I think we're going to get Piscoed!

We arrived in La Serena just before mid day after our epic 16 hour bus journey where we passed the time by watching Four Weddings and a Funeral and eating Avocado, Cheese and Crisp rolls - the journey was fine and uneventful for us but unfortunately not for the guy sat behind us who had his bag stolen at the first stop. 

La Serena is Chile's second oldest city and we arrived to blue skies and 30 degrees. The B&B was great but La Serena is definitely only a one night stop for us. 

We went for lunch at a great little organic cafe and then walked down to the beach it was so nice to see and hear the sea but it is not an attractive place so we headed back in to the city in time for beer o'clock. An immediate difference that we both noticed is that there are no indigenous people here, everyone is dressed in western clothes with lots of people carrying bags full of Christmas presents and wrapping paper.

After a fairly lazy start to the day on Saturday we checked out of the B&B and walked to the bus station via the organic cafe (Ayawasi) where we stopped for a coffee and a piece of apple pie. 

Our destination, Pisco Elqui was only a two hour bus ride away and we'd been warned that without the sea breeze we should expect a 10 degree increase in the temperature in the valley.

Wahoo! Guess what, we arrived in Pisco Elqui and it was 35C and guess what else, we've booked another night.

 

We have a small cabin, a big pool and access to locally produced ice cold Sauvignon Blanc (Vina Falernia), we're a very short walk from the tiny village which, after last night we know has at least one very good restaurant we shared: bean ceviche (beans, olives and Heart of Palm marinated in lime juice), Squeaky cheese (like Halloumi) served with sun dried tomatoes and a bitter sweet honey dressing and lamb chops with mashed broad beans (how is it that people can not like broad beans) all washed down with a few Pisco's.....

For those of you not on Twitter here's a picture of the garden in our hotel.

It's like an English country garden

Right, I must away as it's almost time for our tour of the Pisco Distilliery - expect either a completely nonsensical blog update later or radio silence for the next 24 hours.

Raine x 

Diego, wake up it's time to go......

On Tuesday we decided to have a slow start to the day..... 

When we'd confirmed our Star Gazing Tour the previous day Ben and I had booked us all on a trip to go Sand Boarding and then on to visit Moon Valley and it wasn't starting until 2pm so it was lie-ins and late breakfasts all round.

We all met up at the pick up point for our tour, unfortunately the one person who didn't turn up was our guide but after an hour or so the agent that we'd booked through managed to find a reserve in Diego who looked about 15 with smashed glasses and the most peculiar beard, grown I imagine to make him look 15.

Whilst he was quite possibly the least effective guide and low energy person I've met we had a great day. 

Sand Boarding was hard work, so much so that Abs and I only did it once - walking up hill on sand, madness! Ben and Anthony went a few times before we called time and decided to wake Diego up to take us to Moon Valley.

Natural!

Naturals!

Moon Valley is a strange barren landscape with sand and stone formations that have been shaped over time by the wind - there hasn't been a single drop of rain in Atacama for over 400 years... It's credited as being the driest place in the world after Antarctica. These are facts that I found out before we arrived I don't get the impression that Diego had got to this part of his studies, or perhaps he fell asleep in that class......

The walk to the Great Sand Dune

At each point of interest Diego dropped us off and told us to be back in 10 minutes, it was very funny and not a problem he'll never know it but he pretty much made the day for me and to be fair when we asked to go to watch the sunset he pulled it out of the bag.

Sun setting Moon Valley

Sunset Moon Valley

After drinking our Cristal (remember it's a beer) sundowner it was pack to town for dinner and then Abs, Phoebe and I sat outside a bar close to our hostels and drank too many too strong Caipirinhas which resulted in my first hangover of the trip, I wasn't in a fit state to do anything other than drink fruit juice and eat ice cream the next day and can only imagine how Phoebe got through her 13 hour bus journey to Salta in Argentina.

Last supper....

Next is our first 16 hour bus journey which is to La Serena it will break the back of our trip to Santiago which is where we need to cross over in to Mendoza in Argentina.

Raine x

Starry starry nights

Monday was  one of those days that seemed to go on forever but for a day that started badly it ended beautifully.

Without knowing the shape that our day was going to take Abs and I had booked a star gazing tour in Atacama at 9pm on Monday evening, something that I've been looking forward to since I left England. 

