Salar de Uyuni & San Pedro de Atacama

At the arrival in Uyuni, you get bothered by the sales agents of the tour companies that try to sell you their tour to the Salar. After getting rid of them and checking into the hotel / hostal, we started to look around for a tour. Most of the agencies have 100% the same schedule, but we wanted to have something special, climbing a volcano at day 4 and going then to san pedro de atacama. the standard tour includes 3 days and going back to Uyuni so we looked around.

After 3-4 companies, we shortly revised our options and talked to some people in the street that looked as lost as we were. And fortunately, we met 3 Dutch girls that wanted to do the same (how big is the chance that you meet 3 people from a country that's highes mountain is less than 100 m of altitude??) but anyway, we went back to the first company (that had good information) and booked all together.

Next morning, we left, 3 Dutch, 2 Swiss and 1 US to the cementary of trains close to Uyuni to take pictures (very nice!) before we headed thought the salar. We had a quick stop at the office because the dutch girls thought that they had left there LP guidebook there (but actually it was in their back packs ;-) ). 

Cementary of trains

The salar is a salt flat that receives water and salt from the mountains around and it's flat, flat, flat, white, white, white and hot, hot, hot. It's a good spot to take funny pictures (the dutch girls had 100 of ideas) and it's very impressive (not just the pictures, the site itself!).

Human Star

Salar de Uyuni

 In the middle of the salt flat, there is an "island" with Cactus which we visited and where we had lunch. After another foto session, we headed to a salt hostal where we spent the night. The walls and most of it is made of salt-blocks (no-the toilets not!) and it's pretty nice.

Island in the Salar

Salt hostal

Next day, we visited several lagunes that are beautiful in color, but very toxic so no place to swim. We had a really cool group and the driving between the spots was not boring at all (e.g. the US one is a fire fighter). All the lagunes are in the mountains and you have a great view, colored lakes, mountains and flamingos waling around close from you... the flamingos don't care that the lakes are toxic at all, they enjoy it there!

Flamingos

Lagune with mountain as background

Rolling Stones

On of the highlights was the visit of the "colored-lagune" (Laguna Colorada) or "red lagune" since it has several colors at the same time. Furthermore, it's still a desert, so there is not much rain and it's very dry all the time. In the evening, we were at a tourist-hostel and we had to get up early in the morning (04.30 leaving).  

Laguna Colorada

 

After a short night, (with one of the girls talking while sleeping and one other turning 180 degrees in here bed) we grabbed our swimming gear and we drove to the geyseres which we reached at sunrise (freeeeezing cold!) and there were also some "mud-pools" bubbeling and steaming there! Nice but cold.  Just another hour away, we stopped at a hot spring place where we got breakfast and where we could jump into naturally warm water (nobody knows why they locked the changing rooms close to the springs so that you had to get changed outside while it still was cold!). 

Steam / Geysir

Hot Pool

Closed changing room...

 Heated up, we visited the green-lagune with the volcano Licancabur in  the back (5960m) and we got dropped of in a hostal close to the border (there is nothing there: no water from tab, no shower, .., but a volcano to climb). We relaxed, talked to the guide and prepared for the hike to the mountain.

Green lagune

At 02.00 we had breakfast and we started walking around 03.15. Unfortunately one of the dutch girls was not feeling too good, so she had to go back and here friend went with her, so after 5150 m just 3 of us were left. Passing a grave (yes, the mountain can be dangerous) we continued and we arrived the summit after good 6 hours of climbing and we had a geat view to the lagune and it's surrounding!

The way down took us another 2-3 hours and it was hard and long, and after the car breaking down 3 times on the way back, we arrived tired in the hostal.

On the top

Green Lagune from the top

Our guide should call the transport company in the evening so that we would get picked up in the morning to be transfered to the border. He told us several times, that this is no problem, the bus will come at around 09.30... well, next morning at 08.10 the lady of the hostal shows up and tells us that the bus is there... ? so we rushed out and the diver said, that their cars have passed through 10 minutes ago and nobody had told him to pick up people :-( we packed quickly and we could convince the driver to bring us to the border (there the bus was waiting anyway). So it was not a relaxed morning but we finally mad it to the border, where the next surprise was waiting: we got told in Uyuni that we don't have to pay for the exit since we don't have a visa (just a stamp in the passport). but at the border it was different: 15 Bolivianos, please. After we asked why, the guy wanted to know our company and ¡tada! no, since you come with Andean Explorers, you don't have to pay...? :-) well, we talked to others and it seems that's a bit random: some pay 21, some pay 15 and some pay nothing... :-)

We were happy to arrive in San pedro de atacama (where custom controll found an apple in my bag which is illegal in Chile and I nearly had to pay $100 US but I could redo the form and the let me slip through :-) ).

