On the third day of our trip in southern Bolivia, we woke up at 4:00am in our room at the most expensive hostal in the area, where our group of 6 had shared a room of 3 beds. Luckily we were three couples. We had ended up at the most expensive hostal because there was no room left anywhere else - apparantly there was an overload of tourists for the Easter holidays and communication between travel agencies, jeep drivers and hostals is non-existent. So no bookings for hostals are ever made on these trips, even though accomodation is included in the package. The jeeps that came later than ours, I have no idea what they did - nights are freezing in the desert and it was far from nearby villages. One jeep broke down the previous day - we don't know what happened to them. The jeeps have no form of communication. We had paid for an adventure, our driver told us.
We had woken up before the sun in order to see it rise through the vapour of some geysers and fumaroles amongst boiling lava pools, in an area called Sol de Mañana at almost 5000m height. Luckily we hadn't eaten eggs for breakfast because the warm vapour smelt of it, rotten eggs, or rather sulfur gases. It was one of the best experiences of the trip. On this early morning drive in these heights, we had frost on our windows both inside and out of the car. Our driver said "no no it's ok!" he could manage by sticking his head out the side window when the sun was shining directly on the frosted window, making it impossible to see anything. He tried wiping it with a cloth but to no use in the cold and with no heating in the car. But then along came Señor Ingeniero Andrés and saved us all by suggesting we use our hand sanitizer (or alcohol gel) to wipe the front window for our driver. And ¡voila! the window was now back to normal driving safety.
While the sun was still rising we drove to a hot spring where Maria took a dip in the 40ºC warm water. A very relaxing experience. Maria had also missed being in water, so it was very refreshing.
Later we drove to a green lagoon next to a beautiful volcano in a part of the Atacama Desert. It was very close to the Chilean border, where we dropped off our Brazilian friends, and turned the jeep around toward Uyuni for a 7-hour trip through the national park and desert, in order to catch our 13-hour bus ride back to La Paz at 7:30pm. Along the way to Uyuni we saw vicuñas (a wild type of alpaca), rheas (wild 'ostriches'), domesticated flocks of llamas, and bright-red and orange coloured quinoa fields being harvested.
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| Fumaroles in the early morning at Sol de Mañana Geysers, with a sweet smell of sulfur. |
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| Boiling lava. |
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| It was freezing at that time of morning at a height of almost 5000m, except in the water/sulfur vapours which were nice and warm to stand in. |
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| What we thought to be grass balls were at a closer look huge cactus bushes! |
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Hot spring at the shore of Laguna Salada with 40ºC warm water.
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| The flamingos also enjoy the warm water in Laguna Salada. |
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| Laguna Salada. |
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| Close to the Chilean border in the Atacama desert. |
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| Laguna Verde with a high content of arsenic and cobber which gives it its colour. In the background is the beautiful Lincancabur Volcano. |
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