San Pedro
Day 1
We arrived mid morning into what could only be described as a wild west town. Dusty, quiet streets with little doorways that could be anything from someone’s home to a tour agency. It was only when you looked closer, or when they put the signs outside their doors that you could really tell.
The town lies at 2,440m, our first experience of altitude, and you really could feel it. The air felt thinner and doing anything slightly exertive resulted in getting out of breath!
Our hostel for 2 nights was like a little courtyard village. The buildings were made with clay, which is in abundance here, and the ceilings were thatched with corrugated iron on top. The clay walls and thatched roof made our room feel very unique and authentic.
We headed out into the village/town pretty much straight away to see what was on offer. As it grew closer to midday, tourists started emerging after there morning activities and the thriving town looked a little more like the tourist trap we had heard about, and yet there is still an incredible silence about the place, with psychedelic moon-like landscapes and in the evening, star scattered heavens and hammock strewn hostels! Around most corners, the imposing view of the Licancabur volcano (which is half Chilean, half Bolivean) can be seen.
The afternoon to early evening we spent in the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). It is located 16km out of town in the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world. It has various stone and sand formations that have been created through the centuries by floods and wind and has also given it an impressive range of colour and texture, funnily enough making it resemble the surface of the moon, hence the name! Some areas of the desert have not received rainfall for hundreds of years!
The highlight of the trip has to be watching the sunset on top of one of the great sand hills! After an exhausting walk up the hill, we were presented with an array of colours that were just mind blowing!
As you can see, we took a lot of pictures on this tour so to see them all, please take a look at the album :)
Day 2
Today was a complete chill out day. We were exhausted from the day before and the altitude was a bit of a killer. Also we had booked ourselves on to the Salar de Uyuni 3 day tour for the next day, so we wanted to be well rested and acclimatized before heading up to the extreme heights of 5000m!!!
So we enjoyed a simple lunch of empanadas (a pastry filled with meat and cheese) and some shopping before bumping into some of our friends from Santiago, who we had a very nice dinner with (plus early night as we were all heading out on tour early in the morning).
Day 3
So we set off on our exciting adventure to Bolivia! The Salt Flats of Uyuni and the Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve of Andean Fauna was calling.
But first a long queue at the Chilean border to sign ourselves out. Then a 45 minute into the mountains to get to the Bolivian border. Now the road we were on was lovely asphalt that was like heaven on the bottom. As we got to the ridge of the mountain, the road continued up and over, however we took a dodgy dirt track off the nice road and this was our way to Bolivia. The asphalt road led to the Argentinean border. It was very obvious where the money was here.
This was the last we were to see of asphalt for a long time!!!
A 10 minute drive along this dirt track led us to a shanty hut that was Bolivian immigration. What a way to start our Bolivian adventure!!!
Literally from the border, we could see our first destination, Laguna Blanco (White Lake), called thus as it was dazzlingly white. It was also still iced over from the previous evenings chill, which gave some fantastic reflective views of the mountains in the Laguna.
Chris wanted to test how thin the ice was. At first he was reluctant to jump…. 
Then we jumped back into the car for another 1 hour, past dry mountains and deserts to the next stop, Laguna Verde (Green Lake). This one was a toxic lake that no animal was near!!! It was also called Green Lake for it’s many different colours of green, which in the space of 10 minutes, we saw many of!
Our next stop were the hot springs, an hours drive away! Yes, at 4500m there were hot springs!!! Although we were told we were not allowed to stay in them for long as it is bad for your health at such an altitude!!! The lads all jumped in, but the girls chose to jump dip their legs in!
It was then another 45 minutes to the geysers (there was a heck of a lot of driving on this trip!!!).
Now what you must understand about the Atacama desert and the National Park here is that it is very very dry. From the moment you enter, your skin dries up and you are very dehydrated! Hence the fact Naomi was having fun trying to transfer water in the back of the truck!!!
And then it was on to our final destination for the day, our hostel just west of Laguna Colorado. It was another hours drive to here. On the way we saw some ichuna (in the llama family). We do not know what they were living off here, looked like they were eating the rocks!!!
We had lunch a very late lunch at the hostel, before setting out to investigate the lake for the late afternoon. This was our first experience of the flamengos, and they were fascinating!!! Such elegant and yet daft birds! There are three types in this national park: Andean, Chilean and James. We never did learn how to tell the difference though, our Spanish wasn’t good enough to translate!!! At this time of year, only a thousand or so inhabit the lake, in the summer, there can be up t 30,000 here!!!
Laguna Colorado (Colourful Lake) is a magnificent red, which matches the pink of the flamingos. But it is multi-coloured hence the name.
Here the come the flamingos! (and trust me when I say this, this is a very very small selection of many lol)!
By the time we left the lake, it was getting pretty cold and dark. On average, at this time of year, the evenings get down to around –12 to –15 degrees!!! We were well prepared with our season 3-4 sleeping bags. Only thing that wasn’t ready was our hostel. Thin walls, thin sheets and concrete blocks for beds made everything seem even colder.
As dinner was over by 6.30pm, rather than go to bed, Phoebe and Drew, our fellow Aussie travellers, cracked out the travel Monopoly!!!! And then proceeded to whoop all our arses (think they had practised too much on their trip lol!) so that killed a few hours and settled the spirits before bed!
