous scenery while poor Brian this time was getting sick on the side of the road.


Our next stop was at a collection of some amazing, tall rock formations in the middle of the desert. We climbed the rocks and took some funny pictures. Dave thought it would be a good idea to follow one of the Quebecers and jumped down from a really high rock, slipped and hurt his behind pretty nicely. Thankfully he’s a trooper and he was alright. Again, we had descended our altitude quite a bit and by the time we made it back to the jeep, good ‘ol Brian was back to life!
After another 3 or 4 scenic stops and lunch we made it to our accommodations before dark. This time we were given private rooms, and a gourmet roasted chicken dinner with a bottle of wine!


Sunday, February 17.

This time we were woken by Martin at 6:00 am, and we had to try a few times to get Bryan and Michelle out of bed.  We had a quick breakfast of yogurt, cereal, and some sort of cake, quickly packed up the jeep, and were on the road just before 7:00.  As the engine started, a large hoard of flies decided to wake up, and come out of the vents right on top of Alice and Michelle.  The next few hours were a mixture of driving, swatting, napping, and bracing ourselves as Martin yelled "Ariba" each time we went over a bump.

We stopped just outside the town "Uyuni" to check out what was called the "Train Cemetery", which was aptly named, as it had hundreds of old rusting trains.  We stayed for 20 min or so, snapped some more pictures, and headed on our way to our final destination of the tour; the Uyuni Salt Flats!  This final leg of the journey took about an hour and a half, including a stop at a local market where we used the washroom (hole in the ground, literally) and bought Bolivian Chuchkahs like woven finger puppets.

The salt flats were just as we expected; Amazing!  Being that it was the rainy season, some parts of the flats were flooded, but we drove through for a km or two until we were through the pools.  The truck dropped us off, and drove on for a little, as they prepared lunch.   We stood in awe for a while as we looked at endless expanse of salt; 11 m deep and 1200 square km.  After being in awe for a bit, we decided we would take some of the cheesy pictures that everyone does at the salt flats.  They were a little difficult to co-ordinate, as the reflection of the sun off the white made it hard to see the camera, but we managed to snap a few gems. 

We walked over the jeep and had a homemade (jeep-made) chicken schnitzel lunch with pasta and veggies.  We took some more pics, and the frenchies suggested we walk back to the end of the flats, and we all thought it was a good idea.  35 minutes later, though, it seemed like we hadn't made any progress, and luckily Martin had the foresight to let us walk a bit before leaving, and thus picked us up on the way.

We got dropped off in the town of Uyuni, said goodbye to Martin, gave him a nice tip, and an awkward hug (Dave).  We walked around and tried to find a hostel, which wasn't too difficult as there were many around, and ended up in a "Hotel" for $10.  We said goodbye to the French Canadians, and met up later with Michelle and Bryan for lunch at a Mexican/Italian restaurant.

Later we met up with Michelle and Bryan once again and went to the "Extreme Fun Pub" (actual name).  En route we walked through the last day of some Bolivian Carnival, and were sprayed in the face, hair, and back by teenage Bolivians with silly string.  The extreme fun pub was just that, with novelty drinking glasses, and drinking games on the tables.  We ran into our old dorm-mates from San Pedro, who also thoroughly enjoyed their salt flat trip, and we ended off the evening by ordering way too much pizza.

As always, thanks for watching and tune in for more adventures!
With love from the Salt Flats,
D'Alice