Farewell Chile, Hola Bolivia!

Hi all

Before I go on, I want to wish my dad a happy birthday. He and my mother have just returned from a trip to Nepal and Tibet. My dad wanted to visit Everest Base Camp for his 60th, which they accomplished.
You can see where I get my travelling bug from, hey?
Love you lots guys!

Back to it.

Well we said goodbye to Chile last week, and did it in style. We paid 70,000 CLP each to Cordillera Tours for the trip of a life-time across the border into Bolivia, and passing through awe-inspiring Eduardo Avaroa Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina, and finishing off with the world's biggest Salt Flat - the Salar de Uyuni.

I'll format this blog a bit differently. Loads of text, followed by all the pics. The pics just deserve to be on their own. They can speak for themselves.

The trip takes three days, and the only way to do it is via a tour company. We were picked up at 8am from our hostel (Hostel Iquisa) in a mini-van and, after picking up the rest of our party, we quickly ascended to 4200m, behind Volcan Licancabur to enter Bolivia (check the picture of their immigration office.. very basic). This was the first point that the surrealness of the area hit us. We saw sea gulls around the office. Yep. Sea gulls. I've no idea what they were doing at such an altitude, and also when the driest desert in the world is between them and the coast, but I guess that just shows how successful gulls in general are as a species.

Once that's done, you are allocated a 4WD (all Toyota Landcruisers, and LOTS of them as other companies also do the run) and spend the next six hours or so passing through the first section of the park. In total, there were eight of us on this tour with this particular company, and we were split into two groups of four. The French and Spanish couples (Julien, Melanie, Miguel and Sonja) in the first truck, and Fran, myself, Dave and Carla (both English) in the second jeep. We had wolf stickers on the side of ours, so we knew ours was the cooler jeep.
We had also been warned that the drivers were frequently drunk, stoned, or exhausted, and the jeeps were quite often in rough shape so we were quite nervous as to the composition of our driver and his fourbee! Luckily, we had okay fortune with both.
Our driver introduced himself at the beginning, and we quickly forgot his name. It was definitely something Quechan or Spanish or just foreign, and we didn't find out what it was until two days later when we asked the other driver in our convoy.
"Richard" was apparently his name. Didn't sound like Richard when he said it.

That first day we visited Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon), hot springs, geysers, and finished off at Laguna Colorada (Red Lagoon). At this point I'll interject and just state that it has been a dream of mine to visit Laguna Colorada for about 10 years, so getting to this point was a massive highlight for me. It's incredibly surreal to be in a desert-like landscape, not be roasting, and have the lakes covered in ice.
None of us eight attempted the hot springs, simply because we knew how painful it would be when we got out. Sure it might be warm in there, but hell, I'd probably still have the goose-bumps from getting out if we'd tried it.

At our "hotel" for the night, we met a great little kid named Oscar, who was five, and had the most infectious laugh ever. No matter what you did, he would find funny and would launch into a fit of giggles. Fran has some face-warping software on her phone, and she took a picture of him, and then showed him how he'd look with all sorts of weird features, which he absolutely loved.
Lunch and dinner that day was incredible. Our host (the first glimpse of a "Bolivian" woman - bowler hat, long skirt, woolen jersey etc) cooked us very tasty meals and we prepared for bed on very full stomachs.
Some of us had headaches from the altitude, but no one had any serious problems.

That night, we were all dreading, as we'd heard that the accomodation was BASIC and the temperature regularly dropped to minus 15 degrees.
I layered up in:
-Thermal top and long johns
-singlet
-long-sleeve top
-fleece
-another fleece
-sleeping bag liner
-sleeping bag!
-four thick blankets.
And I was still cold.
I don't think it actually got down to minus 15. It was about minus 5 or minus 10 or thereabouts. Still farking cold!!

Early the next morning after breakfast, we visited Laguna Colorada itself. It's amazing colour is due to blooms of algae and red sediment (most likely iron deposits), which then attract large flocks of flamingoes. It's very weird seeing such tropical looking birds at 4278m amsl!
We spent about half an hour there, walking along the shore, taking lots and lots and lots of pictures, before driving to our next stop El Arbol de Piedra (The Stone Tree). A very strange rock that sits in the middle of the Desierto Siloli, it was formed by wind and water aeons ago; it's very Dali-esque. The remainder of the afternoon sees you visiting the Three Lakes: Chearcota, Hedionda, and Cañapa, and also driving past Volcán Ollagüe. Another very active volcano at 5868m asml. This stretch of the Andes is known as the Central Volcanic Zone, so this should give you an idea of how many volcanoes are about the area.

