Bolivia
After two months in Peru, we were quite excited to move on to our next country. Don’t get me wrong, Peru is beautiful - we were just itching to continue our journey. Our next adventure was a quick pit-stop in Bolivia. We would have loved to have spent more time here and explored more of the country, but we were short on time. We had a hard date as to when we needed to be all the way at the very bottom of Chilean Patagonia, and with only a month to get there we didn’t have time to wander too much. We didn’t want a repeat of our 3 nights in-a-row on night buses that we did to get to Peru on time, as we’d had learned from that experience and didn’t need any more illnesses cramping our style.
We first took a night bus from Cusco to La Paz, Bolivia. This bus is not bad because you don’t actually arrive at the border until 7 or 8am the next morning, so you can have an interrupted sleep on the bus. We were impressed with the set up at this border crossing, because everything was inside the same building and you simply moved from one line to another. The first window is where you check out of Peru, then you get into the line for the window beside it, where you enter Bolivia, then you get into the line next to that where you put your bags through the scanners and voila, you have crossed the border.
Not long after we arrived in La Paz, and we have to say, it was not that nice. They use some type of gas in all of their cars that we assumed must be very cheap, because it stank. The whole city, therefore, smells like this, and it was quite awful. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, and while Peru is not too much better off, you can definitely notice it. We spent only a couple of days in La Paz, resting and still recovering from the Andes race. We visited some cafes where we worked and cooked some homemade dinners, a much welcomed break from the constant restaurant fair. We went to the gym, as well, which was not easy at such high elevations. Doing squats at 3800m will definitely make you a bit light-headed!
Happy to leave La Paz, we continued our journey to the town of Uyuni on another night bus. The original plan was that we wouldn’t actually stay in Uyuni at all. Rather, we would arrive from the night bus at 6am, have breakfast, then begin the 3-day, 2-night tour we booked from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It was a Friday, meaning we would arrive in Chile by Sunday afternoon.
Upon arrival in Uyuni, however, I received a message from the tour operator saying that the meteorologists were expecting snow in the Nation Reserve in the next couple of days and, most importantly, at the border inside the reserve between Bolivia and Chile. The Chilean officials announced that they were most likely going to be closing that border until Tuesday, and the tour operator also said that snow squalls usually means white-out conditions and therefore entering the reserve would likely not be possible. We, along with the rest of the people in our group, opted to wait one day to see if things would improve and also hoped that the Chilean officials would open the border. This meant leaving on Saturday and arriving in Chile on Monday.
Uyuni is not the most interesting or beautiful of places, however, having the Friday did give us the chance to get some more work done. Unfortunately, the tour operator later in the day informed us that the weather wasn’t looking good and that even entering the National Reserve would be difficult. Not only that, but the Chilean border would most definitely be closed until Tuesday. This would mean the tour would return us to Uyuni instead of taking us across the border. From Uyuni, we would have to take a 10 hour bus ride to Calama, and then another hour-long bus ride from there to San Pedro. We asked about delaying one more day until Sunday, because that would mean we wouldn’t be crossing until Tuesday. Unfortunately, they informed us that Sunday was their national day with no motors - from 6am onwards, no cars or buses could depart, meaning if we didn’t go Saturday for the tour, we would have to wait until Monday.
This was a bummer, but we decided that it was better to just go ahead with the tour. This way, we would be returning to Uyuni on Monday and would arrive in Chile on Tuesday. With our time limit, we didn’t really have the time to spare. While the border in the National Reserve would be closed, a border further north, where the weather was fine, would be open.
We started our tour the next day at 10am. The first stop was a place called The Train Graveyard. This is because there is a train track that goes from Uyuni all the way to the coast in Chile, because this area used to be Bolivian territory. According to our guide, there were some disputes about this territory, and then one day on the Bolivian national day when everyone was celebrating, Chile entered the territory, which sparked a war between the two countries. Bolivia did not win, and therefore lost that part of their territory and their access to the sea. During the war, trains could not pass, so they were just left there. The war lasted quite a long time, and during that time the trains fell into disrepair. It was pretty fun to climb around on them and explore, though you definitely had to be careful.
