Salar de Uyuni tour day 1
Day 240 – Villa Mar, Bolivia
The agency picked us up at 6:30am at the various hostels we travellers stayed at, then drove us to the border via minibus.
The Chilean border post is a vast hangar through which the bus drives; we stop inside, go out, step to the counter, where, unsmiling and without any greeting -instructions from the guide- we hand out our passport and tourist immigration card.
We drive then half an hour to the Bolivian border, a far less glamorous small building where I get my stamp in a few second -it’s good to be French-, whereas the four Israelis in our group have a few more formalities to go through!
At this point, we will be dispatched between different Land Cruisers to go on our excursion. We have breakfast by the minibus -which is going back to San Pedro de Atacama with people having done the tour in the other direction- with a few mountain gulls hovering around.
Breakfast at the Chilean-Bolivian border
I’m in a car with a guide who doesn’t speak English and the four Israelis, who learned the rudiments of the language already.
(Many Israelis, once they have finished their military service, go and travel for 6 months. They are not the first I’ve come upon, but I travelled 3 days with these ones!)
We stopped at the entrance to the Reserva National de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa to pay our fees, where I got quite nicely conned out of 100 boliviano bill (around 12 €) and a pen.
Then we went on to the Laguna Blanco, a lake with borax deposits which gives it its whitish colour (see picture above).
The roads are unsealed on this part of Bolivia. The only people going around here are tourists, and we are driving in a zone where very few people live -and the accommodation are rudimentary. The Land Cruisers are a necessity! And at least we have modern cars, comfortable, with great suspension.
Our agency has three cars around this time, but we travel more or less with all the other agencies -most of our stops are the same, and we will catch up with or be overtaken by many other Land Cruisers.
After the Laguna Blanco, we go to the Laguna Verde -copper deposits this time-, where we cheerfully draw on the dust of the rear windshield of the car.
Laguna Verde
As you can guess, during most of the trip, we will have the “Inca toilet” available -the nearest rock for the women, any patch of dust for the men.
We stopped by the Dali Desert, so-called because the rock formations could come from a Salvador Dali painting. Unfortunately, we were too far away to really see them!
We stopped for lunch by some hot springs, with enough time to take advantage of the hot water, then continued our tour.
By this time I had a constant headache -we were above 4,000m-, joy!
We arrived at a geyser field -4,900m- with very nice colours!
Geysers
We drove on, and our next stop was the Laguna Colorada -it has many colours, and flamingos. Between the altitude headache and dizziness, I didn’t go for the full tour, so I didn’t see the flamingos from close-up, sniff!
Laguna Colorada
It is the rainy season in Bolivia, though also we had blue skies and a hot sun in the morning and midday, grey clouds caught up with us -or we caught up with them!- in the afternoon, with grey curtains shower rain falling far away! We mostly avoided the rain, it only caught up with us during the night.
The last hours between the Laguna Colorada and Villa Mar, where we slept, where very bumpy; we get why we need 4×4 cars! And we were the few cars that could fit all the luggage inside, most put the backpacks on top of the cars under a tarp.
Bumpy rides mean the need to stop very often to go to the Inca toilet, aggravated by the need to drink a lot at this altitude.
Bolivia is one hour behind, so we had to change time and adapt. Especially to know at what at time exactly diner was!
We were mostly attributed rooms by car groups, so we roomed all five together. We had to pay for the showers -what I noticed was the guide saying that he had to collect the money for the shower, and I think I overheard one of the women managing the hostel indicating half the price for the same service!
And I succeeded in sleeping through the headache, that was a lot better in the morning.
