The rest of Chile, and the start of Bolivia

Wow, it`s been the most amazing week-and-a-bit I can remember - full of awesome sights, high altitude, desert, and a massive culture shock! We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile on 5 March after a horrific 17 hour bus trip. San Pedro is a far more awesome place than I thought it would be. It`s a tiny dusty town in the middle of the Atacama desert at an altitude of 2400m. There is nothing around but desert, mountains and volcanoes as far as the eye can see (in all directions). The volcanoes were very much in the distance, but were of interest as the last eruption was last April, and the highest volcano in the area is at an altitude of 6000m.

San Pedro has a square and a main street (made of sand) with tour operators, restaurants and bars. We stayed in fantastic chalets at the far end of the road, where although everything was covered in desert dust and flies, the whole place was so well thought out and was really a nice place to just spend some time. The weather was hot, but it was a dry heat (about 30 degrees Celsius), and the nights were cool but not very cold. The desert is the driest desert in the world, and some areas of the desert have never registered ANY rainfall.



On the second day the altitude affected me a bit (we had come from sea level), but nothing too serious. We did a fantastic day trip to the Valley of the Moon (Valle de Luna), named due to it`s resemblance to the surface of the moon. We first did a general tour of the area, and did a 30 minute walk on a great desert path. We went to the salt mines and walked around the rocks and caves. We then went to the Valley of the Moon where we climbed to the top of the dune to watch the sunset. We could see the whole area and the view was spectacular.

We also visited to the Museo Arquelogico Gustavo le Paige which was a museum about the history of the area, and they had awesome and really well preserved mummies and pottery from Inca times.

Other than that our 3 days there involved a lot of relaxing, reading, eating, and generally just doing very little. We did go to one restaurant worth mentioning that was open air and had a fire going in the middle of the restaurant. So it was really dinner under the stars.

At 7:30am on the 8th we took a short bus to the Chilean and Bolivian borders. Once we`d crossed the Bolivian border we met up with our desert crossing guides - 4 drivers/guides and 2 cooks. We had four 4x4s that took us through the desert and the salt flats of Bolivia over 3 days. Our driver was called Placido, a really fantastic Bolivian guy that smiled for 3 full days. I shared a 4x4 with Juliet, Martin, Jaclyn and Sarah. It was a great group and we had a really good time.

The first 2 days were spent on the 7147 square km wildlife reserve - Reserva de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. We went as high as 5000m on the desert crossing. Altitude is a funny thing. You can do the smallest amount of exercise, even walking, and be completely out of breath. On the first afternoon and evening I felt very nauseous, but thankfully that passed quickly. A couple of people were quite sick. The strangest affect I`ve had from the altitude is that for the first week, my hands and feet had pins and needles almost constantly. Very odd. I took altitude sickness pills which help you acclimatise quicker by creating more red blood cells and therefore help yours body store more oxygen. Juliet has been fine - she strangely felt terrible on the first day in San Pedro (very dizzy), but had no problem at the higher altitude on the desert crossing. She was clever, she started taking the altitude sickness pills ahead of time.

Anyway, enough about altitude and more about the trip itself. We saw some fantastic scenery. It was a very desolate landscape with salt lakes, some red and green due to the organisms on mineral deposits (out of interest the green lakes are green due to the high arsenic content!). There were also many snow capped volcanic peaks in the distance and some wildlife. We saw llamas, vicunas (very much like deer), ostriches, donkeys, flamingos and a fox.

On the first day we stopped for lunch at Laguna Polques which had a natural hot spring pool. We then went to Sol de Manana geysers which are literally boiling pools of mud and sulphur and high pressure jets of steam. The geysers were at 5000m and they absolutely stunk - it was hard to go too near to them.



On the second day we went to Laguna Colorado which is a multi coloured lake with hundreds of flamingos. We spent quite a bit of time walking around the lake and trying to get close to the flamingos. We then drove around Pampa Siloli (a high altitude desert of volcanic ash and gravel scattered into interesting shape rocks). The most interesting of these was the Stone Tree (Arbol de Piedra) - a massive boulder 8m high balancing on a narrow stem; and a rock that looked like a big condor.

We spent the first night in a hut on Laguna Colorado. It was the coldest I have ever been. I slept in 2 pairs of socks, a fleece, and had 3 blankets. The second night we spent in a llama herding hamlet which was just as basic as the first night, with one exception - they had showers (you can imagine how thrilled I was when I found out there was no running water on the first night). I do not know how they manage to live in such a climate with no heating at all ( in fact in both places they have a generator that is turned on for 2 hours in the evening and that`s it). And we were there at the end of summer. Winter temperatures apparently can reach -30 degrees Celsius. I think I would need about 100 blankets in that kind of weather! I will never take my central heating for granted again!

