San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

It´s been a little while. After Sucre we went Potosi with out Irish friends for one night, to a great hostel with a super warm shower. There wasn´t much there, a few restaurants here and there, though it was the highest city in the world. There was, however, a tour of the local silver mine, which sat inside a huge hill that overlooked the city. We decided to go for it, and we were not disappointed.

We woke up at 7:30 to have breakfast and then headed out to get our mining outfits. We were outfitted with helmets, headlamps, pants and a jacket. Then we headed towards the actual mines, where, before entering, we were given an explanation of the extraction process. In any other country these processes are considered obsolete. Bolivia is very, very poor.

Into the mines. The miners are known to worship the devil, as they are in his domain. We saw llama blood on the outside wall of the mine entrance, a sacrifice to "el tio". Once we entered we had to start crouching and crawling, and it was getting dustier. Every once in a while we saw men working. 4 guys would come by on the tracks dragging a mine cart filled with two tons of excavated rock. They looked exhausted. We kept moving and had to crawl down to the next level though a tiny diagonal passage. It was getting more difficult to breathe, and we had cloths over our mouths. Down another level, through a vertical shaft (some people stayed behind), where we saw a man drilling. At this point the dust was getting unbearable, and we were all becoming exhausted. Our guide finally told us that we were to make our way back out. It was a slow, tough climb out of the mines, and at the last stretch we could feel the cool air from outside rushing in. It was boiling in there! We rushed towards the light, and then we were out! Totally devoid of energy, we all sat and slowly removed our mining gear. Everyone started saying how brutal it was, and we all realized that the miners worked 10-12 hours every day, where we had been in for only 3. Tough life...apparently they eat 4 servings for breakfast, chew coca leaves all day, and then eat 4 servings for dinner. Crazy.

We got back to the hostel at 3:30, and had to wait for showers for a long time. We had to catch a bus to Uyuni at 6:30, and we still needed to eat dinner. After all the showers were done, we went out to find a restaurant quickly. We decided to go to one that we had been to the previous night. It turned out to be the worst choice, the food taking more than 30 minutes to arrive at the table. We ended up pulling up to the bus station 30 seconds before our bus left. We piled on, and then realized that our bus was much worse than our bus company had told us. For 5 hours we endured the bumpiest road of our lives (it felt like a jackhammer was pointed into my tailbone), in the worst seats of all time. Many laughs at that. Fortunately the trip ended up being way shorter than the bus company told us (10 hours), so we arrived at Uyuni at 12:30 and found a hostel right away. The next morning we booked a tour of the Salar de Uyuni (The salt flats). It ended up being the most amazing thing I´ve seen all trip.

That morning with the Irish couple (Fergal and Dervilah, a.k.a. Ferg ´n Derv), we piled into our 1990 Toyota Landcruiser (the perfect tool for the job), and headed out to see the train graveyard just outside of Uyuni. It was really interesting, seeing german trains from the early 1900´s just sitting there abandoned. They were beautiful trains. We then headed out to see our first glimpses of the salt flats. A while surface extended out to the horizon. It was like an hallucination, seeing an unobstructed surface go on forever like that. Cars would pass by, and you could watch them drive until they disappeared. And it only got weirder.

We passed several points of interest on our travels towards the horizon. Cold gas leaks in the ground, a hotel in the middle of nowhere that was made entirely out of salt, and the hexagons. The hexagons were my favorite part. Shapes made by fissures in the ground, the hexagons looked like the shapes made on cracked desert floors, smaller and smaller as they aproached the edge of the sky. Totally, totally amazing. We kept driving, and I eventually noticed that we were approaching a dark mass. It got bigger and bigger until it was big enough to walk on. It was an island in the middle of the salt lake, covered in the biggest cacti I have ever seen. We ran around the island amazed at what we were seeing. We have so many amazing photos...we can´t post them until later...anyways, we left the island, and halfway to our next destination, we got a flat tire. The timing was absolutely perfect because we were immediately greeted by the most incredible sunset of my life. I can´t describe it! Endless white to the horizon met by a sky set on fire, getting redder and redder as the sun dropped. Totally breathtaking. I knew right there that that would probably be the greatest sight of this trip. The sun finally disappeared, and it began to get much colder so we hopped in the car and headed to our first night of sleep.

The next morning we got up to a breakfast of eggs and toast, and then headed out once more. We had left the salt flats the previous night, and we were going through some very deserty landscape. It was also beautiful, in a more conventional, less alien way. We passed a few sights of geological interest along the way, as well as some cool looking lagoons. It was the most photogenic landscape I had ever seen. A bad shot could not be taken. Photos will explain.

That night we slept in a hostel that was in the middle of it all, where the temperature was said to drop to -20 degrees. We stole blankets from other rooms and wore all our clothes. In the morning I recorded -10 degrees. Needless to say, it was damn cold.

That morning we visited some geysers, which were impressive. Lots of pits of bubbling fluids and such. Then we went to a hot spring where I sunk my feet in the water. It was the perfect temperature. After that, we had to say farewell to our tourgroup, and the Irish couple (who are the coolest people we know!), and the guide brought us to the Bolivia-Chile border. We thought we were going to have to pay $130 dollars US to get into Chile, but apparently we didn´t, which was GREAT.

No we are in San Pedro de Atacama, which is a touristy town surrounded by the Atacama desert. We don´t have time to see the sites around here, because we booked a ticket for a direct bus to Santiago to see my family. It´s a 23 hour ride, so we paid an extra 20 dollars for the bed seats. They look great. Anyways, I´ll update once we get to my uncle´s place, and you´ll see many more photos, I hope....Shawn´s camera is screwing up so I hope we can upload photos. We´ll see, but in any case, more updates later!

Ron