Catchup: Bolivia Salar

ok, so i know im super far behind... like... two weeks at least.. but ive been so busy...and blogging takes lots of time and energy. Of which i usually have neither.

i might just go through and bulletpoint things to keep it short .

Salar tour.
Started Friday, packed up the jeep and headed off at around 11am. First stop was the train graveyard - wrecked trains that Bolivia cant aford to do anything with. Climbed all of them.

Stopped to get the meals for the tour... there was a little boy in the yard who seemed like he had just learned to stand up... he was knocked over by two dogs fighting over a ball.

Salt mounds… the local people are aloud as much salt as they want from the salt flats.. these mounds are where they pile the salt up to leave it to dry.
Climbed all over them, took some photos with dinosaur toys. Had a group hug on one mound.

Salt hotel – its illegal to have salt hotels on the actual salar, this one is just to the side of it. There were various salt sculptures inside, including a big condor and a naked woman.

Cactus Island - the main event… an island in the middle of nowhere, covered in cactus. Walked the path through the island, at the top there are great views of white salt and cactus. There is a shrine to PachaMama (Mother Earth), where people can place an offering to keep everyone safe. I put two colored pencils.
We took a whole load of photos, Claire and Nicky took a series of ninja photos, then we headed back down to the jeep for lunch.
Lunch consisted of a variety of veggies, and then once we were finished we headed out on the salt to take clever, no-horizon photos …which the salar is famous for.
Our clever was lacking, and the guide was useless at setting the photos up properly, so quite a few of them on my camera just look silly. I gave up early on these photos while the others powered on, determined to get one good one. I sat and looked on as I played guitar, and Chris played with the dinosaur toys we bought with us. We then played a round of Frisbee… Chris was in the Ultimate Frisbee team in Afghanistan when he was there…so he has some wild tricks that he cracked out on the salar. It was tiring though, due to the high altitude. We walked back to the jeep as the sun was setting.

The hotel we stayed at was full of other jeep loads of tourists… and we settled in and had a round of cards. We laughed lots about various bad jokes that usually came from either Chris or Natalie. We opened a bottle of wine and had a tiny glass each (our tour guide could only find us shot galsses, so that was classy). We eventually got dinner, after all the other dinners had left the dinning hall. I wanted to complain to our guide for being so useless, but I was too tired.
Went to bed instead of having dinner (the vegetarian option that night wasn’t that appetizing) and fell asleep as fast as I can ever remember.


That night Chris had a bad onset of altitude sickness and in the morning I packed up our things and got him some cocoa matte.

We had a small breakfast then left for the salar to see the sunrise.
Parked in a good spot, with a great view of the horizon. It was super cold, and to warm up, Nicky just ran around in circles for about 10minutes. I don’t know how well it worked.
The sun rose, slowly but surely. And anyone who wasn’t wearing their sunglasses was blinded (except Chris, who is from Florida, where the sun is the brightest in the world!).
Claire taught us all a little tie chi, so we stood and welcomed the sun with that. Nicky did her yoga position, saluting the sun. It looked impressive.

We drove for a while then stopped for a food stop… went to the bathroom, which was guarded by two young children. The youngest, a boy hugged everyone that went through, and then talked me into playing soccer. He showed off how high he could kick the tiny ball, and then Chris joined.
The food shop was amazing, we got crackers, and chips and chocolate, and string, and then a box with a woman in a red bikini caught our eyes. Turns out it was a box of Brazilian fireworks and so we bought one and asked if we could keep the box too. We could. We did.

Once the mechanics appeared to have the jeep working we left for some lagoons. On the way we stopped at an area full of strange rock formations. The lava had ‘fossilized’…our tour guide was a moron.
But Chris and I found a spot in the sun and lay down. The others climbed up various things for some comical shots. …most of their photos have Chris and I in them laying at the bottom of the biggest rock. Suckers!

We came to the first lagoon, and as soon as I saw it I yelled FLAMINGOES!!! Horay. And yes, they were pink.
We were able to walk right up to the water edge and watch them feeding. There were quite a few and beautiful to watch. I stayed there for a while.

We had lunch and then headed onwards to more lagoons.
The next that we came to was called Laguna Hidionda, which means smelly. And that it was. Still beautiful though. We took some photos, and walked as far as we could before the water edge just became sludge.

Drove for another while and came to Laguna Colirado… where we saw the sunset and a lot of flamigoes in the distance. There was a little hut and we walked around for a buit tghen headed to the hotel.
The hotel was a lot more empty that the one the night before and so we settled in then had some tea and played a variety of camp games. They were fun and passed the time until dinner. Dinner appeared and it was a big bowl of spaghetti. We ate our fill then nicky tried to get Natalie to finish the leftovers by just ploughing them into natalies face. That technique didn’t really work.
Chris and I then brought out our new Brazilian firework, and he lit it in the carpark…it was three stots and apparently theyr used a lot at university protests to get peoples attention.
Admired the stars for a short time before heading inside to get away from the cold.
Had a great nights sleep and awoke for our last day on the salar tour. We first visited gysers. Its was before the sun had risen so the lack of light made all the steam more impressive. We jumped over one then went and walked around al the big ones. It smelt like sulfur but the steam was warm so I basked in it a little.

Next up was hot springs on the edge of another lagoon. Nice to be warmed to the core and we sat and soaked it up for quite some time.
When it was time to get out everyone was reluctant but we all managed to get changed and make it to breakfast .
Breakfast was the biggest meal yet, with pancakes and fruit salad, granola, and yogurt.

Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon) was the next stop with its big mountains surrounding, and the best reflections of all the lagoons so far. The water level was low for that time of year though, so there was a lot of salt sludge surrounding the lagoon.
Stayed for a while…I built a little rock tower. It fell shortly after.

The Bolivia/Chile border just consisted of lining up. The bus ride down to San Pedro de Atacama was nice though - desert that Chile had stolen off Bolivia in their various wars. The road descended fast so Chris and Natalie cheered at the altitude dropping. They were the ones affected the most.

Arrived in San Pedro and made our way through customs.
We were dropped at the money exchange place and then we found our hostal –Hostal Florida. Nice place- the bed had an orange duvet.
Chris and I went for a pizza date for lunch, and it was great. Huge pizza and a melon dakari.
Ran errands and then took chris for a easy on the stomach meal for dinner as he had managed to get sick again.