Aside from the cold, the evenings in the desert were really nice. The 2 cook prepared really great meals for us, and we played cards by candlelight. I tried coca leaves (chewed like tobacco - I lasted about 60 seconds before I spat them out) and coca tea (which wasn`t too bad). It is supposed to help with altitude sickness and is perfectly legal in Chile, Bolivia and Peru. I didn`t notice any affect at all - in fact it didn`t even help my nausea on the first day. I suppose a whole continent can`t be wrong about it`s affects.

The third day we spent on the Salar de Uyuni (the Uyuni Salt Flats). The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt lake in the world, and was absolutely incredible. I absolutely loved it.

As it´s rainy season there had been flooding on the salt flats a few days earlier so the Salt Hotel we were supposed to stay in was unfortunately closed. The Salt Flats are 9000 square km, and the salt is 15-30m deep, below which is water. We drove over the salt flats (absolutely phenomenal and so much fun) and spent a few hours taking photos. We took some great photos as there is no depth perception on the salt flats. Below are a few examples.

We then went to a train cemetery full of old British trains that were used to transport minerals. From there we got to the town of Uyuni, and at 5 we caught a 5 hour bus to Potosi - the highest city in the world at 4100m. They don`t even believe in heating on public transport here. Honestly, we all nearly froze to death once the sun had set. Potosi was freezing in both the day and the night. The highest temperature you can expect in summer is 18 degrees Celsius - honestly that`s a winter temperature! Not even the hotels believe in central heating!

The interesting thing about Bolivia (and the rest of South America for that matter) is that whenever you go into any churches (and there are many), it is always full of people praying. In Europe it`s more about tourists taking photos. South Americans are religious folk! We later discovered that the miners in Potosi also worship the devil! But more about that later.

We spent one full day in Potosi. It`s a really interesting city. In the 17th century it was the richest city in the world due to it`s silver mines. I can definitely tell you that this no longer holds true. We did a 3 hour tour of the mine. We got kitted out in overalls, a helmet, light and wellies. It was a really interesting tour. We went to the miners market to buy gifts for the miners. We bought the usual requests - dynamite (legal here and one stick costs US$1!), coca leaves, cigarettes (a mix of tobacco and coca leaves), alcohol (95% pure - yes it`s legal to drink while working in the mines), biscuits and soft drinks. It`s a barter system in the mines - you give them something from your packet and they answer one of your questions or let you take their photo.

Just to put it into perspective, I`ll give you a brief rundown on the history of the mines and the current workings of the mines today. The guide books say that under Spanish rule, 8 million people were killed in the mines over 300 years. Our guide did not believe this to be true. Either way the conditions were hard and many people died. In fact the Andeans (or Indians as they were referred to by the Spanish) were basically treated like slaves. The concept of devil worship arose during these times as the Spanish convinced the Andeans that if they stopped working in the mines the devil would get them. They believed in God as a God of light, and believed in the devil as the God of darkness (ie when they were in the mines). This still holds true today, and there are shrines to the devil in the mines.

Today the mines are run as a Cooperative, so the miners basically work for themselves. There are 3 levels of miners - helpers, apprentice miners, and then miners. They work whatever hours they choose. However, due to the current high price of silver and zinc, the miners often work unhealthily long hours in order to extract as many minerals as possible out of the mines. They refer to this greed here as Silver fever. There are 10,000 workers in the Cooperative, and the best of these miners can earn about 10,000 Bolivianos (about US$1500) a week at the moment. To put this into perspective, the president of Bolivia earns 15,000 Bolivianos a month! So miners are well respected and wealthy members of the community. The down side to this, is that the miners do not live to an old age due to exposure to toxic gases, hard manual labour, the strong alcohol they drink while mining etc.



We spoke to 4 boys between the ages of 15 and 17. They are currently working on the mines as helpers. They work 5 days a week and go to school at night. They said that it`s hard work but they earn good money for their families and they also earn the respect of their friends. They earn a couple hundred a day. It was a really eye-opening trip.

We then ended up in a procession in the city which was a rehearsal for next Sunday`s festival (I can`t remember the name of it - but it`s a festival for one of the saints pre-Easter). It was awesome and gave me a real insight into Bolivian culture. There was music, a percussion band, dancing, great costumes, cars covered in flowers, carpets and silver. It was a lot of fun.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with Jaclyn. We went for lunch and walked around the city (oh and froze to death). We went to Mercado Central (part of which was the most grotesque meat market I have ever seen in both sight and smell), Plaza Central, another market (the name of which I cannot remember - but it was great), and we just walked around the streets.

Yesterday we took a 3 hour bus to Sucre, the official capital (the city is at an altitude of 3000m and you can feel the difference). It`s a lovely city, and is nice and warm so I have finally thawed out. They have a year round spring-like climate, so it`s very pleasant. Sucre is full of beautiful colonial buildings, and seems completely different to the other parts of Bolivia we have seen. We are here for most the week, staying in a really nice hotel, so I am in my element - we even unpacked! But more about Sucre in the next post.