On the way to our accomodation that night, and very luckily, on a flat stretch of road, the back left rim snapped off, and the tyre pushed it's way half-way off the wheel. This caused the 4WD to start fishtailing, which got progressively worse after each swerve. We were also mere feet away from a ditch, going at pace, so if we hit it, we would've rolled and rolled and rolled. Seat belts are non-existant down here by the way.
Luckily Richard controlled the vehicle superbly, and we managed to get back on the road after about 15 minutes repair work (where we found out the spare we'd been carrying was completely the wrong size, meaning we drove with different size tyres).

That night, we stayed at a "Salt Hotel", about an hours drive from the money-shot of the trip - the Salar de Uyuni. The only place that offered hot showers, which we all took greedily. ALthough the air in the hotel was bitterly cold. If you were an inch away from the stream of hot water, you froze. The air also dries your skin out something fierce! So come prepared if you're in the area.

The following day was the big one. The Salar de Uyuni. The largest Salt Flat on planet earth, at a massive 10.5k square kilometers . Nothing prepares you for the sheer size, the sheer FLATness of this once huge lake. Whatever picture you see will never do it justice. The scale is mind-boggling. When we drove to an "island" in the centre of the flat, the size of distant mountains just did not change after about half an hour at pace. Whereas other stops on the trip elicited loads of "oohs and ahhs", we were all in awed silence for the Salar.

Quick fact here - the Salar de Uyuni is obviously a remnant of a massive lake. BUT that lake is itselft a remnant of an enormous lake that stretched from the Salar all the way to Lake Titicaca (in essense, covering the entire altiplano). It's name was Lake Ballivián. When this giant of a lake dried, it left two smaller (but still huge) lakes: Titicaca and Minchin. Titicaca is still around, but Minchin dried up, leaving two current lakes (Lago Poopó and Lago Uru Uru) and also leaving behind the Salar.

Of course, we had to stop and take pictures of us doing silly poses and jumps as is so common on the flats. This is where the compact cameras rule. The depth of field required for such shots just isn't possible on an SLR, especially a full frame one like the 5D. The 40D fared better, but not by much. So be warned photogs who come here. Bring a G10 or something similar as backup!

We then visited Isla Incahuasi, which is covered in cactus and offers superb 360 degree views of the flats. Here we had our lunch and I opted to walk out into the salt flats and eat on my own. It´s pretty surreal to be sat in the middle of nothing, with a china plate eating your lunch at 3660m amsl.

From there we made our way to see the illegal salt hotel, and we took more crazy pictures.
We saw people mining the salt here too. At this altitude, it´s damn hard work. We asked one guy how long he worked for per day and he said just two hours. Then his mate told us to go away. Fair enough!

So we finished off in Uyuni, and said goodbye to our friends. We´d heard some pretty negative things about Uyuni (that there´s not much going for it), but we were pretty surprised. It´s a nice town, and if you want to relax after the trip, it´s a good place for it. But it gets COLD at night! God damn.

On our second night in Uyuni, we two hired a driver to go back to the Flats to watch a sunset. And dear God, I´m glad we did! If the Salar on it´s own is incredible, seeing it reflecting the colours of the sky at sunset is like nothing else I´ve ever experienced. Easily one of the BEST moments of the entire trip, if not THE best.

From there we made our way to Potosi - the world´s highest city, at 4060m amsl. We´ve found a gem of a hostel here as well, that has hot showers, awesome pressure, private ensuite, a TV with cable and a comfy bed! Just as well, as Fran has been quite sick the past few days, so this is a perfect place for her to recover.

Anyway, I´ll finish here. Not too much detail I don´t think (compared to other posts!) as Bolivian internet is a bit slow (which is understandable) - I´ve been uploading pics for the past 4 days!.

I hope everyone is well, and those in the UK enjoying the start of a good summer.

Much love
Adam

And before I forget, remember more pics are in my Smugmug galleries

Immigration into Bolivia! Basic

Laguna Verde

Altiplano desert

That´s our jeep there. Forgot where this was, but the scenery was brilliant

Natural geysers

Little Oscar with his wonderful smile

The deepest part of Laguna Colorada is 80cm, meaning lots of nice reflections

Laguna Colorada

Take off! Flamingo at Laguna Colorada. I took a lot of shots of these birds. Aching for the 500 f/4!

More Flamingoes

The stone tree. Really surreal!

