Uyuni Salt Flats

Bolivia is often described as one of the poorest countries in South America, so you have to take your hat off to them for the way they have preserved the Uyuni Salt Flats in spite of the extroadinary commercial pressure they must be under. With moble phones, electric cars, and powertools demanding ever more litium for their rechargeable batteries, Bolivia is sitting on that proverbial goldmine - the 10,000 sq.km of Salinas de Uyuni alone account for more than half of the entire world´s litium reserves.

Even though you could argue it´s worth more to the country for the tourism it brings in, good for them. For me, the Uyuni Salt Flats are right up there with Glacier Perito Moreno as the most extraordinary sight I have come across on this tour. How they formed couldn´t be easier to explain. Basically, what was once a sea evaporated, and left behind a gargantuan plane of salt. 

You can either do a one-day tour, or a three-day tour that also takes you to see volcanoes, flamengos and whatnot. This is where Noah and I parted ways with the girls, as we just didn´t have the patience to see anything other than the salt flats.

Like all tours, it starts with a detour to a market.

4 wheel-drives are a must.

As are sunglasses.

Nothing but miles and miles of salt.

 A word of advice. The choice of tour is important as some of them shy away from going to the areas that are flooded - for safety reasons. You need to shop around and ask. If there´s any chance of seeing the flooded parts, do it. This is because when the water floods over the flat white surface area, it creates a sort of a mirror effect that, from certain angles, makes the horizon disappear. It is one of the most astounding visual effects you will ever come across, as Noah and I were lucky enough to have done, and the girls weren´t. But then, they got to see flamengos.

 

Unlike the girls, our tour also brought us to the "Fish Island", a rather surreal cactus island at very centre of the salt flats, about 80km in from the edge, where we dabbled with a bit of perpective photography.

Yes, everyone does it. It´s odd if you don´t.

It´s moments like these that make you think the world is such a beautiful place.

Unreal.

Epic.

Faith + 1

What a day.

Different world

Correction on yesterday´s post. The border town we arrived at on the Argentinian side is actually called La Quiaca. Only when you cross the bridge and get your passport stamped are you officially in Villazon, Bolivia. This was easier for the Irish, Swiss and German passports than the American one which is beng discriminated against almost everywhere it goes in South America on the grounds of 'reciprocation'. You make life difficult for our travellers, we´ll do the same for yours.

One of my better headlines.

You are now entering Bolivia.

I was slightly disappointed they didn´t even ask for my yellow fever certificate which I took so much trouble getting in Hong Kong. For Noah, they demanded everything - yellow fever, typhoid, photocopy of passport photo plus US$135 in American dollars. Any bank note that had even a slight rip in it was considered counterfeit. 

 

The other side, eventually.

Like Shenzhen in China, the town of Villazon is best passed through as quickly as you possibly can. Our first port of call was the holiday town of Tupiza, famed for being the place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wrecked havoc and, eventually, met their deaths against the Bolivian army. Even though the distance wasn´t far by South American standards we decided to take the express bus which promised to get us there in just two hours.

The journey cost 50 Bolivianos per person, which is to say, 50 HK dollars. In other words, 1 Boliviano equals 1 HK dollar. I found this, and continue to find this, one of the best things about Bolivia, because there is no need to do any maths. Lord knows how much money I spent in Chile because the currency there works in multiples of thousands. Here, I know from just looking at a menu that a pizza costs HK$25-30. A large bottle of beer in a touristy restaurant, HK$15. A bottle of Bolivian sauvignan blanc, HK$20-35. My full set of laundry, HK$10. A night at Tupiza´s most expensive and quite nice 3-starred Hotel Mitru, HK$60.

It is incredibly cheap here. This is why Bolivia has become the new Thailand for posh-but-apparently-penniless Bristish public school GAP year students. Hoards of them - Marlborough, Sevenoaks, you name it - hogging the internet centres skyping with mummy and daddy, asking to top up their bank accounts because they owe Robbie 3.50 beer money from the night before, but other than that, everything is "yeah, really really good, I´m having a really really good time".

Which brings me to the world's most annoying couple who I've been meaning to forget but now it's come right back. For two whole hours, they sat next to my Internet booth while I was carefully crafting my blog, she sobbing like a pathetic wet flannel because she couldn't get skype to work, and he cwith his arm around her, consoling her in that most creepy and unnatural way when you have an 18 year old rugger bugger going out with a 12 year old. Nothing aggravates me more than middle England abroad, and they are here in numbers.

Then there are the Israelis, freshly released from national service, tanned, cliquey, murderous-looking, but not altogether unpleasant, except to each other. It´s a language thing, according to Thora and Rahel, whereby "could you pass the wine please" sounds like "I´m going to decaptitate your whole family".

The Irish were also here, but not in wolf packs like the Israelis or rugby teams like the English. They usually travel in pairs, a lot of them couples. You often see the same couple in various different towns because they are genuinely here to travel, as opposed to getting drunk in one spot. There were also the scandinavians but I couldn´t find anything to say about Lars and Sven.

Thankfully, just as we were beginning to get comfortable with this scene, Noah put his foot down and insisted we get on with what we all came here for, a 6-hour high-altitude, tyre-shredding bus ride north to the town of Uyuni.

Into Bolivia - the long way round

Five days of drinking cocktails and wine under the desert sun was followed by the inevitable 'what next' moment. The destination for everyone seemed to be Bolivia, although each of us had very different ideas of how to get there. The quickest way would be directly across from Chile. I, however, had to return the car to Salta, the equivalent of driving from Inverness back to London to pick up a bus ticket to Norway.

