Salar de Uyuni - Day 1

April 11

My friend CC whom I met here in SPA and I booked our Salar de Uyuni tour.  Its 3 days 2 nights and takes us from SPA through Salar de Uyuni (largest salt flat in the world) and ends in Uyuni Bolivia.  This is suppose to be an amazing tour and even though its costs $95k Chilean pesos ($160 USD) I feel that it will be worth all of that.  Plus it will get me into Bolivia and towards Sucre where I want to study Spanish.

From my research, I’ve discovered that because I have a US passport, I am required to have a Bolivian visa and pay $135 USD.  Since there is a Bolivian consulate in Calama (1hr) away, I took a bus there and tried to get one.  However they don’t issue visas there and I couldn't tell for sure with the language barrier if I could get one at the remote border crossing that I would be taking on the tour.  I talked to the tour operator lady and she said it would cost $60 USD or maybe $80 and I would be able to get one there.  I’m a bit skeptical as I read that they can be shady at the border crossing and require more money and never even give a visa or an entry stamp.  I was pleased to see that they process everyone quickly at the crossing and took my $60 USD and gave me a sticker visa in my passport along with an entry stamp.

We transferred from the van that we rode up to the border post into Toyota Land Cruisers.  There were 5 of us not counting the driver.  There were 2 other Land Cruisers in our group, and they had 6 tourists each.  It definitely was nice having the extra space.  There was a UK couple (Alex & Louise) and an Aussie guy (Ben) as well as CC and myself.  Our driver was Simón who spoke a little English, and had a lot of different music that he played through the stereo.  A great group of people to spend the next 3 days with.

The first places we visited was Laguna Blanco and Verde.  I think the Laguna Verde would have been better if it had been a sunny day.  Being overcast didn’t make the green color come out as much.  Seeing the Guanaco at Laguna Blanco made up for it though.  I must mention that we were at around 4300m (14k feet) and so there was much less oxygen.  The highest we got today was 5000m and the hostal we stayed at was 4300m.  My favorite part of the day was visiting a hot spring (Aguas Termanles Polques) and having a nice soak.  Wow! Did that dry me out at that altitude. haha!  We also stopped by a Geiser Sol de Mañana which sounded like a huge jet engine with all the gas escaping the earth.

We arrived at Hostal Huayllajara late in the afternoon and had lunch.  3 hours later they fed us dinner.  I wasn't really hungry but tried to eat some of the soup.  I then went to lay down as the altitude was causing me to not feel well. (around 14k feet)  The soup didn't stay down long and I ended up throwing it up.  I felt a lot better after that and went to sleep.