Bolivian Border to Uyuni

Sunday 17 - Thursday 21 April 2011

First thing Sunday morning we grabbed a taxi to the bus station, who decided to take us the long way there, costing us extra and making for a grumpy start to the day! The bus left at around 5:30 bound for La Quiaca, on the Bolivian border. We arrived around 2pm in the afternoon, which, due to time differences, was only 1pm in Bolivia. We started the trek to the border crossing, meeting up with Josie & Luke in the process. The border crossing was fairly painless, with Lawrie sticking to his ¨No Entiendo¨ method of crossing.

We walked up to the bus station, spending some time searching for an ATM to get Bolivianos before getting our first taste (eww) of Bolivian bathrooms near the bus station. The chicken bus cost us around 15Bs (just over $2) each and took around 3hours to reach Tupiza, along a bumpy dirt road.

Arriving in Tupiza, we started the search for a tour company to do the loop up to Uyuni, starting at the hostel where Josie & Luke were staying and finishing up along the road where our friend Andy had just booked. We decided to go with the same company so we had a group of 8 (Andy, Rob, Tim, Mark, Josie, Luke + us), two 80 series cruisers and four days to travel together to Uyuni. We finished the night with a massive feast at a vegetarian place, as we were starving from missing lunch.

Monday we left early, after a quick stop at the markets to get some sun glasses (just over $3) and gloves and started our 4wd adventure. Our trip headed past a few small towns before we steadily climbed through mountains, taking in some amazing vistas. It was a very long day, arriving to our refugio (located in a small town) around 8pm. The food was excellent and the veggie soup did a good job of warming us up! We layered up the thermals, put all the blankets (6 total) onto one bed and spent the first cold night squished in a single bed.

The two 4WDs loaded up for the trip

The first of many sweet looking mountains.

Looking down into the valley.

Cacti with a great view.

Llama!

We continued to climb up into the mountains.

Cute little Llama.

Vegetation gave way to plains studded with mountains.

Town wall where we stopped for a stretch.

Climbing still, temperature dropping rapidly!

Ruins of an old mining Spanish mining town.

Targets...

Ammunition.

Spectacular colours.

The snow capped peaks became more frequent

Sunset at altitude.

JAWA

Tuesday we headed off early (again) to get to Laguna Verde, to see the colour change. The water level has dropped so much since Kitty was last here, that you cannot see the full reflection of Volcano Licancabur in the water before the colour change. It was still awesome to see the lake change colour! Next up was the thermal pools, where we had a swim/shower before a very tasty lunch. We continued across the Desert of Dali, with weird rock formations before reaching around 5000m at the Gyser field. After a brief stop we made our way to Laguna Colorada, getting the best rooms in the refugio before checking out the lake, flamingos, volcanoes and dead lama smoking a cigarette.

Laguna Verde

Hot Springs

Frozen algae.

Ice skating.

Laguna Colorada

Another 'lake with mountain in background' shot

The night was quite cold but we spent some time outside playing hackey sack & inside playing card games. Accoring to the iPod, the (full) moon was meant to rise around 6:18pm, but didn´t make it until half way through dinner! The refugio was around 4600m high, meaning another cold night!

Wednesday we started on our way to Uyuni, passing many lakes and volcanoes before heading through the Valle de Rocas (due to the salt flats being flooded). We made a stop at the train graveyard, where the steam trains which used to run to Chile now lie. We arrived in Uyuni with enough time to explore the town, sort out buses, washing and to get some much needed gloves! Our hostel had three showers: one cold, one zappy and one nice...thankfully a fellow traveller passed on this information, however Kitty still got the cold one!

Valle de las Rocas

Some amazing shapes

Lawrie the (dead train) engineer

Trapped!

Thursday morning we left before sunrise so that we could make it to the salt hotel (now a museum) on the salar for sunrise. Whilst there were heaps of people here, we enjoyed the sunrise and got some cool group action shots. After breakfast in the hotel we headed out to our own patch of salt to partake in the shooting of many weird perspective shots! Luckily for us our guides had some great props, see below!

Flags at the Salt Hotel

Sunrise

Hanging around at the Salt Hotel

Mountain in the background

Dinosaur attack!

Looove perspective shots

Watch our for Kitzilla!

Getting revenge on the dinosaur...

Salt love hole

Trucks for mining salt...

...so Lawrie can snort it

We finished up around lunchtime and had lunch before burning DVDs of our photos, relaxing with a few beers & chatting before a quick pizza dinner and then a mad dash to our bus, bound for Potosi.