The tour however didn't get off to a glittering start. After booking my place on this Bolivian adventure with a operator called Cordillera I was informed that I would be picked up at my hostel at 7.50am. However by 8.30am there is absolutely no sign of my tour bus at which time I rush down to the main square of San Pedro de Atacama to their head office. No joy, the office is shut. At this point I'm getting quite anxious and angry. Fifteen minutes later the woman who I booked the tour with passes by on a bike with her young daughter. She hadn't planned on opening the office until 9.30am but when she spotted me she asked what was going on. Not impressed one bit I proceed to absolutely bite the head off her, when all of a sudden she realises her error - she had forgotten to inform the bus driver that I was to be picked up from my hostel! She frantically rings the bus driver and tells him to come back from the Chilean customs to collect me, and begs for my forgiveness! Eventually it all worked out but if I had continued to wait in the hostel or indeed if she hadn't seen me with the corner of her eye while cycling past then there would have been no tour for me!
My first taste of Bolivia was the border with Chile, located 4500m high in the Andes. Now when i think of a border crossing usually the USA/ Canada entry point near Buffalo, NY comes to mind, a highly monitored operation with massive state of the art buildings. Well this particular crossing into Bolivia is a far cry from that. It is merely a tiny shack in the middle of nowhere!
Upon crossing the border the first thing I noticed was the rapid deterioration in the quality of the roads. On the Chilean side all roads are nicely paved with barriers at each cliff edge that we past while ascending up to 4500m. Once you enter Bolivia these roads transform into a variety of dust tracks, dirt trails, occasionally combined with numerous rocks making the journey one of the bumpiest imaginable. However it gets even worse. At times there aren't even any roads at all, with a previous vehicle's tyre tracks making a sort of makeshift lane way through the barren landscape. Luke Kelly once sang about the Rocky Road to Dublin, but after the last few days I am convinced he was really referring to this landlocked South American country!
After entering Bolivia our bus of twelve people was split into two groups of six (more about that below) and the remainder of the trip was completed in a four-wheel-drive. Firstly we visited Laguna Blanca, a white lake filled with borax followed by Laguna Verde, a lagoon coloured green by Arsenic, Lead, Copper and other heavy metals. After taking some time to admire the picturesque surroundings we continued onwards to the Termes de Polques hot springs located adjacent to the Salar de Chalviri, a small salt lake. Here I took a quick dip in water 36 degrees warm. However getting out of the hot spring wasn't quite as enjoyable with the freezing cold high altitude winds chilling my wet body. Next we checked out the Solar de Manaña geyser basin, a collection of bubbling sulfur pools and a geyser located at a nauseating 4800m above sea level. From there we travelled to our first night's accommodation, a basic hostel with no heating or showers, located close to Laguna Colorada at 4250m high. This is when mild altitude sickness started to kick in with a dose of Panadol required to lift a reasonably sore headache. I found it hard to sleep properly and woke approximately ten times throughout the night.
Day two began with the short drive to Laguna Colorada, a very shallow lake coloured red by the algae that live in it, with many flamingos habiting this stunning setting. Our next port of call was the Arbol de Piedra, a bizarrely shaped stone tree located in the middle of a barren desert carved out by the howling sandy winds. Following this we explored a variety of fluorescent-colored lagoons: Laguna Canapas, Laguna Hedionda, Laguna Chiarcota and Laguna Honda, each one with numerous flamingos prancing around the shallow waters. The setting is extremely colourful with a combination of salt, various rough vegetation and bright blue shallow water. Afterwards we caught a glimpse from afar of the Volcan Ollague an active Volcano, before checking into our second night`s accommodation, a salt hotel in the tiny backward village of San Juan. Everything was made out of salt, the chairs, tables, beds, you name it, and to be honest I found the whole thing a bit tacky.
We awoke at the unearthly hour of 4am the following morning in order to reach the Salar de Uyuni in time for sunrise. I have every respect for our driver after safely negotiating the shocking road conditions in pitch darkness, an admirable achievement in my books. The Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers located at 3600m above sea level with the salt being 10 metres deep. I was fortunate to get the opportunity to visit this spectacular vast landscape during the dry season, giving me the chance to walk along the salt flat. In wet season it is covered in a thin layer of water making it harder to fully explore this geographical phenomenon. The sunrise was worth the early wake-up call and the bitterly cold conditions as it provided a beautiful sight with the sun literally climbing above the endless white landscape. Afterwards we visited the Isla de Pescado, a small hilly island of fossilised coral covered in 1000-year-old cacti in the middle of the Salar providing spectacular photo opportunities from the top. After breakfast on the island we drove out to the centre of the salt flat to spend a bit of time taking ridiculous perceptional photos (see below) before checking out the Salt-Mining Area on the edge of the Salar, an area where salt is dug from the flat into piles weighing a ton each, and left to dry in the sun before transport to a refinery. Next was a short stop in Colchani, a tiny village that survives off the processing of salt, with numerous souvenirs available and a tiny unremarkable salt museum that has carvings of animals created with salt. The tour ended with a visit to an abandoned train, known as the Train Graveyard before finishing in the town of Uyuni, a place where there is literally nothing to do.
One of the great discoveries of this tour is the baño Boliviano (Bolivian toilet). Whenever one gets the urge to urinate all that is required is to simply say to the driver (who doesn't have a lick of English by the way) the words "baño Boliviano " and he will immediately stop at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere so that you can pee away until your heart's content.
There was however one negative with regards this trip which cannot be ignored, and that was the people in my group. With the exception of a nice English couple the rest of the people were instantly forgettable with two 60 year old French couples, three German guys and two Swiss girls making up the numbers. At the very beginning of the trip when all twelve of us were in the one bus one of the moody French men turned around and told me to stop talking so loudly. I'm sorry monsieur but if you are going to sign up to a tour with 95% of its clientele being young people then you can accept the consequences! To make matters worse when we were split into two groups of six I was landed with the three Germans and two Swiss. Even though the five of them have a perfect command of the English language and that they knew I had literally two words of German they still spent the entire journey speaking in their native language therefore cutting me off from roughly 95% of the discussion. The only time English would be spoken was when I initiated a conversation and even then it would quickly revert back to German. This is something I found incredibly rude and after awhile I stopped bothering to talk to them and pretty much kept to myself. This is most disappointing considering the last time I went on a multi-day tour, through the Australian Outback last year, I travelled with a fantastic group of people, a few of whom I am still in touch with. I guess that raised my expectations. You win some, you lose some I suppose. Needless to say I will not be keeping in touch with these people. Possibly five of the most boring human beings I have ever had the displeasure of meeting.
Thankfully as it was just a 3 day tour it was merely a minor inconvenience and didn't spoil my enjoyment of the most immense scenery I have ever witnessed. In addition after the initial howler the tour company Cordillera did little wrong. The vehicles were in good order, the food was adequate and the driver appeared to be sober (something which is not a guarantee in Bolivia!). After a few hours in Uyuni I took a long trip back to San Pedro stopping in Villa Mar, another poor backward village, for the night. Yesterday and today is being dedicated to chill time in San Pedro before I undertake a long bus journey tonight to Arequipa in Peru.
Until later, take it easy
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