Bolivian south western circuit

Bolivia is a country of opposites and extremes. It has big cities and tiny villages, poverty neighbourhoods, with adobe houses, and rich business quarters. You can get a simple lunch menu for less than a dollar or a cup of coffee for the same price at a fancy cafe in Santa Cruz. The places on the altiplano are freezing, airless and dry and the amazon basin is extremely hot and humid.

If the jungle, with its' animals, insects and various plants, is the wildest thing in the Amazon basin then on the altiplano it is the south western circuit, where the air is thin and freezing, the sun is strong and bright and nature just go crazy with different extreme and magnificent views.

We went to Uyuni and booked a 3 days jeep tour of the south west. We were 8 people (6 tourists a guide/driver and a cook) and one jeep, packed with all our food, personal belongings and cooking gear.

In the first day we visited the salt plain. It's a gigantic flat area that's covered with salt (15m deep in the deepest point). In the wet season it's flooded and the reflections are magnificent but when we came it was dry. Most of the plain is protected but some is available for local to extract salt from. A few 'islands' can be found on the plain and there we found big cactuses that grow one cm a year (so some are more then 1000 years old)

View of the salt plain from the car

Karin jumps over the plain

The cactuses

Getting of the salar (the salt plain) we crossed a railway. That railway leads people and mined minerals to Bolivia and to the Chilean border. Here is the view towards the border:

Chile is over the mountains

Next, we arrived to a beautiful lake that was full of Flamingos.

Us, the lake and the flamingos

Flamingos

Flamingo landing

Then, driving on, we arrived to the ¨stone tree¨, a volcanic rock that was eroded by the wind and the sand to the shape of a tree.

El arbol de piedra

On the way we saw a fox. The guide treated him with a sweet wafer and the fox seemed to enjoy it.

Fox chewing a wafer

That evening we stayed at a local village's hostel. The temperatures dropped quickly when it got dark but it was perfectly fine with our sleeping bags and blankets. The cook, who treated us so far very well with meaty lunches and beautiful vegetables, made us a wonderful pizza. The sunset over the local b-ball court was amazing:

Sunset

The second day had a few highlights. The laguna colorada, a beautiful red/brown lake full of Flamingos and surrounded with white mineral supplied beautiful views. We also found a local animal called ¨Viscacha¨, which is some rabbit looking creature.

The laguna colorada

The laguna colorada from another angle

The Viscacha

That evening we stayed in a small hostel at an altitude of 4,300 m.a.s.l. Unlike the previous hostel we had no hot shower. The temperatures dropped so sharply, when it darkened, that we had to flee inside and hide under our blankets and sleeping bags.

Before we went to sleep the guide brought a bottle of cheap wine and later on we both decided to take a Paracetamol against any headache that might develop through the night (due to the altitude). Unknowingly, we both manage to intake the substances that were a recipe for one of the worst nights ever.

It wasn't cold at all but it was something like that: I would fall asleep for about 5 minutes and then wake up breathless. Taking a few deep breaths I notice that my mouth is so dry that I have to spend a minute or so wetting it and then taking a sip of water. Then, the mixture of bad wine and cheap, originating from a Bolivian pharmacy, Paracetamol, made a mysterious solution in my stomach that released Sulfuric gasses (mainly, but not only, from the front end). So, every time I woke up I had the taste of Sulfur in my mouth and my stomach made weird sounds.

Apart from the sleepless horrible night there were two nice Alpacas there:

Alpacas

The third day was the day of great extremes. To begin with, both our stomachs were extremely not functioning and we felt like shit. (mostly poor Karin). We had to wake up on 5 am and go to see some geysers:

Geyser

Me and my (best) wife in the land of Geysers (can you see how bad her stomach is?)

After that, we went to deep in the local hot springs (at almost 5000 m.a.s.l). It was great, but getting out was cold cold cold!

Mmmm.... Nice

And then we drove on to the highest and most magnificent point, The laguna verde (the green lake). Due to minerals like copper and sulfur it has a greenish color. When it's windy it has the color of turquoise (Luckily it wasn't). It's surrounded by three inactive volcanoes, whose peaks are crowned with snow. The guide told us that NASA is conducting experiments on the top of one of the volcanoes because it has the conditions that resembles Mars's better than everywhere else in the world. At an altitude of more then 5 km a.s.l we took a big breath and nodded (Just kidding, it's easy to breath the freezing air but it's important not to make sudden movements. The oxygen demand causes weakness)

The green lake and the Mars like volcano (and me)

From there we went on a long and almost event less ride back to Uyuni.

The relative train

On a different and geekier note, the tour actually started at a train cemetery next to Uyuni. I found an interesting train there. Not because it was old, Not because of anything trainish or engineering related but because someone grafittied it with an equation from the field of general relativity physics (And not a simple one. It took me a whole course of pure mathematics on general relativity to reach the smallest ability of understanding this equation).

Was the train moving around black holes ? Did the space time metrics and momentum, energy Tensor really mattered for the people who built that train? I doubt it.

It is hard for me to explain how ¨out of place¨ and unrelated this equation is to an antique train in the desert of south western Bolivia but I assure you that it kept me puzzled for more than a couple of minutes.

The train and the equation