My next stop was Sucre, which I reached on an 11 hour overnight bus, arriving at 7am. I had learned from my trusty lonely planet guide book that on a Sundays there is a market about 2 hours outside of Sucre so I headed straight there, leaving my big bag at a hostel, on a combi which is a minivan full of locals. I spent a couple of hours walking around the market, bargaining on prices and enjoying the atmosphere with a fresh orange juice before heading back to Sucre. I sat in the central plaza soaking up the sun before finding a late lunch and then deciding to move on from Sucre as although it is a beautiful town, there wasn't much there and I felt like I had seen enough - one of the joys of travelling alone. I found a bus to my next stop, Potosi and rocked up there at 8 o'clock, exhausted and dirty so got straight in the beautifully hot and powerful shower. Thankfully, the others in my dorm were very friendly and we were all going on a mine tour together the next day. The mine tour started with getting us all kitted up in protective clothing, wellies, a helmet with a light attached to it and a scald for my nose and mouth. We then walked around town in this ridiculous attire, getting multiple gunny looks from the locals, to reach the miners market where we were prompted to buy juice, coca leaves and sticks of dynamite as gifts for the miners. We then drove up to the entrance of the mines for a quite photo and wee stop and then we went into the darkness.
It was a very strange sensation being inside the mines as it was very dark, dusty and clammy and we were wading through a couple of inches of orange liquid which I was later informed was oxidised rock that had dripped off. I banged my head hundreds of times as I was busy looking at where my feet were going and then the ceiling would suddenly get lower and I would walk into it, I was very grateful for the helmet. We did quite a lot of climbing up and down slippery rocks which I was mildly terrified about falling on, especially buried so deep inside the mountain. There was also a couple of times when our coca leaf chewing guide (he had the most disgustingly large was of leaves balled in his cheek which oozed green liquid and made him very hard to understand) would point out a pool of water which would be 25m deep and would gently recommend not falling in there. One of the things j found strangest was that it was still a working mine and we kept coming across and chatting to the miners working down there to gather sulphur, lead and tin...sadly all the silver ran out loooong time ago! By the end of the tour I was feeling quote claustrophobic and there was very close, smelly and dusty so I was quite relieved to get out again into the light and its safe to say I am very glad I am not a miner by trade. Once we got back into potosi a few of us went out for lunch and then spent the afternoon showering and packing. I managed to persuade Gordon, a 19 year old Canadian, to come with me to Uyuni on the bus that night as buses are so much nicer when you are with others. So we arrived in freezing, bleak uyuni at 10.30pm, stumbled to a hostel and crashed!
We had to get up early the next morning to find ourselves a 3 day tour of the salt flats, of which every other shop was selling so it wasn't too hard. It was just a matter of finding the best deal, which in the end was £65 for 3 days taking us to Chile...not too shabby!
Our tour took off at 10.30am, when we met the others who would be joining us. Lucas and Sam, best friends from Devon, Sophie, Lucas's older sister, a Swede with an Australian accent called Marcus and Mahani, a Chilean. Our first stop was the Train Cemetry which is next to the old train line to Chile which is no longer in use, so when the trains failed they dumped them here. So it is literally like a graveyard filled with old, rusty falling apart trains with tourists clambering all of them. I found it quite eery having those train giants abandoned in the middle of the desert
but it was really cool to be able to climb on them. We then headed off in the other direction towards the infamous Salar De Uyuni, the salt flats! We took some pictures standing on little lumps of salt amongst the vast flatness surrounding us and our only Spanish speaking guide, Vladimir, explained to us how the salt is all in hexagonal shapes because in the summer, when it rains, the entire plane floods and then when the eater evaporates it does so in hexagonal shapes. We ate lunch in a salt restaurant where the tables, chairs and walls were all made out of blocks of salt making it a little chilly but pretty cool. After lunch we drove deeper into the salt and stopped randomly for photo time. Here we took gazillions of photos messing around with the perspective of the flatness; someone stepping on a group of us, someone sat on us, people sat on an apple, being chased by dinosaurs (plastic ones), holding each other up and spelling out words with pur bodies as the sun got lower. We also visited an island which was covered in cacti that apparently only grow 1cm per year! We watched the sun go down on the flats and it suddenly got absolutely freezing and then we headed to our salt hotel for the night where even the beds were made out of salt but thankfully with a mattress and multiple blankets too. I piled on all my layers to try and stay warm and filled myself with hot tea whilst we sat getting to know each other before dinner. Played a couple of hands of cards after dinner until it was just too cold and the only place i wanted to be was snuggled up in my bed, so that's where I went and it was much warmer there!
