Introduction to Bolivia

After a week of relaxing in San Pedro it was time to pack our bags again and hop on a minibus, which would take us to the Bolivian border, where our 3-day adventure in a 4WD would start.

There is a big problem around here of tour guides drinking while driving and it is basically up to luck which driver you get. There have been accidents with a lot of people ending up dead on these technical roads when drivers are drunk or tired. All the tours go to same sights. What changes is the car, the driver, the food and the accommodation. We spent a day comparing different tour operators, and ended up taking the most expensive one just in case. The company (Cordillera travel) said they pay more for the guides for being safe drivers and not drinking, so we thought that is our best bet of getting to Uyuni alive. They also said they have good cars and a hot shower at the last hostel.

So at 8 in the morning our car came to pick us up from the hostel. It was just us and a Dutch girl we met at the hostel. After an hours drive we had breakfast in front of the Bolivian border control, got our passports stamped and changed into a 4WD with our driver Wladimir. Wladimir is a 21-year old Bolivian guy, who has done the job for 5 years already. On the way we saw other tours, and some of the drivers looked like 60+, some no more than 15. We were happy with our driver, but even he was getting very tired driving on the long roads.

First day took us through different lagoons: Laguna Blanca, Laguna Verde and Laguna Colorada. We also saw a thermal field with tiny geysirs and bubbling mud. Had a nice afternoon swim in a hot thermal pool. We spent the night in some sort of guesthouse in the altitude of 4,400m. As usual in deserts, days are warm even in winter, but the nights are freezing and the temperature drops well below zero. And it does so also inside the house. Because it was only 3 of us in a tour, we could steal some blankets from the empty beds, so totaling with 10-12 blankets each, it wasn´t that bad.

Next day we saw four other lagoons, lots of flamingos, a smoking volcano, a small town called San Juan and in the evening we reached the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the huge salt flat, the highlight of the trip. We slept in a hotel made of salt bricks (as cold as the last one, but with hot showers).

The last day we spent exploring the salt flat taking silly photos and being blinded by the whiteness. We were supposed to go on an island on the salt, but none of the tours went there that day due to some accident. So in the afternoon the tour finished in Salar de Uyuni, where we also saw a train graveyard, full of old, abandoned trains. After the tour we were happy to spend the rest of the day in Uyuni eating some good food and relaxing before hopping on a bus again the next day, this time towards a town called Tupiza.

Visiting Chile

Arriving to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, was a sensory overload. Driving down from the mountains gave an amazing view over San Pedro of a tiny desert town and the volcanos around it. We stepped out of the bus into the dry desert air in the heat of the late afternoon, feeling a bit dizzy and dehydrated from the altitude, just to queue at the customs until the sun started to set and we started to look for our hostel while the weather turned into a cold, starry night.

From the first moment we loved San Pedro. Quiet town, amazing surroundings, nice people. There is plenty to do: tours to geysirs, lagoons, Valley of the Moon, salt flats , stargazing and many other things. The biggest and the most popular of them all is to do a 3-day tour to Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, where you see many similar things as listed before. That was also our plan. Problem is that the big tour starts with an overnight stop in the altitude of 4,400m. Spending only a half a day on bus over the mountains gave us such headaches and weakness that we thought it is better to stay in San Pedro (2,400m) and get used to the altitude slowly.

So we spent over a week in San Pedro just taking it easy, doing a few small tours (geysirs and the Valley of the Moon) and renting bikes. Last one was quite of an adventure… we rented bikes to go to check out nearby ruins, but we ended up getting a bit lost and crossing a river several times with the bikes, going through a nearly crashed down tunnel and biking at least 40 km in the altitude of 2,700m without any roads, just following the bottom of a dried river just to find the way back before sunset with a pretty sunburn in the face. We were also looking forward to doing the stargazing tour. Apparently San Pedro de Atacama, being the driest desert of the world, is one of the best places to do this, but there is no messing with the mother nature. It was too cloudy for the star tour for 4 nights in a row before leaving to Uyuni.