So this is just about it for the trip! Four days of cruising around the Bolivian altiplano region. The standard tour is 3D/2N if you finish up Uyuni, Bolivia, but I had to get back to San Pedro, so I had to tack on another day. And then I’d have one more day in San Pedro and then back home! Just over four months in South America. Not bad! but still plenty left! I’d especially like to do more of Bolivia, but with the coronavirus heating up worldwide, now seems like a good time. Plus, I was just flat out ready to be done! The fatigue had set in!
There’s lot of stuff in the Altiplano region besides the infamous salt lake
So on this trip it would be two jeeps in our group, eight people in total. A nice number! It was a slightly more expensive tour, with guides who spoke ‘some’ English, so it was aimed at the gringo traveler, which is what I wanted obviously. They picked us in a big van, nice and early. Immigration was a bit of a mess, but once on the Bolivian side we got shown to the jeeps and had time to meet everyone. It looked like a pretty diverse group: Israeli guy, Spanish guy, two South Korean guys, German girl, and a middle aged German couple. And me. So the guy:girl ratio could have been better I suppose…
our jeep. They’re all Land Cruisers!
So we got all our stuff packed up on top of the jeep and we were ready to roll! I was with the two South Koreans and the German girl. Departing from the border there weren’t any paved roads, just gravel tracks crisscrossing all over the place, going wherever. Pick your own adventure!
The itinerary for the first day was some geysers/mud pots, a thermal hot spring to swim, and a lagoon, and lots of driving in between! I was by far the biggest person in the jeep so I got to sit in the front, I’ll take it. I also spoke the most Spanish of our group (not a good sign!), so I was the official go-between between us and the driver, Ernesto.
trying to catch that perfect bubble
We would drive for most of the afternoon and ended up at some little village somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I was curious as to how anyone made any money in a place like this because it just doesn’t seem like there is anything at all. Salt harvester?? There wasn’t anything to see in town, so I wandered into the brush a bit, found a decaying dog, and called it an evening! Who’s ready for dinner?! Writing this a year later I have no idea what we actually ate, some soup or something. Overall the group meshed pretty well! I stuck around after dinner for a couple beers and card games with the lads.
The next day we got to sleep in, just a tiny bit, before hitting the road. Before this trip obviously I knew about the salt flats, but I had no idea what other kind of stuff we’d be seeing, which was kinda nice to be surprised. I guess it’s mostly a lot of weird rock formations on this leg of trip. Sounds good to me!
So it was a nice day out on the road, this time we were staying in a fancier accommodation, called the Salt Hotel, where the bricks are supposedly made of salt. I guess there’s lots of so called ‘salt hotels’ in this area. But apparently business was going well in the salt-structure industry, and this place was nice and brand new! I had a room all to myself surprisingly. Glorious! Although again, it’s just kind of in the middle of nowhere. We eventually got the other driver to take us on a beer run to nearby dusty village. We returned triumphantly to a hearty meal of grilled chicken and fish, no complaints here! Then a very early start the next day to catch the sunrise over the salt flats!
It’s pretty surreal, a continuous flat white plane stretching to the horizon on all sides, as far as the eye can see. But up close, it’s far from being flat. It’s easy to see the crystalized structures that makes soft little hexagonal outlines. And very crunchy underfoot! There’s not much to do but relax and take in the otherworldly landscape. Although to be fair I was hoping we’d do sunrise over the part of the flats that is submerged underwater, which looks even cooler with the reflections. But these tours don’t acquiesce to the whims of the photography crowd. Hmmph.
Next spot: Cactus island. A weird place within the weird place. It’s basically a little rock mountain that you can walk up, which feels like an island in the middle of the salt flats. And tons of cacti grow there. Kinda neat! We walked around here for an hour and had breakfast. Off in the distance there was a huge bus hurtling its way down the salt flats, like a scene out of Mad Max. If I ever come back, I want to be on this bus!
Next we drove for a while and the flats started to get softer, slushier, and puddlier. I assume the drivers know where the spots are that are totally covered in water, but not too much water of course. This was the cool thing about going in February, we had the opportunity to see the never ending mirror effect. It only last a few months out of the year! Eventually the various puddles finally merged into one massive puddle and that’s where we stopped to take photos. I switched over to flip flops, as they say all the salt will ruin your shoes! We took some fun photos (which I currently do not have), and some of us took a shot of tequila using the salt to lick afterwards. Very touristy I know!
After milling around a bit more it was time to keep trucking. We stopped at another salt hotel that had hosted a bike race on the flats some years prior. And not longer after that we were back on the dry dusty dirt. And then pavement. Bummer! We had drinks at the tourist market, because you always have to stop at the market, and then finished up in a real, but not very visually appealing, city: Uyuni. We’d have lunch together and this is where we’d part ways. Most people would continue on into Bolivia, which i was a little jealous of, because Bolivia sounds great to me. But at the same time I needed to start making some money again! Those poker games in Cambodia were calling my name! At least I thought they were. But the COVID situation was changing fast, and even in the four days on this trip, the outlook had gotten considerably bleaker.
cute kids crossing the calle, Uyuni
So for me, and two other strangers, they loaded us into a different jeep and we would make the trek back to the Chilean border, the quick way though, almost all on roads, well gravel roads. Unfortunately the place we stopped for the night was that same little crap town we had stayed on the first night. And then by the next morning we were back at Chilean immigration, scooped up by a van, and back in San Pedro de Atacama by noon. And back to the pool for me. That evening I went on a little excursion to the Valley of the Moon, and then the next morning it was the bus the airport, then a quick flight to Lima, and then a longer fight to Chicago. And the timing was fortuitous, because by this time (early March) Covid was really starting to really creep up, and it was becoming quite apparent that it was going to become a worldwide pandemic, as cases were starting to be detected in just about every country :0. My original plan of going over to Cambodia to play poker was now looking like it might not be happening!
last image of the whole trip!
But anyway, Chicago here I come!