If I could only recommend one single activity from this trip, the tour I took through the south of Bolivia would be high on the list. We left San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile, in a bus and headed for the Bolivian border. After clearing immigration we were split into groups of 6 and assigned to a guide and his Toyota Land Cruiser (so many Land Cruisers) for the remainder of the tour. My group had two Brazilian women, two American women who were traveling around together after graduating, a German guy, and me, and our guide was Abner, a 22 year old who’s been guiding this tour for 3 years now (!). During the first day’s drive we got up over 15,000 feet before slowly making our way to lower elevation. Luckily I didn’t have too much of a problem with the elevation, just a bit of a headache. Our first stops were at two lakes/lagoons, the white one (because of it’s borax deposits) and the green one (because of its mix of copper and arsenic, if I remember correctly). The lakes were pretty, framed by stark desert and massive volcanos, and the colors were fairly accurate. Most of the driving on this first day was through wide open expanses of desert with mountains on either side and it was pretty damn impressive. After the lakes we went to Dali’s desert, where volcanic rocks stick up haphazardly from a huge expanse of sand. The pictures don’t do it justice but you really could see where the name came from. Next we pushed on to some hot springs, which were a welcome sight since the early morning desert at elevation is really damn cold. To be fair, by this time the sun had been out for a while and it was pretty hot. After the hot springs we saw some very cool geysers, with huge pits full of boiling grey mud. The last stop was the Laguna Colorada, with it’s red and white patches, and then we stayed at a hostel right nearby.

Bolivian immigration

White lake

The algae was beautiful

Green lake. Apparently it gets greener later in the day when the wind mixes the chemicals more

Dali Desert

Hot spring algae

Sulfury…

Laguna colorada

So much flamingo (I think) poop

I was there!

Baby flamingo! Flamingos get their pink color from the keratin in their food, they’re born grey and turn pink over time as they eat

It’s a pretty popular tour….

Desert sunsets are…. pretty nice

Day 2 saw us up and at ’em to drive through the Siloli Desert before getting to our first main attraction, the rock tree. It’s a volcanic rock formation that really does sort of look like a tree, and it sits next to a ton of other huge volcanic rock formations in the middle of the desert, which makes for a striking scene. After that we saw another couple of lagoons, had lunch next to a particularly beautiful one, and then set up at a viewpoint to watch a semi-active volcano slowly puff smoke into the sky.

The rock tree

Casual smoking volcano

Day 3 was the payoff! We got up at the crack of dawn (kidding, before dawn) and headed off at 5 to drive across the salt flat to Isla Incahuasi (or Isla del Pescado), a cactus-covered island out in the middle of a perfectly flat ocean of salt. The whole drive was in the dark and Abner turned off all of the lights a couple of times, since the route is flat as a pancake, which gave us the surreal experience of speeding along at 40 or 50 miles an hour in complete darkness. Once we got to the island we went for a short hike up to the top where we were treated to an absolutely stunning sunrise, all different shades of pink, orange, and yellow breaking over the mountains in the distance and slowly lighting up the white plain. We then headed down for breakfast before driving way out into the middle of the flats to admire the view and take ridiculous perspective pictures. After that we headed to Uyuni, where the last attraction was the train graveyard, bunches of rusty old locomotives lined up against a desert backdrop.

Look at all those cacti!

Hexagons everywhere

The texture was fascinating

I was there!

He’s a monster!

He’s dead Jim

Perspective photos are funny from the wrong perspective…

This whole tour was one of the best things I’ve done all trip. I got lucky with the group and the guide but there is no way to go wrong with the south of Bolivia – it is truly one of the most beautiful and unique places I’ve ever seen. Mountains, desert, lakes, and salt together all make up an unbelievable set of scenery. I very, very highly recommend it to anyone who’s thinking of visiting.

After the tour the two American women (Jess and Maria), the German guy (Anatole), and I all decided we’d head to La Paz together on an overnight bus that same day. We spent the afternoon strolling around Uyuni, catching up on our internet needs, and grabbing some cheap food, and then headed to the bus station. I’ll write a separate post about La Paz but the short version is that I really enjoyed it.

We’ll fast forward quickly now for a present day update. It’s been an action packed couple of weeks so I’m woefully behind on the blog. After Uyuni I spent almost a week in La Paz, which included biking down the death road and then climbing a veeeeeeeery nearly 20,000 ft tall mountain. I then headed to Copacabana, on the shore of Lake Titicaca, to see the lake and tour the Island of the Sun, where the Incas believed the sun came from. Last night I took an overnight bus to Cusco, and tomorrow morning at 5am I’ll be starting the 5 day Salkantay trek (with porters and cooks, don’t worry about me straining myself…) up to Machu Picchu. I’ve heard great things about the Salkantay (it’s apparently like the Inca Trail but costs a third as much and you can reserve the day before instead of 6 months in advance) so I’m really excited to do it, and I’ll be back to give you a rundown of it, and catch up on previous adventures, in 5 days. After that I’ve got one night here in Cusco and then back to back 22 and 7.5 hour bus rides to get to Huancayo, where I’ll start volunteer teaching English on May 2nd. So, not a lot of sleep in the forecast for the next week, but I’m very excited to get to Huancayo, settle in, get to know some people, and hopefully help some kids learn English. I’ll keep you posted!