The next morning, many of us were all...I woke up and immediately threw up and a fee of the others and very upset tummies so we were a bit slow to get going, which our driver was very angry about. However, the morning red sky was beautiful! It was probably the best day for us to be ill because the day involved a lot of driving with stops to get out and admire the views, so we were not required to be active. We stopped at multiple stunning lakes with views of 3 or more different active volcanoes, visited the rock tree which is a rock in the shape of a tree in the desert which looks like that as it has been carved from the sand in high winds. Our final stop was the Laguna Colorado which is red (although it looked more purple to me) due to the plankton under the surface and was covered with pretty pink flamingoes :) by the end of the day I was feeling much better but still didn't want to tempt fate by eating much, but we didn't spend much time hanging around when we got to the hotel as it was apparently the coldest night of the year and was going to get down to -15°c! We had an early wake up call the following morning, getting up at 4.30am at which point it was -8°c bbbrrrr! I was sick again that morning, but thankfully the others were all better. I was distracted from feeling ill by visiting geysers which were massively strong, hot funnels of steam coming out of the earth. We warmed ourselves up by jumping through the steam funnel, which was so forceful it blew off my hat, even though it smelt of eggy farts (sulphur) and we watched our guide put a bottle of water in the flow and bounce around uncontrollably! He then showed us the active, bubbling volcanoes which went up to 150°c which were awesome to see. As the sun started to come up we drove to the thermal baths which was a pool of naturally hot water. Really quickly stripped into a bikini and jumped from the -5° outside to the +38° inside which was a hard transition but was beautiful once I was used to it. It made me feel so much better and it was great to be properly warm for the first time in a while, although I still wasn't quite brave enough to join the others with their 7am beers. Watching the sun come up through the steam of the bath was stunning and we were gutted when Vladimir announced it was time to get out, mainly because the outside air was so freezing.
On the way to the Chilean border we passed a few more scenic spots, although the whole of this area is incredibly beautiful, and some lovely lakes where we took some group photos before the majority of us got on a bus headed into Chile, and Marcus went back to Uyuni. The transit into Chile was very easy, we just had to fill out a form and when we got to the immigration office in San Pedro (theres nothing actually at the border) we got a couple of stamps, they checked we didn't have any Bolivian fruit or veg and then waved us through. We stayed together as the group of 6 of us in San Pedro De Atacama and found a lovely hostel which gave us a better deal for staying 3 nights and taking up a whole dorm, even with the deal everything here is very expensive! We spent the rest of that day relaxing in the sunshine (it was so nice that it was so warm) and exploring the beautiful, sandy streets of San Pedro. It was also heaven to have a shower even if it did say everywhere to be conservative with water as we were apparently in the driest desert in the world! The boys treated us to dinner that night cooking us a 'veg omelette' although it more turned into scrambled egg and veg but it was still delicious - and cheap! In the morning, we made banana pancakes which were an incredible start to the day and I contributed my pot of Marmite brought all the way from to have with the amazingly soft, fluffy, not sweet, fresh bread, aaaahh you have no idea how good it all was! We even found a dollop of maple syrup in the cupboard each, which made the Canadian very happy ;)
For the day 4 of us hired a bike to cycle to the valley of death and valley of the the moon. The cycle to the valley of death was only a couple of kilometres but it nearly killed me because the majority of it was cycling through deep sand, up hill which you can't actually do! So we ended up pushing most of the way, but it was still very scenic. Sam, unfortunately, had to turn back as he had a bad cold so it was too much for him. Having descended back down the road from the valley which was much more fun and pretty similar to death road, although you had the added fear of potentially running into a deep bit of sand and completely losing control, we cycled to the Valle De La Luna, so called because it looks like you're on the moon - and it actually does! On our cycle, we passed Gordon who had decided to walk and we saw some of the most incredible vistas. Popped into some salt caves along the way and walked through a canyon where all the rocks were making cracking/ticking sounds around us in the heat which was very eery! After the caves the cycle became bumpier and more uphill, much to our disgust, so we carried on another 5 km and then decided to climb up to a ridge where you could pretty much see the whole crated, white, moony valley. I felt like Neil Armstrong but with a very achey bottom! We painfully mounted our bikes again and cycled the 13km thankfully mostly downhill, back to San Pedro and arrived incredibly stiff and with the sorest bums in town! But it felt good to have cycled 30km during the day :)
Sophie and I were hoping to go on a stargazing tour with massive telescopes - and hot chocolate included - but sadly although the day had been beautifully warm and sunny, there was too much high cloud to do the tour so we missed out because on the next night the moon was going to be too big and bright, sadly.
