The Colours of | Bolivia
- giuliandy
- Jun 14, 2018
- 6 min read
An incredible 3 days/2 nights - jeep tour
I have been instructed by my lovely German sweet half to split this post into 3 days as for a better "organization" (he says it´s because he took so many photos, I say it´s because he´s German), so here we go: our tour to the Salar in 3 days…
Day 1:
It was an early pick up in the morning and an even earlier coca leaves tea time. I was already excited to take my coca leaves tea and actually test the effects but sadly and slightly disappointing I really don´t think the coca leaves helped that much.
In the van that picked us up to take us to the border where we´d change to our jeep we were trying to figure out in which group we´d end up and whether we´d be lucky enough to have an English & Spanish speaker that could help us translating some of the stuff which we thought would have been said by the tour guides.
At the border with Bolivia we got off the van handed our passports and got the exit stamp..out of Chile into Bolivia! The entry stamp to Bolivia pretty much set the tone for what to expect as far as development in Bolivia. After consuming our cold breakfast we got our stamps and it was time to split the van group into 2 jeeps. We looked around and we had a group of nice young girls and a group of, rather big than small, South americans with a nice Finnish and Venezuelan guy… So I thought of 5 people in a jeep and I kinda prayed we´d end up with the girls instead. Luckily enough we did and that actually made the long jeep rides a lot more pleasant..
The trip starts in a desert but the road at the beginning was actually not too bumpy at all. At that point we were all quite excited about the upcoming trip and no one really had any side effect from the altitude. Our guide, Jorge, didn´t speak a word of English but actually one of the girls, Lorene, spoke Spanish so she saved us. The first stop was at Laguna Blanca which was the lighthest coloured of all the Lagunas we saw. The Laguna was almost totally white as it was frozen by the night/early morning temperature, however you could see the ice was starting to melt already with the sun coming up quite quickly.
Back to Jeep we made a couple more stop in the Dali desert and headed to the warmest stop of the day: Aguas Termales. The thermal waters really only consisted of 2 small musky water pools but it was still very enjoyable to be in hot water and gaze at the landscape…
The whole group was starting to be quite hungry at that point and we headed to the hostel were we would spend the night to leave our bags and have lunch. We chose to share a room with all the girls instead of splitting into 2 rooms as we thought it´d help the cold temperature we were expecting at night. We were served the only warm meal of the trip and at that point I think we were all a bit dizzy/starting to feel the altitutde at 4368m. We were allowed to take a nap and were woken up by Jorge yelling that we were already late for our visit to Laguna Colorada (5 min late!). Andy had a headache and I was feeling rather weak.
The trip to Laguna Colorada was quite short however and we got to spend some time there enjoying the colours. Laguna Colorada was quite pink with some shades of earth red and it was funny to hear to comments of other people arguing on whether it was pink or red or what colour it was after all. Words of wisdom: we all see different colours and at the end of the day they´re probaby not even the actual colours. The laguna was home to a lot of cute flamingos (don´t ask me to remember which type they were, they were flamingos and they were mostly pink) and some funky Alpacas which mostly showed us their butts when trying to incude them into our photos.
Around 5.30/6pm we headed back to the hostel and were strongly advised by friendly Jorge to drink a bit more coca leaves tea to prevent altitude sickness.. I think I was already feeling most of the effects of altitude. After dinner we played a bit of cards with the girls and then it was time for bed… Except that I was feeling so super sick (needless giving you details of how many times my stomach was emptied during the night). I woke up at 4am with the strongest of headaches and feeling utterly shit and one guy at the hostel gave me some nausea pills and some oxygen hahaha that was Day 1 pretty much. night
1st day pictures
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Day 2:
I just want to say I felt shit for half of Day 2 as well but my condition got increasingly better after taking some more nausea pills and a paracetamol.
Anyway, the second day started very well as we were extermely punctual and also happy to leave the cold hostel and go at a lower altittude.. We set off and passed another Laguna before we headed to the stone tree were we saw the cutest kind of rabbit looking animals I´ve ever seen: Viscachas. We actually didn´t see any at first and ended up having 3 so close by that we took really nice photos of them. They were very curious and came super close..
At that point I was starting to feel slightly better but it was still crazy how much energy and effort it took us to walk a few steps; not to mention climbing up small rocks or jump for pictures. Another couple of stops to what I renamed "the broccoli park" (it was actually a mountain view point that had loads of these funny looking desert plants), and to the Laguna Chiguana and we were finally in the Hostal del Sal.
This was actually an hostal made of salt which believe it or not was pretty cool (and yes I did try the walls just to make sure it was actually salt) and not so cold. Except for the food which was disappointing once again, we had a really cosy night.. There was a small fireplace in the middle of the dining room and Andy played the guitar joined by Josue, the Venezuelan guy who was in the other group, and later on by some Brasilian guitar hero who blew our minds with his solo of hotel california and bosa nova stylw music.
Clare was teaching Irish dancing and we met a cool Croatian guy who had studied in Austria and was singing along Andy´s skiing songs. It was a really nice night, headache free, not too cold. We agreed with our increasingly unfriendly guide that we would see the sunset from the small island on the Salar the day after. Which meant departure at 5am sharp the day after
2nd day pictures
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Day 3:
Jorge was very annoyed because we left with 10 min of delay. Maaaan, the most time annoying South american I´ve ever met. After a sleepy dark drive we got to the island and the sun was just starting to rise.
I´m not gonna lie and say the climb up was super easy; at sea level it would have been a kids game, but considering I had literally just recovered from altitude sickness and was still feeling weak, it was actually quite an effort. Nevertheless we couldn´t stop as we didn´t wanna miss the sunsrise..
So we got to the top, breathless but we were there. And we were definitely rewarded by a really unique sunsrise sorrounded by the white salt desert and tons of cactai (Stephanie said that is the plural of cactus) and yellow rocks which made amazing shades on the desert. It was quite a morning show.
After a breakfast in the freezing cold we finally headed to the middle of the salar where all the tourists give the best of their photography skills to take the silliest photos & videos. We came well equipped with an engineer and a bunch of iphone carrying ladies and lots of dinosaurs kiwi birds and silly ideas. We burnt under the sun and the reflection and the white salt to take pictures for almost 3 hours before declaring ourselves satisified with the results. We had a pringles video (which was later edited by MariVi who added the minions music and made it much more fun), and loads of other funny pictures.
We made another couple of stops before getting to the city of Uyuni, which quite frankly didn´t really impress me as far as construction, and there we were, eating quinoa at a local foodcourt with seemingly working wifi, a warm temperature and cement under are feet.
It was quite the trip, we travelled more than 800km stuffed in a Jeep and went as high as 4910 m at the Geysers point, within less than half a day, slept in a freezing cold location , and all of us suffered from some kind of altitude sickness (me being on top of the list).
We saw some of the most beautiful natural colours you can ever imagine in a desert. Except for the points of interest we were basically alone, with our Jeep in the middle of a sand desert and a salt desert, and last but not least we shared some good laughs with a funny group of ladies which we then ended up travelling with for a bit… p.s. Enjoy the photos!
3rd day pictures
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