Into Bolivia

Hello and happy new year, I hope everyone had a good one?

I'm in Potosi at the moment after crossing the salt flats over the past few days, it was really amazing, but I'll catch up on the few days before first...

So in La Serena, on the last day there we went on a tour of the Elqui valley. This was a gentle day of driving round lots of villages, vineyards and pisco factories. It was a nice day, we went on a tour of a pisco factory (the process was pretty similar to the vineyard tour we did a few days earlier) and we got to try some pisco - it's pretty foul stuff, but then I don't like rum or whisky and it's similar to them so it's not surprising really, we had to try some, the first ohe was clear and 65% alcohol - urgh! I took the tiniest sip, it was foul! The other stuff was brown and less alcoholic. People said they liked that, I thouht it was all nasty. But it was good to visit. The rest of the valley was vineyards. All the greenery around there was done by irrigation which is impessive considering how muchbis grown round there. We learnt to recognise the different grape plants, if they're to be grown for wine or pisco because the pisco grapes need to be left longer on the vine to get sweeter and grow up to the sun more, forming a carpet-like effect, whereas wine vines look like usual vines.

After the tour we had to catch the night bus to San Pedro de Atacama. This was a 19 hour trip on all so we got there around 5 the next afternoon. I really liked San Pedro, there was loads to do and lots of shops to look at. We only really had one full day there which was a shame, but we managed to do plenty. In the morning we hired mountain biked and cycled to some local ruins and climbed them. You really felt the altitude there, I think we were at about 2800m. At first I thought I was fine, but that was before I did any exercise, you get out of breath so much quicker and your pulse races! But it was fine. We spent quite a while climbing the ruins and didn't leave all that much time to cycle further down the river and go to other ruins, which was a shame, and why it would have been nicer to stay for an extra day.

In the afternoon, we went sandboarding, this was great fun!! We had no instruction on how to do it, just walk upvthe sand dune, strap your board on and go for it! It was like snowboarding but on sand. I was surprised how well I managed actually as I didn't fall down much and headed up to the bigger, steeper sand dune really quickly. The only downside was having to treck back up to the top of the sand dune each time, especially at that altitude, but I really enjoyed it! After sandboarding we drove to the valley if the moon, so named because people think it looks like craters on the moon. We climbed up a rock to watch the sunset. The sunset was nice and the colour of the mountains when the sun had set was lovely. Also, there was a full moon that night which looked lovely over the valley.

The next day (30 dec) we crossed the border onto Bolivia. It was about a couple of hours drive away from San Pedro and at the border we were picked up by the 4x4s that would be driving us around for thenext few days. The border crossing was at about 4400m and we drove up to about 5000 at some point during the day. The scenery was really beautiful, we saw lots of different coloured lakes. The first was lago blanco that had a few flamingos on it, then we headed onto lago verde that was green because of the minerals and arsenic from the volcano next to it. Then we headed to the Salvador Dali desert and took some surreal pictures there which was fun. It's called that because it looks like the deserts he uses in some of his paintings.

After that we headed to the hot springs for lunch and to go in them. I just dipped my feet in which was nice. Then we headed off to some geysers caused by the volcanos and then to the ted lake which was really pretty, the water was red, but there were white strips of land around it caused by salt and the effect was really beautiful. Our hostel was really close from there so we headed there. The altitude was still really high and I had a huge headache from the altitude so we just had tea and headed straight to bed.

The next day I woke up without my headache which I was really grateful for and we headed off to see the stone tree (a rock that looks like a tree), then we saw a little rodent critter that was a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel. He was sitting happily on a rock quite close to us not bothered by us. I've forgotten what it's proper name is! We had lunch at a lake with lots of flamingos on it, but unfortunately, most of the flamingos were on the other side of the lake so we didn't see that many of them! Then we drove and saw a live volcano in the distance puffing away and then we headed to the salt hotel which was cool. I was glad to be out of the jeep by then, it was a long day driving and the roads were really bumpy (probably because there are hardly any roads and you're just driving over dirt!)

so that night was new years eve. We had stopped off at this tiny town called San Jose I think, it was in the middle of nowhere!! We pretty much cleared out the fridge of beer! New years was fun, it started off quite slowly, but then this group of argentinians staying at the hotel got out a guitar and we had a bit of a singsong, finishing with a pretty good version of bohemian rhapsody! There were some other local people there initiating some games that some of us joined in even though we didn't understand what was being said but it was funny! At midnight we got some fireworks and had those. We had sparklers and got sine good pictures if us spelling out 2010 with them.

New years day we were allowed a bit if a lie in before heading onto the salt flats. They are pretty amazing! Over 12000sq km of salt! We started off driving over a bit that still had water on it, only a couple of inches so we could get out and take some pictures. Then we headed onto the salt flats and took lots and lots of perspective shots! We had lunch on a coral island in the middle of the salt flats (made when there was still a sea there) and had a bit more time for a few last pictures before driving to Uyuni where we stayed for the night.

There isn't too much in Uyuni really, there is a sort of train cemetary where they dumped the old trains when they upgraded, now it's a playground for kids really, we had a climb and took some pictures too. We headed out for pizza that evening, it was the slowest service I think I've ever seen! Took about 2 hours to get our food!

The next day we got a bus to Potosi. It's not that far distance wise, but it's quite hilly on dirt roads so we couldn't drive fast, it took about 6 hours. I was surprised along the was how many people I saw on the roadside or working in fields, it was in the middle of nowhere with no other vehicles or houses to be seen! The scenery was really fabulous though. We got there around 4.30 )after a slight argument with the bus driver about where the hotel was) and had a bit of time to relax before heading out for dinner. We went to a llama restaurant so I tried my first bit of llama meat, it tasted nice. Then we headed out for a drink or two because it was a guy in the groups birthday.

Today is Sunday and the whole of potosi is pretty much shut down which is a shame as there's not much to see now. We're going on a mine tour this afternoon as this is what this place is famous for, it was really big in the silver mining business in the 17/1800s and was really rich and affluent but then it all went downhill after the rush was over.

I think that's it for now, tomorrow we're heading to sucre which should be really good. Bye for now x