But, we made it into Bolivia! It's really only a short distance from San Pedro de Atacama. We made it from town to the Bolivian border in less than an hour. After making it through, we stopped at the edge of Laguna Blanca for breakfast. It was freezing cold! Most of our day was spent at 4,300 meters above sea level (13,780 ft.). We snapped this picture at the breakfast stop.
The Bolivian border is in the middle of the Andes Mountain Range. From there, we drove for about 100 km through desert terrain. We had a Bolivian driver in a 4WD Toyota Land Cruiser. There was also a Chilean woman and a Brazilian woman on the tour with us. This was our sweet desert ride:
The main part of the trip was a visit to Laguna Colorada. It's also at about 4,3oo meters above sea level and in the middle of the Andes! It's so bizarre: a colorful water oasis in the middle of colorless desert. Best of all there were lots of animals! We first saw a herd of nine vicuñas! This is a nice picture of one from pretty close.
There were also many flocks of flamingos and there were lots of llamas out there. Notice the llamas have cute hairdos? Well, they belong to people who live out here. They let them graze and eat at the lagoon. There was quite a few of them. We got pretty close, but they didn't seem to like us very much. Carly did get to almost touch the baby, but that didn't pan out.
It's hard to explain how big this valley was. It just went on forever and was surrounded in the distance by mountains bigger than Mt. Ranier! Standing in this valley really put in to perspective how small one person is:
Much of the water around the edge of the lagoon was frozen, but there were a few small hot springs scattered about. This one was probably about 75 degrees:
After we left the lagoon, we climbed to the maximum height of the day: just under 16,000 feet above sea level! I had a little trouble breathing during the day, and it was particularly noticeable when we reached the highest point. Carly said she didn't really notice until we made it to the highest point. Even though all we did was walk around, I got terribly winded!
At the highest altitude of the day is where we got to see some volcanic activity. There were a bunch of boiling pits of doom! Note the cool signs!
After our long day of exploring the Andes, we stopped for a late lunch and a dip in a hot spring. It was probably close to 90 degrees. It felt really nice to just relax in there for a while and enjoy the vast landscape.
After lunch, we made one last stop at Laguna Verde. It's very close to the Bolivian/Chile border. It has an intense green color ('verde' is green in Spanish). We didn't stay long because it was windy and terribly cold. The mountain behind us there is a little less than 20,000 feet tall! That's almost as big as Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska! It just doesn't look so high because we are at 14,000 feet in the picture!
We spent Saturday just relaxing and walking around San Pedro de Atacama. We had a very busy three days exploring the area, so it was nice to lounge in the hammocks. We met Cati, the hostel owner's daughter. She's five years old and oddly amusing. We practiced our Spanish with her. It was pretty fun!
We would've posted more while we were in San Pedro, but the internet was sketchy. Also, power was shut down to the entire town a few times while we were there. This morning we flew back to Santiago for a couple days. We fly to Montevideo, Uruguay on Tuesday morning.
Tomorrow, we're going to hang out with Nacho and our old New Zealand flat mate Ollie! She's from the Czech Republic. We're glad we get to see her one more time since we probably won't see her again before we go home for good.
1 comment:
Everything looks soooo amazing! I love the pic of you relaxing in the hot spring! thanks for sharing your adventures.
Post a Comment