San Pedro de Atacama and Bolivia - VERY delayed post :)

Hi everyone :)
This will be the first of many travel editions of my blog. This one has been 1,5 month delayed.. sorry, I'll try to keep up :)

Clara, Jennifer, Paula and Julie at down town San Pedro

So, the first big travel I did was in September to San Pedro de Atacama which is a city in the north of Chile and then later to Bolivia. I traveled for 10 days with 5 other girls from my university: Julie and Jennifer (roomies), Paula, Juliette and Clara. Being the “poor” students, we had decided to save money and take the bus to San Pedro. It took more 25 hours one way! Even though you can lean back your seat, you can watch movies and they bring you blankets, pillows and snacks it is still an exhausting trip – well at least for me. I didn’t really sleep during the bus ride, but Julie slept like a baby the whole night through.

 Our first day we saw the city of San Pedro. That was done in about 1 hour – the city is basically constructed for tourism which also means higher prices for everything. Later day we went on our first tour: Valle de la Luna and Valle de la Muerte (= the Moon valley and the Death Valley). It is an amazing desert landscape.

Valle de la Luna

The tour ended with pisco sour and a sunset over Valle de la Muerte. 

Julie's photo of the group lost in the desert - the guy in green kept spirits high

But THEN…. A dramatic turn of events! After the sun had set, the guide told us to go for a walk WITHOUT him in the desert for stargazing. Somewhat apprehensive our group of 12 people started walking into the dark. The guide had told that the road was easy to follow and that it would take about one hour. After about 45 minutes we started releasing that we were lost; in the desert, completely dark (only amazing stars and Milky Way) and no cell phone signal. On top of that, it wasn’t very reassuring being lost at “The Death Valley”. At one point I thought we would have to spend the night in the sand dunes, but then someone got a weak signal and we were able to call the agency. They told us to go back the same way we came and they would pick us up. The only problem was that we didn’t have a clue of which way we had come from. Fortunately a guy in the group took leadership and found the way back. He kept spirits high which was helpful in a stressful situation like this one. Back at the agency we complained until they gave us the tour for free – sweet! 

The next day we went to Laguna Cejar where among other things you bathe in the lake with the highest salt concentration in the world – higher than the Death Sea. It was fun to float without having to do anything really.

The third day we took what was my favorite tour. It was to Lagunas Altiplanicas, which is landscape with lakes and mountains

Lagunas Altiplanicas

It located about 4,000 meters above sea level which you can feel! Your breathing and your legs feel heavier. The city of San Pedro is about 2,400 meters which I felt the first days, but then you get used to it. It common for tourists to get altitude sickness there, but in our group nobody had any serious problems. In general we just felt tired, had dry nostrils, light dizziness, slightly reduced appetite and headaches. But we were told those are all common – even fainting is considered common. The only dangerous symptom is vomiting. You get so many advice on how to reduce the effects of high altitude (you can’t really not avoid it completely). Among the many advices were: don’t drink alcohol (which personally meant 10 days soberness – in fact heavily needed at that point after nightlife in Chile), no red meat (no problem for me), eating coca or coca products (bought some very nice bonbons with coca and toffee) and eating small meals. But it depends on the individual person and doesn’t really have anything to do directly with one’s physical health, some people are just unlucky. Our guide told us that in his experience the most important thing was not to think about the altitude and freak yourself out. 

Geiser del Tatio

On our last day in San Pedro we went to the Geiser del Tatio. We left at 4 am and arrived at about 8 am at the geysers. But it was soooo f…. cold, that I almost couldn’t enjoy it. There were hot springs where you could bathe in 80° C water, but NO WAY was I taking my clothes off! So I just stayed on dry land trying to enjoy the landscape. 

Crossing the Bolivian border

The next day we started our 4 day trip around Bolivia. Summing up it is the most beautiful nature and landscape I have ever seen in my life. About 2 hours from San Pedro we crossed over the Bolivian border and switched to a jeep with our luggage on the roof. Our guide/driver was Javier who had kind of a dry sense of humor – similar to the Danish one so Julie and I liked him, but I think he sometimes was misunderstood by the other girls. During the 4 days we stayed at a different hostel every night. There were basic, the food was bland and the nights freezing cold, but all that didn’t matter a thing because the places we saw were amazing.





Different lagoons –some with flamencos and lamas

 

The train rail between Bolivia and Chile. It was a “gift” from Chile to Bolivia because Bolivia lost their entire coastline after the War of the Pacific (1879-1883). The Bolivians still have hard feelings about this – our guide, Javier, joked when I asked about this and said: “Chile has the coastline – for now” 

The highlight of the trip was the last day when we visited Salar de Uyuni – the great salt flake lake where we took the “mandatory” tourist photos.

 

The last thing we visited was the train cemetery that has been turned into a playground/art gallery. Between all the different kinds of tags and graffiti I found a graffiti that said “Grandma” in Danish. As a nice end to a long, exhausting, but amazing trip I got a photo of the “Grandma” tag and send it to my 95-year old grandma in Denmark.

Two weeks ago Julie, Thibault and I had a somewhat spontaneous trip to Buenos Aires. Even though I had (almost) sworn on my life never to take a 20 hour bus ride again, we ended up taking the bus to Buenos Aires – about 23 hours, but through beautiful mountain scenery. I will return (hopefully) soon with a post about our great trip to BA!

If you want to see more photos check out the album on Facebook called "San Pedro de Atacama y Bolivia <3"

Until then,

Besos Mette.