Southwest Bolivia and dash for the Chilean border

Kara says:

We've made it to Chile and have bedded down for a few days on the coast so i can reflect on the beauty of southwest Bolivia from the safety of a bed, the Champions League final (Man U currently 1-0 down and Karl yelling at the TV), beer and Pringles as flashbacks of the intense cold gradually lessen.

We did a 4-wheel drive tour across the southwest part of Bolivia to the Chilean border. There's not alot there. One day we drove through salt flats all day, the next day and a half through desert. The oddest thing was to see the occasional local bus passing by because people (CRAZY PEOPLE) actually live out there in the middle of nowhere.

Photo of Karl fulfilling his dream to be a steam engine driver at a "train cemetary" near Uyuni (freeeeezing town in the middle of nowhere). When steam trains were replaced (in the 70s!) they couldn't agree on what to do with the old ones (or who owned the rights to the scrap metal) so they built some tracks into the desert, drove the trains there and left them.

Photo of our 4-wheel drive on the salt flats near salt mining (little piles of salt). Only the most desperate of the desperate work at salt mining, there's so little money in it the Bolivian government actually give salt miners money! Given that they only recently started to give pensioners money - the grand sum of 200 bolivianos a month, about $40 aussie - this shows what a bad job salt mining is. Any Bolivian citizen can mine salt without having to pay a penny to anyone, they pile it up to dry (if it manages to avoid being trampled on by idiot tourists posing for photographs) and then transport it in trucks to salt packaging plants. Unfortunately Bolivia imports expensive sea salt which doesn't help the market price for the local stuff.

Photo of a village in the salt flats near the mining. Old truck, dusty streets, little houses of adobe bricks and thatch. They're pretty typical of rural houses all over Bolivia but mostly they have tin/galvanised roofs now instead of thatch.

Photos of us on the salt flats. Salty (Karl tasted to make sure) and flat. They formed when the ocean was pushed up with the mountains gizillions of years ago to form a saltwater lake that gradually evaporated leaving only the salt behind. There are lakes in the area that are still evaporating and have salt floating around the edge looking like ice (there's ice too 'cause it's freeeeeeezing), see photo of Karl and lake. Haven't gotten a good answer/googled the reason for the hexagonal patterns in the salt yet - feel free to educate me if you know.

Then photos of an island with lots of cacti in the middle of the salt. When there was a lake here it was actually a coral reef. The cacti grow at a rate of 1cm per year so most of these are really really old. There's a 12m high one (ie 1200 years old!, I was impressed). Spot Karl doing a cactus impression. He too is quite old now. Also photo of the "seat of stone" on the island which i thought was very Craggy Island.

Then through the desert. It might be the highest, or driest, or second highest and/or driest desert in the world. The facts were too much to bear in the thin air. The mountains have beautiful marbled colours of white, red, yellow, green depending on the minerals present but the photos just don't capture it. It's dry, it's dusty, it's freeeeeeeezing and it's very high at 5000m. That's now the highest we've been and high enough for me for possibly the rest of my life. There's lots of old volcanoes and even one that was smoking - see photo.

Other photos - some big green alien droppings, REAL 4-wheel driving, 4-wheel drive tracks in the desert, and a herd (?) of vincuna I think - like llamas but not. They somehow find the odd wisp of grass to eat which is enough for them to survive on.

We visited a geyser field, also at 5000m, also absolutely freeeeeeeeeeezing, but we did get to walk all over it unimpeded by any pesky "danger" signs or fenced off areas. Sure a little bit of boiling, volcanic mud never hurt anyone. There's Karl's genie impression jumping through a geyser (they don't let you do that in New Zealand!), he still smells a little sulphury. Me warming myself in the geyser steam which seems like a great idea 'til you realise it's wet and just makes you colder afterwards (and the hypoxia means that this takes quite a while to dawn on you). And a photo of Karl enjoying the hot springs - finally something hot, very exciting, bits that had been numb for days came back to life.

And then we crossed the border and arrived in civilised Chile. Then we came down to sea level where there's sea, and warmth and oxygen (I only need to breathe once every 5 minutes now) and are resting and recovering from sniffles and sneezes.



















































































































































Karl says:
Last minute additions! Every blog should have a least one flamingo! Also a picture of sunrise at the boiling pools of oozy gloop.