Venezuela had to go...
Uyuni, Bolivia: Another couple days have passed - I have gone yet farther up north and crossed borders into Bolivia for the very first time in my life.
I took another one of those fancy buses out of Santiago de Chile - and experienced the best that traveling through these means has to offer. I booked myself for the bargain price of 29.000 Pesos a so-called cama(==bed) seat - and it´s like flying first class on an airplane. You get a little pillow and a blanket, the steward comes through every now and then and brings some food and drinks, the seats recline almost all the way - and they are actually more comfortable than most hostel beds. A few movies are shown and in what feels like no time at all, you have another few hundred miles under your belt. I only had a ticket to Calama (CHI), but was lucky enough to spot a bus at the bus terminal that was heading the direction of San Pedro de Atacama, and for a meager 1000 Pesos they allowed me to hop on board and dropped me in San Pedro.
San Pedro de Atacama is - according to the Lonely Planet guide - THE backpacker´s gathering point of northern Chile. Notable sights here include the Salar de Atacama (the driest desert in the world and apparently the third largest salt lake after Uyuni and Salt Lake city), the Valley of the Moon and some Inca ruins. The town itself is kinda cute, with plenty of hostels and tour organizers - and even in this off-season it is packed with tourists - nestled in a small oasis of an otherwise dry and otherwordly desert. To see some of the surroundings I hopped on a Moon-valley sunset trip (the sunset wasn´t as spectacular as running down the dunes in Death Valley), and a Geysir trip for the next morning.
That geysir trip was quite amazing: A minibus picked us (me and about 10 other very sleepy people) up at our hotels at 4am in the morning, and the next 2 hours the little bus crawled on desert roads through potholes and dried out river beds from 2400m up to 4500m into the crater of a volcano. Surrounded by steaming geysirs we watched the sun slowly rise and create an eerie atmosphere (pictures to follow, as always) and the -8 degrees celsius quickly turned us into icicles. To warm up we headed over to the hot springs for a quick bath - another first for me, neither had I ever bathed at this altitude (more than 13,000ft), nor with outside temperatures like that.
Beign a slave to the bus schedules, I discovered that the only buses from San Pedro to Uyuni left either that very same night (Wednesday) or on the following Sunday, so I had to pack my things after only one night here, abandon my already paid room and jump on another 19 hour bus ride. This time I should experience the worst that bus travel has to offer.
Without any trouble I made the 20:30 bus from San Pedro back to Atacama, where the next bus should take me at 23:00 to Uyuni in Bolivia. That bus looked already a lot sketchier than the previous buses I had taken, and soon after departure I should discover that neither the toilet worked, nor the heating. Neither of these seem like a big deal when you are thinking of taking a bus from downtown Seattle to Redmond, which is only a 20min ride - but if you will be on the bus for 5 hour stretches without stop - on a route taking you from 2400m altitude to over 4000m altitude (that´s about the height of Mt. Rainier), both of those are becoming pretty big deals. What gets worse is that - unannounced to us foreigners, but apparently a normal custom in this area - the bus arrived at the Chilenean/Bolivian border at 3am, and would just sit there waiting until the border opens at 8am, no heating, no engine running, nothing. The local passengers were all informed and well-prepared, they had thick blankets and sleeping bags. Three other foreigners (french canadians on their way to an orphanage in which they volunteered) and I had no idea. Our sleeping bags and warm clothes were safely stored in the hold...
The minutes crept along. Luckily I was wearing both fleece jacket and shell, but was only wearing my hiking pants, which are one htin layer of cloth. It was cold. Very cold. Every time I looked on my watch only 6-8 minutes had passed, it turned 4am, then 4:30am. My legs were freezing. At 5am, wiht the sunrise and a little more warmth still 5 hours away, I had the idea to stuff some paper into my pants in order to insulate them a little better. What could i use? There were no used newspapers on the bus, and all I had was my diary, El Viejo y el mar, and the "South America on a shoestring" guide from lonely planet. That was the solution! There were still countries in this book that I wouldn´t visit on this trip - for example Venezuela! Quickly I ripped the Venezuela section out of the book, crumbled up the pages and stuffed them in my pants - finally there was a little more between the sub-zero temperature air and my legs than only one layer of cloth. That sealed the deal on me not visiting Venezuela on this trip, but it was worth it: It helped a lot.
Needless to say that the last 2 hours didn´t pass much faster, and I can only begin to describe the joy when suddenly a faint glow became visible on the horizon. Day was near! It would still take another huor until the first rays of sunshine would hit the bus, but one of the longest nights of my life was finally nearing an end. Like the 3 French Candians I hadn´t closed an eye throughout this night... not for more than 8 minutes at a time at least.
A few hours later I would arrive safely in Uyuni, Bolivia - home to the largest Salt Lake on earth. Tomorrow I will jump on a 4x4 jeep to see the highlights of this lake and hopefully take some more pictures...