I´d be lying if I said there wasn´t a tiny bit of self-interest behind inviting them back to Salta with me. Bolivia wasn´t the sort of place I felt comfortable entering alone with my limited Espanol, and here I was with three Spanish speakers of varying ability, from fluent to reasonably proficient. The main reason, however, was that we made a good group, were having a lot of fun, and i thought it would be a shame to break it up after only five days. As the senior citizen/sage of the group, I proposed the idea and was delighted to find that everyone felt the same way, particularly since Noah and Rahel had never been to northern Argentina. One final, glorious sunset on the roof of Hostal Neuvo Amanacer, and we set off the next morning on the road back to Argentina.

Adios San Pedro, the Milky Way and more comets than I have ever seen.

 It was interesting to finally catch what I had missed that night driving all alone in the dark.When you can actually see something, the experience is very different.

The high pass. Almost level with volcano top.

On the drivers´ blogs, this road is talked about with both affection and awe.

Nearing Argentina, one of the salt lagoons.

Made it to Pasa de Jama. 3 more hours of flat nothing to go...

...before this outrageous descent into Purmamarca.

Could have gone straight back to Salta from here, but a unanimous decision was made to hike around the UNESCO protected Rock of Seven Colours and stay for two nights at the excellent Malka Hostel in a small, nearby town called Tilcara.

There was talk of spending a few more nights here but the car rental company, laundry and all manners of errands demanded a swift return to Salta. It was a good thing the sheer ghastliness of the city hostel took away any sentimentality I might have had about leaving Argentina because when the 6-hour coach finally rolled into the border town of Villazon, having anticipated Bolivia for so long, I was finally ready for it.

Fast forward in pictures

Afternoon at the Salt lagoon

Salt saturated water.

Is it a lake, or is it a mirror? One wonders.

 The Church of San Pedro

Built in 1641, this is Chile´s 2nd oldest church.

Looks kind of Chinese, doesn´t he?

Geysers del Tatio

These works of wonders are a must-see in San Pedro. I don´t think they have UNESCO status but they were every bit worth the 4am wake-up call and 2 hour drive up the volcano zone. Umpteen blogs had warned against driving there yourself, so against my own preference I joined a tour bus full of strangers. I loathe these sorts of tours, mainly because they go on for so long, stopping by at remote villages for an eternity in the hope that you are hungry or bored enough to buy some overpriced food, a rug or a poncho.

The geysers themselves, though, were amazing. At -7 degrees C and 4,000 plus altitude, the cold hits you hard as soon as you step off the bus. There is a 5-10 minute window for you to capture that magic moment, just as the sun pops over the mountains, during which it is almost impossible to take a bad photo.

According to the guide, the geysers are also more active at this time.

This is me, in front of the geysers, at sunrise.

This is me, from the opposite angle, at sunrise.

Me, without the hood, at sunrise.

My fabourite shot. I followed this guy for a while
to capture this one.

This is me in front of the geysers, after the magic moment.
See the difference?

This is me again, as the wind blew volcanic steam
across the background.

This is me in a full length shot, in front of the geyers.

Here I am in a close-up shot, still in front of the geysers.

A rare frontal shot for me, in front of the geysers.

This was taken later on, also in front of the geysers.

There are in fact hundreds of these amazing photos, so if you´d like to see more, just let me know when I´m back in town. I´d be more than happy to bring my memory card along and go through all of them with you, one by one.

An Unexpected Gang Of Four

This is where the course of my trip took another radical turn, from the luxuries and excesses of travelling with Graham, followed by the solitude of driving around northern Argentina by myself, to a whole new and unexpected chapter.

San Pedro de Atacama, far from being on a par with Somalia for its hostile welcoming of visitors, in fact delivered everything the poster at the car rental firm promised. Moreover, staying in a hostel, which had previously been the sum of all my fears, has been one of the highlights of this trip. On arriving, the only forms of human life present were two Swiss/German girls who were only too happy to share the bottles of wine that I had brought all the way over from Cafayate. Tired though I was, I seriously needed a drink and someone to share the ordeal that I had just been put through. By 3am I was fast asleep, and even though my single room  was barely the size of the bed, it was the best night´s sleep I could recall for a long time.

The Hostal Nuevo Amanecer (meaning A New Day Dawning) couldn´t have been more aptly named, and the very sight of the desert morning sun almost instantly reversed my opinion of San Pedro. Before heading out to breakfast, I bumped into a tall bearded hippie type with a guitar on his way in. Other than rolling my eyes with vague contempt, no cause for alarm here. Breakfast, a stroll around the town square, and even a chat with a few humans convinced me that I should stay longer here. It was, dare I say it, a nice place.

A new dawn at the Nuevo Amanecer

Scrambled eggs not as good as Mom´s, but still pretty good.

To my relief, there was a reason to be here, and it was tourism.

By the time I returned to the hostel, Thora and Rahel, the two Swiss girls, had already made friends with Noah. the bearded hippie who happens to be a student from Vermont USA. I suggested we do something with the car, so off we went to see the famous Valle de la Lune (Moon Valley) a half hour´s drive away, for sunset.

The hippie.

The Swiss.

The lucky bastard whose Nikes almost slipped. Almost.

From here on known by the native Indian name, Moon Valley.