Laguna Chearcota

Red Fox

Laguna Hedionda

Forgot which lake this one.. I think it´s Laguna Hedionda

Self portrait

Busted car

Me and Dave contemplate what to do to our busted car. It´s probably the alternater

Driving onto the Salt Flats!

Air Time!

An overland truck drives past

The view from Isla Incahuasi

Same view

Reflections

Fine dining on the salt flats

Cactus on Isla Incahuasi

Ninjaaaaaiii

Just as the sun went down

Our jeep at sunset

Sunset over the Salar de Uyuni. Can't wait to play with these in PS

Catching our bus to Potosi from Uyuni

Halfway point between Uyuni and Potosi. A very small percentage of Bolivian roads are paved

Smog, Rain, Cloud, Stars, and PISCO!

Hello everyone.

Before I go on, I just want to share with you a picture I took down in patagonia of the Perito Merino glaciar. It is a pano, and it has been stitched and edited by my good mate Neil Burton (http://neilburton.smugmug.com/ and http://www.neilyb.de/) Huge thanks to you dude!

Stitched from about 8 frames from memory. I'm going to print this one quite big I think

Back to it..It´s been a while since my last update.
Well, not really, but it does seem like it. Net access has been pretty poor lately, mainly due to the short amount of time we´ve spent in each location.

It´s been a pretty busy couple of weeks, and we´ve been to Santiago, Mendoza, back to Santiago, Valparaiso, the Valle de Elqui (brilliant) and are now in a snoozy big town/small city called La Serena on the Chilean coast, waiting for our bus to San Pedro de Atacama tomorrow night at 630pm. So be warned, there´s going to be a lot of text in this post! (again)

I´ll kick off where I left off last - Pucon. As you know, the main attraction was to climb Volcan Villarica, which we successfully completed at the start of the month. The next night, which was the night before our departure from Pucon, we decided to visit one of the local beaches, situated on a lake just next to town. Apparently they are famous for their "black sand", due to being located right next the active volcanoes in the region. We saw about an inch worth of black sand right next to the water. The rest of the beach was gravel.
Dodgy marketing.
Fran went back into town to spend some time doing something else, and I decided to watch the sunset over the lake. I wasn´t disappointed. It was beautiful:



The next day, we caught a bus to Santiago to spend a few days. This was to be the first of two trips to the city. To be honest, we didn´t spend much tme looking around the city, even though we´d wanted to. So many people had said that Santiago wasn´t really that interesting, but in the time we were there, we had a great time. The hostel we stayed at was brilliant. The guys that worked there were super nice. One guy has a band.. "Ciudad Satellite". Their videos on Youtube are pretty good: H2O and Peligro de Gol.. Their lead singer/guitarist "Tonino" was a really chilled out bloke, who was completely left field. Getting a bit drunk one night at a barbeque, he started going on about how he "believed in the moon", and he was so psyched it was a full moon because it gave off so much femine energy. He went on and on about so much new-age hippy crap, but he was so positive and so friendly, it was hard not to do anything but laugh with him and be happy. He got into a friendly argument with a pommie bloke at our hostel named Simon, who started his own tirade about Israeli space-lizards. Seriously, if I have time, remind me to tell you guys the story whenever I see you. We´ve even got video of one of their discussions. Tonino also told us about how he met Zac de la Roca during RATM´s split when Zac visited Chile - and how Zac went over to Tonino´s place for a bbq. Pretty cool.
The other guy at the hostel, Sebastian, was VERY chilled out. One night, after going out for Fran´s birthday with a dutch couple we met, we caught a cab back to the hostel and the Dutchies entered first. As they entered, they both exclaimed "wow, that smells good". Expecting the scent of a bbq, Fran and I were amused to smell the overwhelming and unmistakable aroma of Mary Jane wafting through the hostel. Sebastian emerged through a cloud, grinning from ear to ear.

Anyway, back to Santiago. Unfortunately, we spent a lot of time in hospitals getting stuff sorted (long story - I won´t bore you, and yes, everything´s fine), so we didn´t get too much time to see the place thoroughly. But what we did see we loved. There is a view point on the edge of the CBD that gives a good overview of the city. Unfortunately, Santiago suffers from a huge smog problem, and the visibility is really poor





There´s a giant statue of Mary (not Jane) up on that hill, and also, as my mum puts it: "an ABC" - another bloody church.



Santiago is a modern city, with a cosmopolitan feel, a decent size financial district, and a good metro system, which will be expanding over the next couple of years. One lunch time, Fran and I had the nicest sushi I´ve ever tasted, at a place that was giving a 50% discount. A full meal, plus drinks and a tip cost us 10,000 pesos; approximately 11 squids. Not bad for "the most expensive country in South America". You just gotta look for the bargains.. isn´t that right, DC Carver?



