Man, it was completely stellar. A righteous good time. I absolutely recommend the trip to anyone in the vague area, and the company we went with - Pamela Tours - was basically without fault. Our driver Orlando didn't speak any English (unless he was amusing himself with a very cunning prank) but he was helpful and courteous and a fine driver. Not that I'd know. The food and the accommodation was better than I was expecting (the toilets were awful) and I enjoyed both thoroughly. No breakdowns and no food poisoning, which so far as I can tell puts it in at least the top 5% of all tours run across the flats.
The first day wasn't all that salt-themed to be honest. We headed off in a minibus around eight in the morning and after an hour or so arrived at the Bolivian border. This first hour involved a reasonable ascent and I drank a great deal of water so as to ensure I would not grow dehydrated at altitude. I thought myself very sensible at the time, but combined with the diuretic effect of Diamox I was absolutely desperate for a wee by the time we hit the border. ¨Thank god,¨ I thought when we arrived, ¨a border crossing, a fine place to go to the toilet.¨ I didn't consider the fact that the Bolivian border crossing would probably be a little bit less schmicko than the Chilean and Argentine crossings with their fancy pants ¨x-ray machines¨ and ¨security¨ and ¨toilets.¨ It was basically just a tiny brick hut. They didn't seem to give a damn what you brought into the country, in fact the only reason they seemed to exist was so that you could get a stamp on your passport and thus be permitted to reenter Chile.
Long story short I was forced to search frantically around the DESERT for a place to relieve my torment. The only thing I could see was a sort of deserted looking tiny brick hut. ¨Could I go behind that do you think?¨ I asked my travel companions. ¨It's a HOUSE,¨ they said, looking at me in disgust. Eventually I found a mound that provided enough decency to stop me getting shot for public exposure but not enough to hide me from the numerous jeeps that lumbered past, faces glued to the windows (I probably made that last bit up).
Anyway this is supposed to be a story about the salt flats, not my bladder. Sooooooo we transferred into a Jeep with our travelling companions, Jen and Trin from Canada and Stephanie and Oliver from France. PS Did I mention that I love the desert? It is so beautiful. Actually the first few moments in Bolivia were not overly beautiful. I kept thinking of Moriarty´s ¨I don´t think you should go to Bolivia Caroline, it looks really bad in Quantum of Solace.¨ You were right Moriarty!... BUT NOT FOR LONG. Soon the landscape became all wonderful and red and terracotta coloured and the sky was enormous and blue and the mountains were striped with glorious golden shades. We saw some pretty great things. Lagoons that were named for their colours, like the Laguna Verde and the Laguna Blanco. We had heard that you couldn't tell the difference but I guess we got lucky because we could! The coolest was the red lagoon, which was all full of flamingos and surrounded by big old llamas with pompoms on their head, the ridiculous sweet things.
We saw one of the rock deserts that had inspired Salvador Dali, though only from a distance. It was sort of cool but not really that interesting. We saw geysers! Not the shooting hot water in the air type, but the bubbling hotpots of sulfuric water and mud. Vaguely cool although I was sort of worried at this point because my middle finger was turning yellow. It was cold outside.
It was a cruisy day. We arrived at the hotel (NOT ACTUALLY A HOTEL be warned, but less primitive than I had expected. EXCEPT THE TOILETS) really early. So we had lunch and I had a little read and a little chillout sess and then it was time... for afternoon tea! Man do I love afternoon tea, I drank tea and ate galletitas (little biscuits) and it was great. Just when we'd decided we were done with afternoon tea and were thinking about whipping out a deck of cards, they bought out dinner. Sheesh! They gave us some pretty great vegetable soup and bread. Luckily I wasn't souper (oh ho ho) hungry after the whole afternoon tea thing, because dinner was a platter of fried chicken, potato fries and fried banana. When we talked to the other group that went with our company they said that they only got the chicken and chips. Jen and Trin suspect the cook picked up a bunch of bananas that they left on the table after lunch and decided to roll with it. Oh well.