I took another one of those fancy buses out of Santiago de Chile - and experienced the best that traveling through these means has to offer. I booked myself for the bargain price of 29.000 Pesos a so-called cama(==bed) seat - and it´s like flying first class on an airplane. You get a little pillow and a blanket, the steward comes through every now and then and brings some food and drinks, the seats recline almost all the way - and they are actually more comfortable than most hostel beds. A few movies are shown and in what feels like no time at all, you have another few hundred miles under your belt. I only had a ticket to Calama (CHI), but was lucky enough to spot a bus at the bus terminal that was heading the direction of San Pedro de Atacama, and for a meager 1000 Pesos they allowed me to hop on board and dropped me in San Pedro.
San Pedro de Atacama is - according to the Lonely Planet guide - THE backpacker´s gathering point of northern Chile. Notable sights here include the Salar de Atacama (the driest desert in the world and apparently the third largest salt lake after Uyuni and Salt Lake city), the Valley of the Moon and some Inca ruins. The town itself is kinda cute, with plenty of hostels and tour organizers - and even in this off-season it is packed with tourists - nestled in a small oasis of an otherwise dry and otherwordly desert. To see some of the surroundings I hopped on a Moon-valley sunset trip (the sunset wasn´t as spectacular as running down the dunes in Death Valley), and a Geysir trip for the next morning.
That geysir trip was quite amazing: A minibus picked us (me and about 10 other very sleepy people) up at our hotels at 4am in the morning, and the next 2 hours the little bus crawled on desert roads through potholes and dried out river beds from 2400m up to 4500m into the crater of a volcano. Surrounded by steaming geysirs we watched the sun slowly rise and create an eerie atmosphere (pictures to follow, as always) and the -8 degrees celsius quickly turned us into icicles. To warm up we headed over to the hot springs for a quick bath - another first for me, neither had I ever bathed at this altitude (more than 13,000ft), nor with outside temperatures like that.
Beign a slave to the bus schedules, I discovered that the only buses from San Pedro to Uyuni left either that very same night (Wednesday) or on the following Sunday, so I had to pack my things after only one night here, abandon my already paid room and jump on another 19 hour bus ride. This time I should experience the worst that bus travel has to offer.
Without any trouble I made the 20:30 bus from San Pedro back to Atacama, where the next bus should take me at 23:00 to Uyuni in Bolivia. That bus looked already a lot sketchier than the previous buses I had taken, and soon after departure I should discover that neither the toilet worked, nor the heating. Neither of these seem like a big deal when you are thinking of taking a bus from downtown Seattle to Redmond, which is only a 20min ride - but if you will be on the bus for 5 hour stretches without stop - on a route taking you from 2400m altitude to over 4000m altitude (that´s about the height of Mt. Rainier), both of those are becoming pretty big deals. What gets worse is that - unannounced to us foreigners, but apparently a normal custom in this area - the bus arrived at the Chilenean/Bolivian border at 3am, and would just sit there waiting until the border opens at 8am, no heating, no engine running, nothing. The local passengers were all informed and well-prepared, they had thick blankets and sleeping bags. Three other foreigners (french canadians on their way to an orphanage in which they volunteered) and I had no idea. Our sleeping bags and warm clothes were safely stored in the hold...
The minutes crept along. Luckily I was wearing both fleece jacket and shell, but was only wearing my hiking pants, which are one htin layer of cloth. It was cold. Very cold. Every time I looked on my watch only 6-8 minutes had passed, it turned 4am, then 4:30am. My legs were freezing. At 5am, wiht the sunrise and a little more warmth still 5 hours away, I had the idea to stuff some paper into my pants in order to insulate them a little better. What could i use? There were no used newspapers on the bus, and all I had was my diary, El Viejo y el mar, and the "South America on a shoestring" guide from lonely planet. That was the solution! There were still countries in this book that I wouldn´t visit on this trip - for example Venezuela! Quickly I ripped the Venezuela section out of the book, crumbled up the pages and stuffed them in my pants - finally there was a little more between the sub-zero temperature air and my legs than only one layer of cloth. That sealed the deal on me not visiting Venezuela on this trip, but it was worth it: It helped a lot.
Needless to say that the last 2 hours didn´t pass much faster, and I can only begin to describe the joy when suddenly a faint glow became visible on the horizon. Day was near! It would still take another huor until the first rays of sunshine would hit the bus, but one of the longest nights of my life was finally nearing an end. Like the 3 French Candians I hadn´t closed an eye throughout this night... not for more than 8 minutes at a time at least.
A few hours later I would arrive safely in Uyuni, Bolivia - home to the largest Salt Lake on earth. Tomorrow I will jump on a 4x4 jeep to see the highlights of this lake and hopefully take some more pictures...
posted by Mark Peters @ 8:48 PM
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