This entry covers 25 to 27 November
25 November
I started wondering whether luck is one of those untouchables that you can get good at if you practice enough. Following a 13 hour gyrating bus ride through nowhere requiring 2 sets of no shows in order to make it all the way to Uyuni, we had somehow arrived shaken but not stirred. Bumped into Jonas who I met in La Paz as we climbed off the bus and the 3 of us headed straight for one of the countless agencies in this one horse town to see if we could squeeze onto a 3 day tour of the flats...you guessed it, 3 spots left so we coughed up the cash and decided to celebrate the fact that we'd successfully saved ourselves at least 1 day in this "race around the world" with a shower and full breakfast.
Like sardines, 7 tourists and the driver shifted hips until the Land Cruiser's doors could close and we were off (Theresa, Jonas, Geoff, Sian, Janick and Fanny).
First up was the 80 year old railway cemetry in the desert...felt a bit like the elephant's cemetry in the Lion King without the jibbering laughter of the hyena's! A couple of photo's of us clambering the sizzling iron skeleton and we were off to a tumble weed village (if you could call it a village) where salt is refined from the surrounding salt flats. We only got half the story (in Spanish) as half way through seperation and sedimentation the tour guide collapsed in an epileptic fit. Needless to say, Team Cruiser decided to give up salt for lent! Without further a dew the Cruiser was careering through vast white nothingness to what was believed to be a museum made exclusively from salt...we were not dissapointed! This place was amazing. Everything from tables and chairs to grandfather clocks and bed bases were all sculpted out of salt. After a solid team lick of the dining room table we departed intrigued and thirsty!
The next spot was truely spectacular in its absurdness and contrast...hundreds and thousands of years ago Fish Mountain (what a shait tourist name!) was one of many islands in the middle of a lake and many millenia before that a lump of coral at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Picture the scene....3600m above sea level in the middle of the vast expanse of salt flats, an island of ancient coral covered in cacti whose seeds germinated around the birth of Jesus...After a dodgy lunch Team Cruiser headed onto the flats to take the much spoken about photos without perspective. It turned out to be a lot trickier than anticipated as the distances between the camera, object in the fore and background needs to be juuuust right. After about an hour messing about, we high 5'd and squashed back into the Cruiser.
Despite the many hundreds of kilometers travelled and the claustrophobic conditions, the uniqueness of the landscape made it a breeze and pulling up to the salty hotel there was an apparent air of revelry amongst the crew. After dumping our backpacks on the beds we made tracks for the nearest bottle store and picked up some local rum and coke. I'm not quite sure whether to blame the altitude, the rum or the fact that we were in one of the most remoat places on the planet but the post dinner conversation would have made hippies proud...vague recollection of topics included questioning Chile's rude kidnapping of the moon to green flamingoes in the desert...
26 November
Day 2 was the longest in the Cruiser. We all had a turn to play DJ in the front seat next to our mute tour guide. I decided to give the crew a taste of South African music which ranged from Johnny Clegg to Dozi (which the Dutch speakers appreciated!). This entertainment was nothing compared to the mind blowing scenery we were being treated to…the infamous lagunas nestled amongst towering volcanoes which splurged ancient rivers of red iron deposits over Mars like landscapes. In a similar fashion to the Dakar Rally we powered our way through the beautiful desert which had been peppered by gigantic meteors from eruptions from another era…We made pit stops at each of the green, red and blue lagoons, home to huge flocks of flamingos and other birdlife all at over 3000m above sea level…no words nor photographs can do this truly spectacular place justice!
We reached our final hostel thirsty and we proceeded to get absolutely smoked playing speed and shithead in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
27 November
Our 4am start was seriously messy…I couldn’t find my passport and once we finally got going, we ended up leaving Jonas behind! Dazed, confused and feeling severely hungover we lurched and blinked at powerful sulphuric geysers and then found ourselves flopping around half naked in steaming hot springs…a cure for nausea although highly inaccessible!
The rest of the morning was spent searching for the illusive Bolivian border post where a bus was supposed to be waiting to take us into the town of San Pedro de Atacama. 2 hours later and 45 team photos later and the bus finally made its appearance between the dunes. Tiredness turned to delirious giggling as Jonas, Theresa and I giggling in a 3 way spoon position until we reached border control. We finally reached San Pedro de Atacama around midday and headed straight for the bus station to see if we could book a ticket to La Serena as part of our mission to reach Mendoza in Argentina as soon a humanly possible. We got lucky and secured 3 seats leaving at 19:30 leaving us a couple hours to explore this Wild West town in the north of Chile. The grid like gravel streets lay between beautifully clean Spanish architecture although there was an obvious tourist flavour with numerous agencies, pizza dens and markets selling local bits and pieces. We smashed a pizza and decided to take some time out watching soccer in the shade of a pavilion for the afternoon. The searing heat lured me to take the plunge and explore my theatrical skills in requesting an ice cream…this turned out to be quite an entertaining experience as acting chilly didn’t suffice so I had to resort to licking an imaginary ice cream…you can only imagine the responses I received instead of receiving the desired ice cream!
The loose trio made tracks for the bus station well in time for our departure only to discover the bus we thought was heading south was actually due north. We scrambled around the corner to the front desk where we informed that our bus had left 45 minutes earlier…we checked our tickets and rechecked the time before glancing up at the clerk who smugly smiled at us while pointing at the clock on the wall…a 1 hour change in time zones had screwed us and had been left stranded in this one horse town. A weird sensation flooded our exhausted backpacking brains…pissed off but pretty chilled that our “Race Around the World” had amazingly encountered its first glitch. As quickly as tossing a overripe apple, we promptly booked the next bus leaving at 14.15 the next day and crashed into the nearest hostel we could find. The trio started plotting the next phase of the trip…hiring a car from La Serena over the Andes and into the wine lands of Mendoza, Argentina.
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