We would travel into Bolivia from Chile via a 2 night 3 day tour visiting the salt flats. I was super looking forward to this but a bit nervous for two reasons: First, our last day in Chile I did not feel well at all and as our tour went up to 5000m high I was worried I would get very sick from altitude. Second, for the tour you are in a group of just 6 people in a jeep and sharing a room for the whole time – anyone who knows me well will know that as the little introvert that I am this could be quite overwhelming!!
Day one
We were picked up from our hostel at 7.30am by minivan and driven to the Chilean border control. Passing through took about 40mins and then we got back into the minivan for the drive to the Bolivian border. Once through we were asked to get into groups of 6 which would be our 4wd drive groups for the next three days. This group forming was crucial for Tom and I, our tour only had a Spanish speaking guide so if we were to understand anything we needed to latch on to some speakers of Spanish and English and hope that they would translate for us. Luckily for us we ended up with two lovely Brazilian guys who both spoke English and one of which spoke fluent Spanish. Our group was rounded out by a girl from Uruguay and a girl from Argentina and off we went!
Our first day driving was filled with beautiful lagunas, some impressive geysers, and soaking in a thermal pool at 4000m. The highlight however was stopping by laguna Colorado and seeing thousands of flamingos feeding in the waters.
Day two
Waking up in the hostel everyone was feeling the effects of the altitude, symptoms ranging from slight headache to throwing up from nausea. Luckily Tom and I just had light headaches so we were able to have breakfast before setting off for the day.
The weather was lovely in the morning where we explored a rock forest and visited more Lagunas. At one spot people have written the name of their country in stones so Tom spent some time tidying up the NZ sign.
The tour normally stays at a salt hotel but because of the weather we stayed the night in Uyuni. Dinner was not quite as good as the night before but it came with a bottle of wine so I was totally ok with it. Tom and I were last to leave the kitchen and noticed one group had only had a quarter of their wine, of course we couldn’t let this go to waste so between the two of us we finished off the bottle. Time would tell whether or not this was a bad idea…
Day three
It was a bad idea. Although we were at a lower elevation than the night before we both had pretty bad headaches, woops. Today we would visit the salt flats because it is wet season they would be flooded so although we wouldn’t get the classic perspective photos, if the weather is nice we should get a nice mirror effect. Arriving at the slat flats I couldn’t believe how much water there was it was like we were at the sea. We spent a long time playing in the salty water and taking pictures.
Finally we said goodbye to our jeep buddies and waited around for our night bus to take us to Sucre. Such a beautiful three days we totally recommend it for traveling from Chile to Bolivia!
The Wandering Woutersens 