Bolivia and the past few days!

Our time in Bolivia was short, but for the most part great. La Paz wasn´t great for a couple of reasons, it’s a large dirty city and my dad got food poisoning. We aren´t sure from what but he had to spend the day resting and I walked around La Paz. Fortunately he was only sick for 1 day since the next day we spent most of the day on the bus and train getting to Uyuni. The next day we were picked up in a 4 wheel drive vehicle and took off with 4 other people, the driver-guide and a cook. Our first stop was at a train grave yard outside Uyuni. It was full of very old rusty trains it was pretty neat but we were looking forward to getting out to our next stop. The next stop being the Uyuni Salt Flat, the world’s largest salf flat, covering over 10,000 square km. It was the largest expanse of whiteness I have ever seen. It kind of reminded of Great Slave Lake frozen over in the winter except it was +35 and not -35. We were told to bring sunglasses and I did, but I didn´t really take their warning seriously. It was even more blinding than the snow though and I´m glad I has brought my sunglasses. We drove for an hour on the salt flats before reaching an island where we had lunch. The island was full of cacti all over the place! After lunch and having taken some fun pictures, such as the ones below, we drove on the flats for another two hours before reaching land. On land we drove for an hour on a bumpy trail and slept overnight in a small town. Our hotel was made of salt bricks and was really neat!

My dad and I having fun at the Salt Flats.

Pay back time for stepping on me.


The next morning we got up and took off on another bumpy road. The entire way was pretty much off-roading, with the only trail the one formed by the jeeps taking tour groups or a few farmers. We could see volcanoes all around us and did a lot of driving this day. We stopped at numerous lagoons to see pink flamingoes! There were also a few lagoons that we red, yellow or green from some algae growing in it! We also saw a small tornado, a whole lot of desert, volcanic rock formations and even hail.

Me at one of the lagoons with pink flamingoes in the background.

The third day we were up at 4:30 and off at 5. Driving in the dark, we reached our highest point of 4900m for sunrise. We were at the crater of a volcano and walked around at the top. It was pretty spectacular; there was smoke everywhere and lava boiling in different holes. It smelled very strongly of sulfur. It was very impressive. After the volcano my dad and I got dropped off at the Bolivia -Chile border where we crossed into Chile. After a long and inefficient wait at customs we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama where we spent the day until we had to catch an evening bus to Iquique.

Reaching in to touch the lava...not.

My dad asked me to make the reservation for the hotel in Iquique since he said that I need practice doing these things for when I´ll be on my own. The third hostel I called had a room for us so I was done my job! We caught our bus and arrived in Iquique at 2:30 am. The hostel was 7 blocks away so we decided to walk. I was pretty uncomfortable walking in the dark at such a late time, in the almost deserted streets. It went well other than the few sketchy people we saw and prostitutes standing on the first corner we walked by. We arrived at the hostel only to find out that they didn´t have any room for us. The man who ¨took¨ my reservation was there but didn´t really have anything to say about it. We didn´t know what to do and the owner ¨kindly¨ let us sleep outside in the yard on their lawn chairs (she wasn´t very nice about it and felt that we should be more thankful even though her hotel told us they had a room for us). It took us a while to fall asleep but when we did we both slept quite well. My dad said that it was the last time he let me make a reservation at a hotel. It was definitely the most star hotel we´ve slept at though! The next morning we packed up our stuff and went on the search for a hotel which proved to be hard since there was a festival in the town. We finally found one and could start enjoying ourselves. We did a lot walking along the beach and went swimming in it yesterday! This morning my dad left back to Lima by bus to catch his plane! I am in Iquique for another 2 days before I leave to see Stephanie!

My dad in our five (hundred) star hotel!