Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve of Andean Fauna

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. 

Fumaroles in the early morning at Sol de Mañana Geysers, with a sweet smell of sulfur.

Boiling lava.

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.

What we thought to be grass balls were at a closer look huge cactus bushes!

Hot spring at the shore of Laguna Salada with 40ºC warm water. 

The flamingos also enjoy the warm water in Laguna Salada.

Laguna Salada.

Close to the Chilean border in the Atacama desert. 

Laguna Verde with a high content of arsenic and cobber which gives it its colour. In the background is the beautiful Lincancabur Volcano.

Deserts, lagoons and volcanoes

On the second day of our trip, we enjoyed beautiful desolate landscapes, where volcanoes and lagoons showed up in the desert. We drove from the Uyuni salt flat to the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, located in the Sur Lípez Province.

The Ollagüe Volcano is located in the border between Chile and Bolivia and has intense fumarolic activity. With a height of 5868m is mined still today for the extraction of sulphur.

Huge yareta plants can be found on the old lava flows from the Ollagüe Volcano. The plant grows about 1.5cm per year, building up big green rock-shaped formations. Many yareta plants are estimated to be a few thousand years old.

A group photo with our great travel group.

'Árbol de piedra' (stone tree) is a very photographed wind eroded rock in the Siloli desert.

A James's flamingo in the Laguna Colorada (red lagoon). The red colour comes from microscopic red algae and red sediments. The flamingo gets its pink colour from eating the algae.

The Laguna Colorada has white "islands" of borax, which is a source of the important boron. used in detergents, cosmetics or in the metallurgy industry. Many of the lagoons in the area abound in it, and are therefore mined.

Andrés does not know how to write informally :)

The long road to Puno

After 4 long days we have finally arrived at our destination at ciudad del lago, Puno. Except for lack of sleep, our travels have been better than we expected. We had no problems at 'George Bush Airport' at Houston, even though we only had 2 hours, and the line for immigration (or whatever it's called) was endless because everyone has to provide fingerprints and so on to the U.S., and the immigrations officer told us we would be stopped by all the security officers we met if we went the shortest way to our airplane gate (which was already boarding at that moment). However, we chose the shortest way and were not stopped by a single officer, and made it in time for our flight. The airplane food on United Airlines was surprisingly tasty (and vegan): chickpeas and curry rice. For me food is what adds to travelling extra adventure and 'hygge', so you might hear more about that part of our travels in the next months. 

When we came to Lima at midnight two days ago, we called Andrés friend to let him know we had arrived, but found out they had misunderstood each other and the friend was in the jungle far away from Lima, unable to pick us up. So we prepared to stay the night at the airport, but Andrés' friend made arrangements for us to stay at his sister's place in Lima. So luckily we had a comfortable place to sleep - he and his sister were both very helpful to us! And that night's sleep was very much needed because the next two nights we slept in busses, while we drove along the coast of Peru to Arequipa, and then on to Puno. It was awesome to drive through the desert landscapes of southern Peru bordering the Pacific Ocean, with occasional rice fields growing along rivers that flow into the ocean. Arequipa is a nice place to go as a tourist with a lot of old buildings and beautiful views to the three volcanoes surrounding the city. We went to the 'mummy' museum in Arequipa, which had a frozen 500-year-old mummified body of a girl found buried on top of a 6000m high volcano close to Arequipa. Another body of a teenage girl, called Juanita, also found at that volcano, was unfortunately out on a research trip. But she is the most well-preserved of several Inca offerings found at that volcano, almost completely preserved by the ice. They were offerings to the Inca gods at the volcano, who were chosen as infants to be educated at Cuzco, and the most intelligent and beautiful of them were chosen to engange on a long journey along the Andes to this volcano to be sent to be among the gods. A horrible fate for these young people, but at least it seems like they didn't suffer much physical pain, being intoxicated for most of the journey, and probably filled with notions of pride, having the prospect of becoming a god. At least all this is what the museum guide told us.

Today we arrived in Puno at 5am and met an already awakened city, and were already able to get our hostel room because 'ofcourse' the hostel hosts were up - it was already 5:30am! We had tried finding couchsurfers here, but out of the 40 I wrote to we got about 3 answers, one of them saying he already had 15 friends visiting at this time of the Fiesta de la Candelaria and that we would be lucky if we even could find a hostel, since Puno has been recognized as a UNESCO world heritage sight. 

So here at 3830m height I am sitting on the roof of the hostel in a hammock, eating watermelon I bought on my morning walk, while Andrés is at the agricultural conference he has to attend these few days. I hope he's not suffering from altitude-sickness as much as my headache is reminding me that we are at the highest lake in the world (navigable lake, that is). Maybe I should drink some more coca tea...