Santiago's Metro is clean efficient and safe

Once all the admin stuff was done, we hightailed it back to Argentina to see Mendoza, which, like Santiago, is situated at the start of the section of the Andes that gets really big. The highest peak on the hemisphere (in fact, outside of Asia´s behemoth ranges, the highest peak in the world), Aconcagua, is just a four hour drive away. But we arrived to really shitty weather: thick cloud and rain. We were there for a few days, with plans to do horse-riding, and sample some of the regions wines; Mendoza is a main wine-producing region in Argie. The horse-riding was out of the question, but we did do a wine tour. Got the priorites right, eh?
The tour was basically a self-drive to various wineries outside of Mendoza, around a very run down town called Maipú. We´d heard Maipú was pretty rough, and it was. But it was nice to see something that wasn´t so clean and touristy.
Oh - I must clarify at this point, that the "self-drive" thing, is actually a "self-cycle". You rent bicycles from one of many bike shops in the area, and cycle from winery to winery getting more and more sloshed along the way, as you try and stay away from the deteriorating road where crazy Argies speed past you. Exciting stuff.
The weather was poor, but we had great company in the form of an Irish girl we met in Pucon - Aileen. She was a good laugh, and could talk for Ireland. If you´re reading this Aileen - thanks for the company! We might see you up in Salta in a short while if you´re still there.
Anyway, we cycled to a few wineries and hoped for a quick tour of each place before starting on the wines. I managed to find a white wine I could grow very fond of. Trapiche´s "Torrentes". I hear it is available in Australia. If you find it, give it a go. Very sweet, and typically South American. By the time we got to our last location (a chocolate factory!), we were well on our way to being slightly merry.
The weather didn´t play nice that day. One tour lady said that it was highly unusual for Mendoza as they get "300 days of sunshine per year, and hardly any rain".. Balls.

We stayed at "hostel Lao" so named because the owner wanted a relaxing place just like Buddhist Laos.





Fran got a bit greedy



Road Hogs. Mine's yellow, obviously.. Because yellow´s faster.

Aileen cycling "happily"



The night bus back to Mendoza. We found out later it's pretty dangerous. And there´s me snapping away with the 5D + 24-105 L!

We did pimp it up a bit when we had lunch at a delicatessan Jamie and Lex recommended to us. Damn pricey, but worth every penny. Super tasty food.

Ahh the life of a backpacker!

Speaking of Jamie and Lex, we managed to organise a meet up with them as we were both in Mendoza at the same time. We met at an all-you-can-eat place that another friend we´d met previously had recommended (Tom, if you´re reading this - thanks for the tip for the restaurant, but what were you thinking with the "I could live in Mendoza" thing?!). It was awesome to see them and guys, we will miss you! I hope your last week in SA has been brilliant and that you managed to get up to Iguazu. Enjoy Canada!

Anyway, maybe it was the weather, but we weren´t so enamoured by Mendoza. We´d heard such great things about it, but the city was pretty dull. Maybe in better weather it has a nicer shine.

So from there, we made our way back to Santiago for a day for two reasons. One, since we´d not managed to see what we´d wanted to see previously, we thought we should give the place a day or so (we arrived at 5am and left at 11pm), and two, for the past week I´d been in touch with Canon in Chile to get an A/C charger for my 5D and 40D so I could use it in our upcoming trip to the Elqui Valley. More on that later.
The second visit to Santiago was great. It is a really nice city, full of life and it has a great buzz, yet manages to retain a nice laid-back attitude. Though saying that, we did stumble across an interesting scene where the police had set up a blockade in a pedestrian mall, and had arrested a group of women who had stormed some apartments protesting against some socialist government policy.











As dusk settled, we took a walk to the main square downtown, and there we stumbled across a large bunch of guys playing chess. It was great standing there watching, and everyone was so good natured. I was so tempted to sit down and play someone, but we were running late for our bus and had to leave.









From there we took a short bus ride to the coastal city of Valparaiso. Valparaiso is an old port-city that made a fortune back in the day shipping minerals from the vast Atacama desert up north around the Tierra del Fuego to European markets. Once the Panama canal opened however, "Valpo" as it´s known lost a lot of business, and became a run-down city, a shell of it´s former self. However, what it lost in wealth, it gained in charm, and the city is ringed with colourful houses that adorn the hill-sides, and access to the top of the bigger hills is via funicular.

















