After a few days of delay we were finally on our way. The delay had been due to snow blocking the border between Chile and Bolivia.
The first morning we travelled by bus through the Chile and Bolivian borders. The Bolivian border crossing was a tiny little building perched between mountains at 4400m with ice as far as you could see. Easily the nicest border crossing we have had, there was even a couple of foxes begging for bread while we had breakfast there... It was cooooold! The group of 24 people divided up into four 4X4's. There were 6 of us in the car, Martin the Latvian (he was sandboarding with us), a french couple, and a girl from Columbia - a godsend as the driver/guide only spoke spanish... but it made us lazy - after a while we stopped trying to understand and waited for the translation...and us.
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| Nice icy border crossing |
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| The Andes |
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| Fox |
We will let the pictures do most of the talking..day one we saw an assortment of 'lagunas', white, blue, red, green with some flamingos....geysers....hot springs....and WILSON a good mate from home....Steph was pretty fluey and chesty, the icy wind and the in and out, in and out of the car wasn't helping so much...that and the freezing little shack we stayed at the first night.
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| Laguna Blanco - white due to the slate-like rocks in the area |
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| Laguna Verde - the green appearance caused by a large amount of arsenic leaching from nearby volcanos. No life exists here. |
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| Too cold for us to swim, note the frozen lake just meters from the warmish pool.... |
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| Something we found along the way... |
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| Geysers - these are all in essence small areas of active volcano escaping. There was boiling mud and steam everywhere. The main geyser was huge, spewing steam and sulphur. The howling icy wind hitting the escaping steam made a huge roaring noise. |
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| Laguna Rojo - the red lagoon due to an abundance of micro-organisms in the water. A favored watering hole of flocks of flamingos. |
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| Our extremely warm house night 1. |
Day two involved the car misbehaving a little bit, a few stops the drivers would stand around the engine laughing as much as they were tinkering. But no major problems which was good...the landscapes are crazy, lots of ice, frozen and partially frozen lakes, towering mountains and volcanos, a tree rock, a volcano with smoke pouring out, more Michael Wilson, and this night we stayed at the salt hotel - surprisingly, a hotel made out of salt. Our room had a salt floor, salt bedside tables, salt salt salt! Salt being the insulator it is, allowed a more comfortable nights sleep as well.
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| The stone tree... |
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| Andean Gull |
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| Don't fall in Hew, I don't really trust that ice! |
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| Another lake |
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| Lake Chiar Kkota was our lunch spot. It was also home to lots of flamingos, who were doing their group marching |
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| Its a Wilson, and a smoking Chillean volcano |
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| Rocks here are ancient lava flows eroded over time |
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| Train in the middle of nowhere. Getting salty here... |
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| The Salt hotel, made of salt...salt bedside tables, tables, chairs, beds.... |
Day 3 and we were up at the crack of dawn, literally, to watch the sunrise before breakfast then a drive throught the salt lakes to incahuasi or cactus island...a little island of rock in the middle of the salt flats that was covered in cactuses that were 3 or 4 meters tall...here and at our next stop we started the salt flat tradition of taking corny perspective photos with weird props. We didn't have much with us to use apart from a wine bottle, can of beer and an empty pringles container... Our best effort is below....
Our last taste of the salt flats was an area where they collected the salt by making little mounds or salt pyramids.
Before we finished the trip in Uyuni we headed to the train cemetry just outside of town. Old dead, rusting trains..Steph LOVED that stop.Hew thought the photo opportunities were going to be better than they actually were..
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| Sunrise over the salt lakes |
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| Salty water as far as the eye can see |
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| Nice view |
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| One of the large cactuses on incahuasi, they can grow to 4m! |
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| Steph being silly |
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| Steph sitting |
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| Yes, we were very bad at this! |
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| A bit better :) |
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| Some salt pyramids, this is how they collect the salt |
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| The train cemetery in Uyuni |