Had an extremely and appropriately lazy Saturday morning, with more banana pancakes, fluffy bread, coffee and even some added fruit juice before venturing out to book buses for the next day - Sam and Lucas down to Santiago (where Mahani had already gone) and Sophie, Gordon and I on to Salta in Argentina. That afternoon we went on a tour to the Laguna Cejar which is a lake in the middle of the desert that is very, very, very, very salty. This means that when we got in to swim in it, you cannot physically sink, its even hard to push your head below to surface.
It was also a strange sensation because the top foot or so of water was freezing cold but everything under that was really warm. So my chest, upper arms and neck were permanently freezing but everything under that was amazingly warm...this made bobbing about in the water bearable for the 45mins we were in there but you certainly didn't want to let your legs drift up to the surface too, which is what they naturally wanted to do. Once we had got out and desalted, we visit the 'Ojos De salar' (eyes of the desert) which were 2 little round pools in ground and then on to an absolutely stunningly clear and still lake where I had an incredible view of the Andes, almost more clearly reflected in the lake and we finished there with a Pisco Sour at 'sunset' although there was too much cloud to really see the sunset until just as we were leaving when the sky turned a vivid pink!
The next morning, I said farewell to Sam and Lucas, who we will probably see again down in Buenos Aires, and settled in for our 11 hour bus journey into Argentina.
I am almost afraid and very disappointed in myself to say that although we made ourselves brilliant food, we had 3 very sober nights in Chile so didn't even get to have any Chilean wine, supposedly the best in the world - don't hate me, I will make up for it Argentina....
Love all around xxx
It was a very strange sensation being inside the mines as it was very dark, dusty and clammy and we were wading through a couple of inches of orange liquid which I was later informed was oxidised rock that had dripped off. I banged my head hundreds of times as I was busy looking at where my feet were going and then the ceiling would suddenly get lower and I would walk into it, I was very grateful for the helmet. We did quite a lot of climbing up and down slippery rocks which I was mildly terrified about falling on, especially buried so deep inside the mountain. There was also a couple of times when our coca leaf chewing guide (he had the most disgustingly large was of leaves balled in his cheek which oozed green liquid and made him very hard to understand) would point out a pool of water which would be 25m deep and would gently recommend not falling in there. One of the things j found strangest was that it was still a working mine and we kept coming across and chatting to the miners working down there to gather sulphur, lead and tin...sadly all the silver ran out loooong time ago! By the end of the tour I was feeling quote claustrophobic and there was very close, smelly and dusty so I was quite relieved to get out again into the light and its safe to say I am very glad I am not a miner by trade. Once we got back into potosi a few of us went out for lunch and then spent the afternoon showering and packing. I managed to persuade Gordon, a 19 year old Canadian, to come with me to Uyuni on the bus that night as buses are so much nicer when you are with others. So we arrived in freezing, bleak uyuni at 10.30pm, stumbled to a hostel and crashed!