Day 4
After a very cold evening (which was barely noticeable except on our faces as they were the only exposed bits) we were ready to leave our hostel at 8am!!! However, our lovely trucks were not ready to go!!! One of them had died overnight, and then the driver flooded the engine trying to get it started in the morning! In all fairness though, we watched as they took apart a full engine, and rebuilt it!
We all just chilled out during this time, meditating, contemplating, listening to music, chatting, wandering……whatever took our fancy.
Naomi chose the scenic music listening point!!!
Until the llamas came to join us and entertain for a while!
So at 10am we were ready to go!! Once again, we had a long drive (about an hour) to the first point of interest, the rock tree, to be honest, the mountains in the background were just as impressive!
Then we drove on to an amazing and huge rock formation with strange green, moss like plants growing on it. Forgetting the altitude, we all had a rock climbing session that left us all shattered lol!
We broke down again here, so had some more time to contemplate………
Then headed to a collection of four lakes, the focal lake being next to the Flamingo Ecolodge (our lunch break) where we got to see even more animals and even more flamingos!!!!
And now time for the flamingos. Now this lake was even better than yesterday’s for flamingos and it was like a challenge to get as close as possible to get a good picture without scaring them off!
From our lunch spot, it was all driving for the afternoon :( as we were 2 hours behind, we had to make it to our salt hotel before night fall!!!
As we approached the fourth lake, there was a Culpeo or mountain fox (having obviously just come for a dip for some lunch) wandering back into the mountains, but was metres from the car!
We did have two brief pit stops on the way to see one of the active volcanoes and the first (small) salt flat, but other than that, it was all driving!
Just before getting to the town that housed our hotel, we passed through what was meant to be an army outpost, but looked like a derelict fort with teletubby buildings. It also manned the only railway line for miles!
And then we arrived at ‘home’ for the night. A hotel made completely of salt. Not just the walls and windows, but also all the furniture!!! It was amazing! Very comfortable and very accommodating for the evening!
The hotel also had a ‘bar,’ so before it shut, we got 3 bottles of wine between our group of 6 and enjoyed a very pleasant meal! And, as pre-arranged by Chris the previous evening, a night of poker and drinking ensued!!! Phoebe once again being the winner (we think something dodgy was going on lol!!!). Some star gazing before bed and then a very good nights sleep before our big day!!!
Day 5 SALAR DE UYUNI (The Uyuni Salt Flats)
The big day had arrived, the day that this trip was all about. The Uyuni salt flats.
It was an early start (4am) as we had all agreed to get up and drive to the salt flats for sunrise. But unfortunately we lost the other truck on the way, and after repeatedly telling our driving vamos (let’s go), after 30 minutes (and the sun nearly being up) he drove on at startling speed to get us there on time (when we got there, the other car was there and had just taken another route. Hmmmm not amused!). Didn’t spoil the sunrise though :)
We got a little bit eager and tried to do some cool pictures early on, but realising it was too dark, waited while watching the sun come up and played football!!!
As the sun comes up, you start to realise the spectacle around you. It’s just vast! The Salar de Uyuni is 10,582 sqm and is the world’s largest salt flat. It is at 3600m above sea level and it is so flat, that the most major the variance across the whole flat is only 1m in height!
There is a thick layer of salt across the top which is used for different kinds of salt (including the one you put in your food) all over the world.
We drove to a spot where you can see how the salt is dug up and produced.
And then it was time to drive to Incahuasi Island where not only was breakfast being served, but its also the main point for where all the legendary pictures of the salt flats are taken. We’ll let the pictures do the talking, but it was a lot of fun taking them!
To get to this photo 
Then we decided to climb Incahuasi Island which is an amazing island. It means Inca house and is an island in the middle of the salt flats. The terrain is harsh and rocky and it is covered in enormous cacti that are up to 10m tall (which takes over 100 years to grow)!
Back off the island and it was back to funny pics again, but this time with our fab group! Oh, and some more football!
So our 5 hours on the Salt Flats were up :( sad times :( after a great morning, we had to keep heading towards the town of Uyuni where we were to be dropped off :(
On the way, we stopped in at the original salt hotel with all original salt artifacts!
We were not amused as there were flag poles outside this museum, but no British flag, Naomi tried to block out the NZ flag while Chris made his own British out of the NZ flag!
And then onto the small village of Colchani for lunch. This village survives off the processing of salt and selling salt souvenirs!
There was a massive religious festival going on in the village when we got there. It was something to do with the Virgin Mary, but what exactly we couldn’t make out (and Uyuni were not celebrating it when we got there so possibly a local event!). There were a lot of very drunk locals, but all in traditional wear.
Naomi asked in her best spanish if she could take a picture of a grandmother and her daughter. The grandmother insisted on Naomi paying (much to the embarrassment of her daughter) and try to charge quite a lot. Naomi haggled and got her down and got a very good picture out of it!
Chris just hid behind a wall with the camera and took sly pictures without people knowing!!! Lol!!!
We were dropped in Uyuni, a pretty unimpressive and dirty town! We were thinking of spending a night there, but as the only cash machine in town was not working, and could possibly not be working till the end of the weekend, our only option was to move on to La Paz on the over night bus. But not before saying a decent goodbye to our friends ]]over pizza and death by chocolate cake desert first!!!
And that was the end of our wonderful tour with the fantastic and very fun Phoebe, Drew, Daniele and Luana.
:)
Excellent tips and great pictures! Here you can find more about San Pedro de Atacama hotels for your next adventure. Regards!
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