jeep tour

Our last days in San Pedro included swimming in a salt lagoon, pisco watching the sunset, cycling around the desert, and missing the infamous astronomy tour due to bad weather.

On Monday morning we got picked up in a minibus for the beginning of our jeep tour to the Uyuni salt flat
 (Bolivia). Crossing the border was almost a joke it was so informal. I didn´t even have my photo page checked at the Bolivian side. We rose to 5000m altitude within an hour of being in the jeep across the border, and stopped at the White Lagoon, Green Lagoon, and Red Lagoon (their names say it all), as well as taking a dip in a rather toasty thermal spring. The wind was insanely strong due to change of seasons, meaning it was about -8
degrees celsius outside the jeep.

Our hostel on the first night was the most basic thing imaginable, without even running water, ie. no flushing toilets, but our group of 12 bonded over card games of cheat, a bottle of rum for the cold, and in the morning the shared expeience of a bad night's sleep.

Day 2 featured the stone tree, more lagoons, this time not so excitingly coloured, and a notable pitstop for photos of the active volcano Ollague. I hesistantly asked the driver if we were going any closer to the volcano, bearing in mind the very recent eruptions in the South of Chile, to which he replied "no way,it's active!", thank God... The landscape was absolutely amazing though; an eruption had left some incredible wave like formations of lava.

Our second hostel was much more bearable, with a very lovely meal (and running water!), and after a much better rest we spent our final day mostly on the salt flat, Salar de Uyuni.

It was just awesome. Genuinely felt as though we were on another planet. Our guidebook said the salar spanned 9 thousand km squared, but our driver thought it was 12... Either way, ENORMOUS.

We stopped in the middle at the ´fisherman's island´, which was a hill covered in cactai; a rather bizarre sight amongst the miles and miles of flat white salt.

That afternoon our tour concluded in the town of Uyuni, where we said goodbye to Isabelle, Daisy's flatmate for the last 6 months. Emotional. That night we caught a bus to La Paz, arriving at half 7 yesterday morning. Despite some severe exhaustion we managed to do quite a lot, most importantly have a wash.

La Paz is very charming. I've been really surprised at how many women wear the traditional dress of the huge long skirts, tall rounded hat and many shawls - we especially saw a ton of them at the Buenos Aires market today. Yesterday we went to the National Art Museum and ended up meeting the sculpture whose work was being shown in an exhibition there.

Got 2 more nights here (including this one) before we head to Lake Titicaca, where we will hopefully be able to cross over to Peru, despite the prolonged closures...

Until then.. XO