One of the best parts of Valpo was the fruit and vegetable market in downtown. The place was alive and kicking and Fran and I tried a bit of street food in the form of a local hot dog made of God-only-knows-what. Horrid, but hey, you gotta give it a go!











We were there just for one day before catching another bus to the Valle de Elqui, and a little hotel called "Elqui Domos" (google this name.. it´s worth a look).
Situated outside one of the nicest towns we´ve been to, Pisco Elqui, Elqui Domos is basically a group of high-end tents that open up to reveal one of the most impressive star displays in the world. It´s such a well kept secret. Hardly anyone we´ve spoken to has heard of the region, let alone the hotel.
The skies above the Elqui Vally are some of the clearest on earth (situated right underneath the Atacama desert - itself the earth´s driest desert - no recorded rainfall since the Spanish settled the place!), and many many Observatories are based here. Thanks very much to Fran´s father, Richard for finding out about the place and recommending it!
We were there for two nights, and it was worth every expensive penny. It was here that I put my new A/C charger to use, attempting to capture star trails over exposures from 15 minutes to 2 hours.





Please don´t take too much from these pics just yet. They need a lot of work in Raw, to fix white balance, colour and composition, but for now, they will do. There was no decent forefround interest so I had to make do with what I had.

The hotel was absolutely amazing and it was brilliant to be off the "Gringo Trail" for a short while. It was here I learnt that the Elqui Valley is a region of the world with the highest concentration of electromagnetism, which has drawn mystics, hippies, and religious leaders like the lamas to the area. I also leared about a neat trick the Incas had, where they´d make a circular hole in the ground (not deep), bottom it with dark volcanic sand, and top it with water. When the water was still, they´d mark the positions of the stars, and over time, use it as a calendar - they´d know when to plant or harvest certain types of crops from it´s use.
The nearest town, Pisco Elqui, was super nice and laid back. It felt like the real "South America" we had come to see. Obviously, the "Elqui" part of it´s name is derived from the valley in which it resides, which runs ravine-like from a couple of villages outside of Pisco Elqui to the larger town of Vicuña further down. The "Pisco" was added last century to counter Peru´s claim of trademarking the name; Pisco being a famous drink in these parts (Pisco Sour - a damn fine drink with one hell of a kick).
On the way into town, the bus driver honked at everyone and they all waved and smiled at him. Obviously, community means something here. It was so refreshing to see people behave like that, instead of scowling at each other like in London. When we left Pisco, the bus driver stopped at another town square, got out, left the keys in the ignition and the engine running, and sat down at the fountain having a chat to a local. How nice and trusting is that?













Once we´d checked out of our hotel, and were waiting for a bus to Vicuña, a man and his family in a pick up truck offered us a lift into Pisco Elqui. At that moment, we felt like real backpackers - travelling the roads with the locals!









Once we arrived in Vicuña, we searched for a place to stay and stumbled on a family-run hostel a few minutes from the bus station. After the luxury of Elqui Domos, it was quite a come-down, but the place was clean, had hot showers with excellent water pressure, and was fairly central (though the latter point isn´t too difficult to achieve in a town as small as Vicuña).
We had booked a tour to go to a local observatory to see a working astrophysics lab, and get a chance to look through their huge 30cm and 60cm telescopes. But when we arrived at the tour pick-up point, the lead scientist (a bearded French bloke with the smallest face ever) told us "sorry, not today, bad weather".. Having just looked at the stars in a very clear sky not moments before, I was skeptical. But he was the scientist, and we assumed he knew what he was talking about.
Vicuña itself was otherwise rather dull. We went to dinner where I ordered what sounded like a gem of a meal: steak topped with two fried eggs and a plate of chips.
To cut a long story short, the patatas fritas were the best part of the meal, and they were horrific.

So this morning we caught a bus to La Serena, where we were hoping for a connection tonight to San Pedro. Unfortunately the bus is tomorrow night, so we are chilling out here for the night. Yay, that means net time!!
Which leads me to apologise to all my friends for being slack over the past couple of weeks with emails. I will reply to you all as soon as possible.

Anyway, I believe we´ve just past the 1/3 mark as well, so there´s a landmark!
The plan for the immediate future is to get to San Pedro, check it out, then head back to Argie for one last hoorah around the Salta region (between 7-10 days I think). Then back to San Pedro for the 3 day trip to Uyuni in Bolivia. We are running quite a bit behind schedule, but we´ve plans to fix that I think!

Gotta go (and reply to mails!)

Much love everyone, and I hope you are all doing well.
Adam