We had a few hours to kill and after checking in to our respective hostels we met up with Martin & Jeanine, Ben & Phoebe and Gabby & Anthony in the Plaza de Armas for a couple of beers, lunch and a Pisco.

The events of 10 hours before are long forgotten.....

Les, who was the Astonomer and Guide on the Space Obs tour was both funny and interesting, there were a number of telescopes set up so that we could see amongst other things, Sirius the sky's brightest star which is beautiful when you look at it through a telescope and the 'Spider' constellation, which is without a doubt the sparkliest most appealing spider that I've ever seen.

It was so interesting to learn a little of the 'history' of stars - the tour finished with a cup of hot chocolate and bed just before 1am.

It was a long day and one that will stay in my memory for lots of reasons, primarily because it was the first time I'd seen Sirius up close - truly an amazing and captivating sight.

Raine x

Our driver's been drinking all night????

As we were sleeping in a dorm as soon as Martin's Swiss Army Knife App alarm went off at 4:30 we were all up and trying to dress by the light of a head-torch without exposing bits of ourselves.

I thought  it was strange that there was no one in the kitchen making breakfast when I went to brush my teeth (in the shared bathroom) at 04:45am as breakfast was due to be at 5am. I mentioned it in passing when I got back to the room and Jeanine joked about the fact that the previous night she had bet that we wouldn't leave before 7am.

Then a little after 5am Israel was banging on a door down the hall, clearly without much success as about 10 minutes later he told us that the lady who was supposed to be making our breakfast had overslept and that we would get breakfast at the Hot Springs which was going to be our first stop of the day followed by the Geysers and then the Green Lake before being dropped at the border for our crossing in to Chile.

Shortly after that I commented that I hadn't seen any of the drivers and Richard went to see if he could find them, returning five minutes later having seen no sign of them. A few minutes later I went to see if I could find Israel or the drivers to find out what the plan was.... no sign of anyone..... It's important to remember that we were in the middle of the desert more than 2 hours from the border with Chile and 8 hours from Uyuni with no mobile or radio communication....

As I was about to go back in to the refuge a 4X4 pulled up with six people in it, I was looking to see if I could see our drivers in the car when the driver got out and stumbled towards me saying "Tienes un Problema?" (Do you have a problem?) I responded sarcastically saying "do I have a problem?" and then realised that probably wasn't the best thing to do, he was falling down drunk, as it turns out were all of the other drivers who quite literally fell out of the car behind him.

Then I'm not quite sure what happened next but our driver from the previous day walked up to Israel our guide and poured a can of beer over his head, Israel lamped him and then there was blood everywhere and we changed from tour group in to UN peace keeping mission trying to negotiate a good outcome for everyone - it's not easy to negotiate with angry drunks. 

Ben, Emanuelle and Martin took the lead in trying to negotiate our collective way out of the situation, 

Abs, Phoebe and I walked the length of the refuge (four other buildings) asking if any cars were going to Chile with spaces but there weren't any. Then we found two men at the end of the block who we offered $300 dollars to but they claimed not to have any petrol. 

Ben, Emanuelle and Martin, in between stopping the fighting offered to drive the cars themselves, tried to bribe the drivers and at one point we seriously talked about the possibility of tying the drivers up (I am not joking) and taking the cars.

Eventually another tour group who were on their way to Uyuni offered us their driver to take us to Chile and then return to take them on their tour which was incredibally kind, they were 'paying it forward'.

The two hour trip to the border was quite stressful, there were too many people in it, there was too much luggage on the top of it and the driver was going too fast which made for some hair-raising moments on the bends. I don't think any of us thought we were going to make it, apart from Martin who in his lovely Swiss way kept trying to help everyone through the trip.

With the border in sight we breathed a collective sigh of relief but when we pulled up, the bus driver who coincidentally was our 4x4 drivers boss insisted that we pay $200 and he spoke to the border police who wouldn't stamp us out of Bolivia until we'd paid it - we initially thought it was a scam but it wasn't it. Any way to cut what is becoming a long story short we paid our money, got stamped out of Bolivia and arrived in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, somewhere that I'm really looking forward to.......

UN Peacekeeping Mission

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Raine x

Your driver's been drinking all day????

On day two of our tour we were up early for breakfast and back in the 4X4s to visit the lakes and rocks and flamingos it was an interesting day, made all the more so by the insight and information that Israel was able to share with us, he's a geologist and having him there to answer questions like; why does the salt form perfect cubes? Because of the crystalline structure known as infinite lattice and Why are the salt flats covered in hexagonal markings? Again, because of the 'infinite lattice' structure of salt.