After the train graveyard, we went to a salt processing facility where they take the salt from the thousands of square kilometers of salt flats that they have and turn it into both bath and table salts. From there, we went to visit the famous salt flats. We were there in the dry season, so you don’t get the cool reflection effect that you often see in photos. That being said, it was still really impressive to see. Despite being high in altitude, it was also quite warm. There were zero clouds, and with the reflection of the sun on the white salt flats, you had to be quite careful not to get burnt. We had some fun taking photos on the salt flats, particularly ones where you use perspective to make it seem like someone is standing in your hand, things like that. Our guide had a dinosaur toy and we took pictures that made it look like the dinosaur was chasing us. He also had a bottle of wine that we used to take some funny photos, though the best part about this was that we had an apero on the salt flat for sunset later on that included drinking the bottle of wine.
That night, we stayed in a hotel made entirely of salt. The walls were made of salt, the bases of the beds were made of salt, tables and chairs all made of saltThe beds were fairly comfortable, but it is definitely not warm. Thankfully, that night, Jo and I were able to have a room to ourselves. We slept pretty well, all things considered. The next day we had breakfast and then were off to day two’s activities. We visited a place called the Island of Thousand-Year-Old Cacti. As the name suggests, the island was covered in cacti that all were at least one thousand years old, if not more. It is called an island because it is in the middle of the salt flat. Standing on the highest point of the island you have the sensation that you are on an island in the middle of a frozen lake, only it’s not frozen, it’s just bright white salt.
The tour then passed through several cool geological features that looked like Mars or perhaps the Moon. Then, we reached the place where we would have lunch. This place was one of my favourite stops, because it was at a lagoon that was filled with thousands of Pink Flamingoes. I have loved flamingoes since I was a child and getting to see them so close up in their natural habitat was just incredible. We learned there that as mating season approaches, the male flamingoes head to special lagoons where the quantity of red plankton is particularly concentrated. The more deep their colouring, the more attractive they will be to the females. The juveniles, however, are completely grey in colour. It takes them a while before they can eat enough of the plankton to start turning pink.
Our guide dropped us off on one side of the lagoon with the instructions for us to follow the path along the shore until we saw the building where we would eat lunch. Jo and I stood there watching the flamingoes for quite a while, before we decided to move along to the lunch spot. When we arrived there, there were even more flamingoes. Thankfully, the lunch spot, which was perched up on a hill, had a good view of the flamingoes. As we were eating, Jo looked out and saw that the flamingoes had come in almost completely to shore. We grabbed the camera and ran down to the bottom, slowing our pace and approaching the flamingoes quietly so as not to scare them off. We sat down there by the shore watching the flamingoes interact with each other for quite a long time until our guide came over and told us it was time to leave.
Our next stop was for more cute animal observation. This time, it was a special rock where a whole colony of viscachas, or how we know them as chinchillas, call home. These are like if a mouse and a rabbit had a baby, and they are very cute. They also seemed relatively unbothered by the car fulls of humans that come to look at them and take their picture every day. Here, it is strictly forbidden to climb on the rocks, so as not to disturb the vicachas.
After this, we visited the red lagoon, which was beautiful, however, it was very cloudy and so we didn’t have the best views of it. There were more flamingoes there, though, which was great. There was also a place where you could go inside and warm up (it was very cold out) and have a coffee. While getting warm and a coffee was nice, the best part about this place was the tiny white malamute puppy that lived there along with a mother cat and her very recently born litter of kittens. Cute animal heaven! The cat was in a box filled with blankets, where she was feeding her tiny little kittens. The puppy had his corner with blankets and toys, and at first seemed quite fearful of us. He came around, though, and eventually we were holding in our laps and giving him lots of pets and snuggles.