We had to get up early the next morning to find ourselves a 3 day tour of the salt flats, of which every other shop was selling so it wasn't too hard. It was just a matter of finding the best deal, which in the end was £65 for 3 days taking us to Chile...not too shabby!
Our tour took off at 10.30am, when we met the others who would be joining us. Lucas and Sam, best friends from Devon, Sophie, Lucas's older sister, a Swede with an Australian accent called Marcus and Mahani, a Chilean. Our first stop was the Train Cemetry which is next to the old train line to Chile which is no longer in use, so when the trains failed they dumped them here. So it is literally like a graveyard filled with old, rusty falling apart trains with tourists clambering all of them. I found it quite eery having those train giants abandoned in the middle of the desert
but it was really cool to be able to climb on them. We then headed off in the other direction towards the infamous Salar De Uyuni, the salt flats! We took some pictures standing on little lumps of salt amongst the vast flatness surrounding us and our only Spanish speaking guide, Vladimir, explained to us how the salt is all in hexagonal shapes because in the summer, when it rains, the entire plane floods and then when the eater evaporates it does so in hexagonal shapes. We ate lunch in a salt restaurant where the tables, chairs and walls were all made out of blocks of salt making it a little chilly but pretty cool. After lunch we drove deeper into the salt and stopped randomly for photo time. Here we took gazillions of photos messing around with the perspective of the flatness; someone stepping on a group of us, someone sat on us, people sat on an apple, being chased by dinosaurs (plastic ones), holding each other up and spelling out words with pur bodies as the sun got lower. We also visited an island which was covered in cacti that apparently only grow 1cm per year! We watched the sun go down on the flats and it suddenly got absolutely freezing and then we headed to our salt hotel for the night where even the beds were made out of salt but thankfully with a mattress and multiple blankets too. I piled on all my layers to try and stay warm and filled myself with hot tea whilst we sat getting to know each other before dinner. Played a couple of hands of cards after dinner until it was just too cold and the only place i wanted to be was snuggled up in my bed, so that's where I went and it was much warmer there!
The next morning, many of us were all...I woke up and immediately threw up and a fee of the others and very upset tummies so we were a bit slow to get going, which our driver was very angry about. However, the morning red sky was beautiful! It was probably the best day for us to be ill because the day involved a lot of driving with stops to get out and admire the views, so we were not required to be active. We stopped at multiple stunning lakes with views of 3 or more different active volcanoes, visited the rock tree which is a rock in the shape of a tree in the desert which looks like that as it has been carved from the sand in high winds. Our final stop was the Laguna Colorado which is red (although it looked more purple to me) due to the plankton under the surface and was covered with pretty pink flamingoes :) by the end of the day I was feeling much better but still didn't want to tempt fate by eating much, but we didn't spend much time hanging around when we got to the hotel as it was apparently the coldest night of the year and was going to get down to -15°c! We had an early wake up call the following morning, getting up at 4.30am at which point it was -8°c bbbrrrr! I was sick again that morning, but thankfully the others were all better. I was distracted from feeling ill by visiting geysers which were massively strong, hot funnels of steam coming out of the earth. We warmed ourselves up by jumping through the steam funnel, which was so forceful it blew off my hat, even though it smelt of eggy farts (sulphur) and we watched our guide put a bottle of water in the flow and bounce around uncontrollably! He then showed us the active, bubbling volcanoes which went up to 150°c which were awesome to see. As the sun started to come up we drove to the thermal baths which was a pool of naturally hot water. Really quickly stripped into a bikini and jumped from the -5° outside to the +38° inside which was a hard transition but was beautiful once I was used to it. It made me feel so much better and it was great to be properly warm for the first time in a while, although I still wasn't quite brave enough to join the others with their 7am beers. Watching the sun come up through the steam of the bath was stunning and we were gutted when Vladimir announced it was time to get out, mainly because the outside air was so freezing.