It was hard for the second day to compete with the first, having never seen or experienced anything comparable to the Salt Flats I was blown away by them and whilst the lakes were interesting; The Red Lake (because it was) and the Stinky Lake (because it did) and the Flamingos (they really shouldn't thrive as well as they do in the altitude) - in my opinion the second day wasn't a patch on the first (just wait until you hear about the third!).

Red Lake

Stinky Lake (and flamingos)

A Rock....

We had been warned that our accommodation on the second night was going to be more basic, and it was. We were staying in a refuge with several other tour groups and we were sleeping in a dorm, something that Abs and I have been able to avoid up until now. But it was fine, it was only going to be a few hours in bed as we had a 4:30am start on Monday....

As an aside to my story, another group of four young girls arrived at the refuge just as we were sitting down for a drink, they were all very upset as their driver had been drinking throughout the day and was now drunk and they were scared to continue the tour with him the next day.

As a group we comforted them, shared our drinks with them and collectively came up with options for them for the following day. 

And when the girls were out of ear shot we smugly talked about how clever we all were for doing such thorough research, paying a bit more (because you get what you pay for, don't you?) and going with Red Planet, we laughed a lot about this later!

Friends, a word of warning - never be smug......

Raine x

I thought I felt tall in Ecuador.......

After a fairly mediocre and over priced breakfast at a hostel in Uyuni we walked to the pick up point for our three day tour. It was here that we met the rest of the members of what I have to say was a great group.

Israel our tour guide arrived and we were split in to two 4X4s for the tour, Abs and I were in Car 1 with Martin & Jeanine and Emanuelle who were all Swiss and Israel our guide.

Car 2 had Phoebe & Ben a great couple from Australia who are on a 6 month honeymoon, Richard & Koji who'd met at La Paz airport and decided to travel together for a few days and Gabby & Anthony from London.

Our first stop was only five minutes away at the Train Graveyard,the final resting place for the steam locomotives that many people believe were game changers for Bolivian industry, now left to rest and decay in the salty flats of Uyuni - not far incidentally from where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid died/were killed/committed suicide.

Where dead trains are laid to rest.

Sala de Uyuni is the worlds largest Salt Flat at 4,000 sq. miles - it also contains 70% of the worlds lithium reserves, unsurprisingly a business that all of the locals are trying to get in to - there ain't no money in salt that's for sure, 1 Boliviano for a small gift bag, that's about 8p......

Next stop was a small village where we saw how they refine and manufacture the salt for domestic use and saw some of the ornaments and tourist tat that the villagers produce - one of the many benefits of travelling for 6 months is that it's fairly easy even in our limited Spanish to explain that it's pretty impractical to buy gifts of salt or indeed a foot tall ornamental owl made of salt, so don't worry, although economically it would have made sense and I did consider a small gift bag of salt for each of you whilst it's cheap it's heavy so you aren't getting salt or salt based gifts.

After a lunch of Royal Quiona salad, steak and the most delicious apple pie I have ever eaten (sourced from a Swedish bakery in Uyuni) we headed to the salt flats which is an amazing place. I have never been anywhere like it and I have nothing that I can compare it to and I'm sorry but I fear that I'm not going to be able to do it justice with my words or my photo's.

It is massive expanse of space that feels like a giant optical illusion. Even though I knew that it was salt it looked like Sand and then Snow and then Ice, it really did mess with my mind, if it was sand it should have been soft and hot but it wasn't it was a solid formation and cool, if it was snow or ice it should have been freezing and slippery but it wasn't it was cool like marble and not slippery at all.

It's flat!

Because it's so flat it gives you a great opprotunity to take some 'perspective shots', we had so much fun taking silly photo's (see below) and filming a video (will publish to YouTube and send the link as soon as Wifi permits).

Abs and I Star-jump every opportunity we get.

I'm a giant in Bolivia....

Then we went to 'Fish Island' a strange piece of land covered in thousands of cacti in the middle of the salt flats which is actually the top of an ancient volcano before watching the sun set from the middle of the salt flats.

A cactus on Fish Island

Then it was off to our hotel for the night, a hotel made entirely of salt, including the beds, the dining table etc....   

Raine x