From here we went to our next hotel for the night. This hotel, however, was even colder than the last, as it sat at 4600m of elevation. It began snowing, and there was a girl in our group from Brazil who had never seen the snow before. She was incredibly excited at first, and we went outside and had a (mini) snowball fight and she made her first ever snow angel. By the next day, however, she was fairly over it. Jo and I lent her some extra clothes, because the stuff she had just wasn’t warm enough - she didn’t even have a toque! She told us that she had never experienced temperatures less than 15 degrees before, which is hard to imagine as a Canadian.
That night, Jo and I had to sleep in a shared room with the Brazilian girl and another guy in our group from England. Thankfully, we have really good quality ear plugs, because that guy snored - amazingly loudly! We also slept inside our sleeping bags, partly for warmth and partly because we didn’t trust the cleanliness of the place. We didn’t have the best sleep, because even for us, who were fairly accustomed to altitude by that point, sleeping above 4500m was still difficult.
There was one man in our group who particularly struggled with the altitude. The poor guy did his best to enjoy and stay positive, but he was suffering from altitude-induced headaches, nausea, and more. He and his wife were visiting from Argentina, and they mentioned how they knew that he didn’t handle altitude very well. What I didn’t understand, was why, then, they decided to come directly from sea level to Uyuni and do this tour, which is entirely over 3500m, with no intermediary steps in between to slowly work their way up. They were going to Peru and Machu Picchu next, which is far lower, and it seemed weird to me that they wouldn’t do it the other way around, knowing how much he suffers in altitude.
The next morning we started early, as it was the day that we would be going into the reserve. Despite the snow that had fallen, the reserve remained open, so we were optimistic that we would still get to go to the thermal baths, the coloured lagoons, and the geysers. We paid the fees and entered the park, and at first, things seemed like it would stay clear. All of the sudden, however, we arrived in a section where it was so windy, the snow that had fallen the night before was blowing around making it impossible to see. Our guide tried to take another route that he knew of, but that ended up being impassable, as well, due to the snow drifts everywhere. Even in a 4x4 it was tough to get through them. With that, we had to take the decision to turn back, leave the park, and replace the park’s attractions with other interesting locations that were on the way back to Uyuni.
We were disappointed, for sure, but we all agreed that it was better to be safe than to try to keep going and risk getting stuck out in horrible weather. On our way back to the park entrance, a caravan of the other tour groups were coming the other direction. Our guides told them about the conditions further inside the park, and all of the guides got out to have a chat. Our guide told them it wasn’t safe and that they should consider turning back, but another one of the guides disagreed and said that the clients wouldn’t be happy if they didn’t go. He pressured the others to follow him and even kind of made fun of our guide for being so cautious. He managed to convince the entire caravan to decide to continue on. Not long after, we got word that the entire caravan was lost, having gotten disoriented in the white-out conditions. Our guide said that they would have to stay where they were and essentially wait it out. Once the visibility improved, they would then be able to make their way back.
We visited some truly spectacular locations with natural rock formations, plenty of llamas, alpacas, and vicunyas, as well as more flamingoes, before reaching the final lunch spot before returning to Uyuni. At lunch, our guide learned that the caravan was still out there, waiting for the weather to calm down. We were all grateful to have a guide that had more sense than the other.
We finally arrived back in Uyuni and found a very cheap hostel to stay in that was right next to the bus station. It was not exactly the nice, warm, comfy place we had imagined staying in during the last few days, but it was perfectly situated for the early morning bus we would have. We then went to the bus station to buy our tickets to go to San Pedro. All the buses that do this trip leave at 5am, because the border is open only during a certain window throughout the day.
The next morning we got up at 4am to be at the bus station for 4:30, as per the instructions of the bus companies. By 5am we were on board and finally on route to Chile. Despite the setbacks and inclement weather, we enjoyed our time in Bolivia. Perhaps one day we’ll return to see more of the country.