We currently stay in the "Casa corvatsch" hostal and yesterday, we went for a star watching show at midnight in the desert (highly recommended!!) with a funny french astronomer and an annoying Israeli that was asking all the time very stupid questions... :-( but the show and the stars were great!!

The Moon

Now, tomorrow we head to Salta in Argentina and then further south, but this will be on the next entry!

Sucre - Dinos & Potosi - Mine

For all of you how have been waiting for the next entry, we did not have any internet in the Salar the Uyuni since there is nothing but sand, salt, stones and mountains.... but first, let's talk about Sucre (the white city) and Potosi (a miners' town).

We arrived in Sucre and stayed in a very nice hostal (casa verde) which is run by a Belgian how offers great breakfast in the morning ;-) the first day in Sucre, we visited the city and we packed some stuff together to send home (things we didn't use a lot and some guidebooks we don't need anymore). This sounds easy, but it took us quite a while to firstly burn all pictures to DVD (just because the flyer of the company says that they have a dvd writer, that doesn't mean they have one ;-)  ) and later , we spent some time in the post office..

The friendly lady said, that our stuff will not fit into the box we have (it did) and the other friendly man told us, what we had to do, step by step: 

1) remove all things from the box again

2) write everything on a piece of paper what's inside and how much it weights

3) do the same again, but now on the official paper and weight EVERYTHING 

4) estimate the value of all things

5) hand over 2 copies of you passport (fu.. this is in the hostal, go back and do the copies).

6) Write the receiver address on a piece of paper 

7) Tape the package with tape and add the address

8)  re-measure the weight of the package again to make sure that is still the same weight

9) Pay the parcel...

Total amount of time used: 2 h in the post office, behind the counter

Working at the post office

In the evening, we had a very nice dinner and prepared for the next day, sightseeing!

We started our tour in the center with the visit of the casa de la liberdad (where bolivia became independant), followed by a church stopover (seeing a man peeing on the street and his little daughter sh... next to him), we also visited the army museum next to the church and slowly walked down the city until we reached the old train station behind the Parque Bolivar. Sucre feels nice and save and we enjoyed the sunny day there.

View of Suce

Cathedral

Don't touch... ;-)

Next morning, we headed with the dino bus to the dinosaurs tracks close to Sucre (note: if the cab-driver tells you, that today there is no bus, just ignore him and wait. The bus arrived five minutes later ;-) ) and we drove to the site. It's a nice display of live-size dino's and a good view to the dino-tracks on the other side, but it's not a great park you can spend days in, so after 1/2 a day, we used the public transports to get back to town and we watched Roger Federer on the live - ticker and we went to dinner with the two swiss we met in Coroico, another funny night

Dino in real size

Dino tracks...

Our plan was, to catch the train (a bus on train tracks) to Potosi, but since the taxi decided/thought that there is no train tickets, it was late. We still went to the train station and we almost got tickets (with another taxi it would have been fine!!) so we had to change the plan and go by bus and we arrived in the afternoon in Potosi.

Potosi is famous for it's mine where the spanish and now all others are mining for silver. The mine is pretty basic and you can do tours to it (we hoped, it will not be a human zoo and it was luckly not like this) so we booked it for the next morning.

the tour is done by an ex-miner who knows the mine and starts with a stop where you get dressed appropriately (boots, helmet, etc) and you head then to the miners market where you can buy all things the miners need.. TNT / Dynamite (what we bought as a present) 96% Alcohol to drink, cigarets, helmets, soda and much more... together with the group, we then visited a refining factory where they refine the rocks to 1% silver-salt (50 tons of rock are more ore less 24 kg of 1% silver). The next stop is then the mine itself; don't think of a new mine, it looks still like in 1700. the mine is narrow, low, dark, sticky, dusty and hot, so that you have to crawl through howls, climb down rocks and you start swetting a lot due to the temperature of almost 35 degrees where the miners are. most of them are between 15 and 25 years old an started with 13 to work in the mine and most of them will not turn more than 45 years old... but it's the only way to earn something in Potosi, therefore they work there.

Refining Silver with toxic liquids

Entry to the mine

Crawling

Men at Work

It's all manual work, there is no big machines and therefore, they use the TNT to ease the work. In the end, we were happy to be back in the sunlight and went for a shower.

In the afternoon, we also visited the national mint museum (Geldmuseum) and took a guided tour. Nice place and we got some funny information: We know that bolivia is exporting most if it's products directly (fruits, coffee, etc) and re-import the refined products at the end. Not much is produced in bolivia, not even their money: the coins come from Spain and Canada and the bills from France ;-) 

Well, after this special and interesting day, we headed to Uyuni, to the salt desert (but not with the bus below!!)

But this you can read in the following blog.