By this stage we were exhausted. It was about 8:30. Oh well, again. We went to bed. But not without... sleepover chitchat! Turns out we got on like a house on fire with our new Canadian friends Jen and Trin so there was much post-lights-out giggling. Also once we had gone to bed and the lights were out and we were all comfortable dozing off Orlando popped his head into the room and happily announced ¨Hola, amigos!¨ which was extremely funny for some reason. He just wanted to tell us what time breakfast was in the morning.
Whooooooooo are we ready to hear about DAY TWO on the salt flats? The first stop was SALVADOR DALI'S DESERT. Well one of them. We saw the big upside down triangle rock! I wanted to have a good old stare at it, but it was surrounded by other people doing the salt flats tour who felt the acute need to be photographed in front of the damn rock. Eventually I got a good look though and some sexy photos. I wasn't in them.
Then we saw what we thought was a salt lake! It wasn't salt, though. It was Borax. Or Ajax, as Jen seemed to think. The wackiest thing ever is that, even though the sun was shining and it was a glorious day in the old Bolivian desert, the lake was coated in ice. Do you know how cold it had been the previous night? I don't either, but it was somewhere between -10 and -20.C. Frosty as all heck! The Canadians were unperturbed but I was going to bed in my thermals and jumpers (chompas) and socks and hat and all that business.
We stopped for lunch by another salty or boraxy or whatever it was lake, this one covered in flamingos again, and had a nice old time eating pasta salad and watching the same people who insisted on clambering all over Dali´s desert now chase flamingos so as to capture photos of them in flight. Which, I feel bound to point out, Lonely Planet says is an ¨Environmental No-No.¨ After lunch we saw a volcano! It didn´t really look like a volcano so much as a mountain having a smoke. Still kind of cool. It was also cool when Orlando pointed out that the rocks we were standing on were in fact hardened lava.
Thennnnnn we hit the salt lakes! Well, the beginning of them. The best was yet to come. We drove on them for a while until we hit the salt hotel which actually was kind of a salt hotel. Well, it still wasn´t a hotel but it was super salty! The walls were made of salt, and the tables and chairs and beds, though not the mattresses. I was excited to see that they had a picture of Evo Morales in one of his trademark chompas (attn MAGDA and TOM, "chompa" is the Bolivian word for "jumper!") on the wall. It wasn't made of salt.
By this stage we had come down by a cool 2000m or so and altitude sickness was vanquished, it seemed. We ate some more vegetable soup and read books and drank cups of herbal tea and it was lovely. (I was reading a wonderful book called 'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck that Jen and Trin gave us. I finished it a couple of days ago. It is a magnificent achievement and I recommend it to all.) Ooooooh and the hostel and the little town surrounding it was full of cacti, which I thought was pretty cool... AT THE TIME. I love cacti.
The next morning we had to get up SOOOOOO EARLY! Well, we left at six or so. That is early, yes. That is because we were to watch the sun rise over the salt flats. "Big flipping deal," I thought grumpily. I sort of changed my mind once we started driving across 200 square kilometres of salt, though. We drove on a little more and ate breakfast by the cactus island. Which is just an island of cacti. If this doesn't sound awesome to you then you are obviously crazy.
I can't really tell you how great the salt flats were. The colours and the expansiveness and the patterns in the salt and such. So here are three of my favourite pictures from Ro's camera (mine had lost its battery by then), on the extreme offchance that you have failed to see them on Facebook by now. You can click to enlarge.
Ro on salt.
Me on salt.
Team Robolion reenacting the Beautiful Ladies hombre on salt.
That'll do, piglets.
Love love love
Lion
Yikes, who knew James Bond was lying to me!
ReplyDeleteAnd I've also found out since then that the building used for "evil villain's Bolivian lair" in Quantum is actually an astronomers' hotel, filled with a global community of peaceful scientists. All signs point to Bolivia = way cool!