Lost in Vacation: Chile

Once again in the bus, we saw the flat of Yuyui disappearing in the rear window and soon we were passing the first cactus, Llamas and Vicuñas in the altiplanos of the Precordillera de los Andes. At the 4300m Paso de Sica we shortly had to gasp for air while handling the Argentinian border formalities, but soon we where "down" again at San Pedro in the Atacama desert of Chile.

At the Argentinian border post. Hypoxia makes Stevie grumpy ;)

Travelling also means searching for your true Self...

Slurping Mate in the Bus

San Pedro is as Mexican as it can get considering that we where in Northern Chile: Painted and scalding wooden doors in red clay walls, dusty sand roads and a merciless sun above. The heat didn´t really fuel our motivation to do things like sandboarding or riding bikes through the desert, so we just visited the nearby Valle de la Luna.

Valle de la Luna

The man on the moon

Unreal

Tall blondes are always very popular photo backgrounds

What we missed by skipping the Ho-Chi-Minh tunnels, we got in the Moon Valley

Daredevil

Rocks at the Valle de la Muerte. Originally called Valle de Marte - Valley of Mars - by some Danish pastor, who seemed to have similar pronunciation problems like me.

But the principal magnet of the Atacama region is the 3-day Jeep tour to Bolivia. It is not only the most scenic, but also the cheapest and fastest way to get from San Pedro to Southern Bolivia, the region of the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. It is not one of these Jeep Tours where you might as well go with a low-slung Opel, it is one where a Jeep is really necessary. And better not one of the new American models, as we´ve been told by our driver, but an old Toyota which he can just fix with his tool box and a bit of wire, should something go wrong in the middle of the desert. There are no roads, just rough tracks of sand, rocks, riverbeds and gravel. ´Cause what is called desert is actually a variety of landscapes, as different as they can get without almost any flora and fauna.

Pit stop at a hot pool. Now I know, Borax (whatever this is) makes skin itch...

Enduring scalding heat and freezing cold

A maverick. The volcanic pool, not Stevie

I guess the view from the floor was not good enough ;)

Flamenco!

On the bow of the Titanic

But the biggest risk on this trip are overtired (and sometimes drunk) drivers, who literally have to spend all their lives in the Jeeps. They can call themselves lucky if their wife is a cook in one of the two lodgings on the track.
But due to a misunderstanding in the price negotiations we went with a more expensive but also more reliable company, which maybe was a lucky twist for us, as some really bad accidents occur on this tour now and then. On our second day, a Jeep of another company overturned, down a steep riverbed. (Luckily nobody was hurt too gravely.)
But our driver was always perfectly sober and, apart from the occasional coca-leaves he was chewing, perfectly clean. He also answered sporadic questions of his passengers patiently like: "Will there be more sun tomorrow?" "Depends on the weather." Or: "How does the Salar look like when it hasn´t rained?" "Dryer."
We also had luck with our travel companions, who were an interesting mixture from Germany, Switzerland and Vorarlberg. At least the German spoke a language we could understand ;) Even tough some of us had problems with the altitude, especially during the first night at about 4500m, we had a great time together and with some of them we kept travelling until Lima...