On the way to the Chilean border we passed a few more scenic spots, although the whole of this area is incredibly beautiful, and some lovely lakes where we took some group photos before the majority of us got on a bus headed into Chile, and Marcus went back to Uyuni. The transit into Chile was very easy, we just had to fill out a form and when we got to the immigration office in San Pedro (theres nothing actually at the border) we got a couple of stamps, they checked we didn't have any Bolivian fruit or veg and then waved us through. We stayed together as the group of 6 of us in San Pedro De Atacama and found a lovely hostel which gave us a better deal for staying 3 nights and taking up a whole dorm, even with the deal everything here is very expensive! We spent the rest of that day relaxing in the sunshine (it was so nice that it was so warm) and exploring the beautiful, sandy streets of San Pedro. It was also heaven to have a shower even if it did say everywhere to be conservative with water as we were apparently in the driest desert in the world! The boys treated us to dinner that night cooking us a 'veg omelette' although it more turned into scrambled egg and veg but it was still delicious - and cheap! In the morning, we made banana pancakes which were an incredible start to the day and I contributed my pot of Marmite brought all the way from to have with the amazingly soft, fluffy, not sweet, fresh bread, aaaahh you have no idea how good it all was! We even found a dollop of maple syrup in the cupboard each, which made the Canadian very happy ;)
For the day 4 of us hired a bike to cycle to the valley of death and valley of the the moon. The cycle to the valley of death was only a couple of kilometres but it nearly killed me because the majority of it was cycling through deep sand, up hill which you can't actually do! So we ended up pushing most of the way, but it was still very scenic. Sam, unfortunately, had to turn back as he had a bad cold so it was too much for him. Having descended back down the road from the valley which was much more fun and pretty similar to death road, although you had the added fear of potentially running into a deep bit of sand and completely losing control, we cycled to the Valle De La Luna, so called because it looks like you're on the moon - and it actually does! On our cycle, we passed Gordon who had decided to walk and we saw some of the most incredible vistas. Popped into some salt caves along the way and walked through a canyon where all the rocks were making cracking/ticking sounds around us in the heat which was very eery! After the caves the cycle became bumpier and more uphill, much to our disgust, so we carried on another 5 km and then decided to climb up to a ridge where you could pretty much see the whole crated, white, moony valley. I felt like Neil Armstrong but with a very achey bottom! We painfully mounted our bikes again and cycled the 13km thankfully mostly downhill, back to San Pedro and arrived incredibly stiff and with the sorest bums in town! But it felt good to have cycled 30km during the day :)
Sophie and I were hoping to go on a stargazing tour with massive telescopes - and hot chocolate included - but sadly although the day had been beautifully warm and sunny, there was too much high cloud to do the tour so we missed out because on the next night the moon was going to be too big and bright, sadly.
Had an extremely and appropriately lazy Saturday morning, with more banana pancakes, fluffy bread, coffee and even some added fruit juice before venturing out to book buses for the next day - Sam and Lucas down to Santiago (where Mahani had already gone) and Sophie, Gordon and I on to Salta in Argentina. That afternoon we went on a tour to the Laguna Cejar which is a lake in the middle of the desert that is very, very, very, very salty. This means that when we got in to swim in it, you cannot physically sink, its even hard to push your head below to surface.
It was also a strange sensation because the top foot or so of water was freezing cold but everything under that was really warm. So my chest, upper arms and neck were permanently freezing but everything under that was amazingly warm...this made bobbing about in the water bearable for the 45mins we were in there but you certainly didn't want to let your legs drift up to the surface too, which is what they naturally wanted to do. Once we had got out and desalted, we visit the 'Ojos De salar' (eyes of the desert) which were 2 little round pools in ground and then on to an absolutely stunningly clear and still lake where I had an incredible view of the Andes, almost more clearly reflected in the lake and we finished there with a Pisco Sour at 'sunset' although there was too much cloud to really see the sunset until just as we were leaving when the sky turned a vivid pink!
The next morning, I said farewell to Sam and Lucas, who we will probably see again down in Buenos Aires, and settled in for our 11 hour bus journey into Argentina.
I am almost afraid and very disappointed in myself to say that although we made ourselves brilliant food, we had 3 very sober nights in Chile so didn't even get to have any Chilean wine, supposedly the best in the world - don't hate me, I will make up for it Argentina....
Love all around xxx
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