uyuni (part 1)

We got up at 5:00 and took yet another very long bus ride, to Bolivia. The bus this time is pretty rudimentary, and the road is quite bad, we get pretty shaken up. Sleeping is not really possible for me. We drive to Ollagüe, the last town on the Chilean side of the border, where we have to get out and wait around for customs for about an hour. It is quite cold, we are high up. There are volcanoes all around us, and a lake with flamingos. It was too dark for me to get a good picture of them though.

Bus switch in no-man’s-land.

Then on to Avaroa, the first town on the Bolivian border. Right away we discover that Bolivians aren’t as friendly as Chileans…the border control dudes were rude and demanding.

It is light by  now and the scenery in the altiplano is spectacular. However, it is freezing and the bus doesn’t have heating or a bathroom. The Bolivian buses aren’t nearly as comfy as the Chilean ones. This is our first taste of Bolivian buses, but unfortunately, not the last.

 High in the Andes, the altiplano.

We continued on to Uyuni (population ~10,000, elevation ~3600 m), and also immediately see that Bolivia is completely and utterly different from Chile. Not just the buildings, general look of the place, and dirt streets, but also the people look completely different.

The women wear bowler hats, layered skirts, woolen knee socks, sandals, and shawls or blankets wrapped around their shoulders. They carry things in colorful blankets on their backs. Some of the women are laden like pack mules….and I don’t see the men carrying anything.

After the bus ride, we realize that we should seriously consider getting canvas bags for our backpacks…they are completely covered in dust. Not for the last time, either. We are met at the bus station by a woman who says she got a call from our friend Freddy at the Calama bus station. (We had a long conversation with Freddy about busses, schedules, prices, tours, etc.) She is from a tour agency and wants to give us a tour of the Salar. But all I want to do is go to a hostel and sleep off the migraine from the jolting bus ride. We end up declining and later going with a different company.

We were lucky, it happened to be market day when we arrived so there a bunch of stands on the main drag. We bought textiles that all the women here use to carry stuff around in, and also, in preparation for going to the salt flat the next day,

cheap sunglasses!

Bolivia is much poorer than Chile, and definitely a “developing country”, which means it’s very cheap for tourists. For example, our tour company is family-run out of their home: at the back of the storefront is a curtain, behind which is luggage storage and their sleeping area. The reception area with the desk and some couches is their living room. Every time we enter, the family is huddled around the gas heater, watching tv. The tour, which took a full day, cost less than 20 Euros, and included lunch.

part two about the Salar coming up laterzz....

chuqui

Our next stop was Chuquicamata, which until recently was the world’s largest open-pit copper mine. Copper is one of chile’s biggest exports. The mine is state-owned, runs 24/7 and employs in total something like 60,000 people, including all the bureaucracy/office workers.  

There used to be a town here for mine employees, called Chuquicamata, but in 2007 the population was forced to leave because the mine has gotten too big and too close to the town. They have all moved to nearby Calama and I believe the company had to offer them houses at dirt-cheap prices as incentives to get them to leave.

 

abandoned playground of chuqui: in the background, hills of refuse from copper processing

street in chuquicamata

The mine pit is 5 km long, 3 km wide, and 1 km deep. The copper concentration in the rock is 1%. Which sounds like nothing to me. For those of you with poor math skills, that means that in order to extract 1 ton of copper, they have to haul and process 100 tons of otherwise useless rocks, leaving them with 99 tons of refuse. But apparently it is worth it, even in these days when copper prices have apparently fallen significantly. Also, there are other mineral by-products which are marketable as well.

They are in the process of connecting the main mine with two other mines right next to it: Mina Sur (“south mine”) and Mina Name-of-some-dude-which-I-forgot. Once the three mines are connected, it will again be the largest in the world, and the length of the mine pit will be around 15 km.

 

the mine pit

There are three truck sizes at “Chuqui”: large, larger, and largest. The largest is the largest in the world, and, naturally, german.

The smallest, (Komatsu, Japan) holds 170 tons, the medium truck (Liebherr) 330, and the biggest (also Liebherr) 370 tons. Unfortunately, we did not get to see one of the biggest ones up close.

 me and steffi next to a medium truck

 

a truck in the truck garage, having it's 7 ton tires checked.

More about the biggest truck in the world, here, in German.

 

to give you an idea of the scale of the pit: do you see the giant truck in this picture?!

pools where copper is being processed

More pictures of trucks are here: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#22.1

cabalgata

my new life goals: a horse, a dog, and the atacama

early monday (22.06.) morning we got up to start our 2 day horse ride in the desert. it was just me, steffi, our guide, Roberto, and of course, 3 horses. and also 2 awesome dogs from the ranch that followed us.

We cantered/galloped a few times, and wow, it was crazy. I’ve only cantered before under more controlled circumstances, you know, in circles, under a roof. Or outside with summer camp horses who go short distances and then quit. But this horse just took off and wouldn’t stop, and was way faster than any other horse I’ve been on, it was so awesome. Actually the first day I was totally taken by surprise and discombobulated, but the second day I was better at it.

We rode through areas where the pre-Incan peoples used to hang out, there were millions and millions of pottery shards, and also a few bones, and ruins/walls remaining:

Our “camp” was at a half-finished building in the middle of nowhere which I guess belongs to the ranch. The ranch people drove out with the supplies we needed, our tent, and also dinner. After talking a bit with Roberto we discovered that he is slightly crazy… he keeps bringing up blood circulation and “equilibrium’ as the answer to all ills. The next day at lunch he was talking about “photons” and the 4 alien races, and that Jesus was an extra-terrestrial. Smile and nod, smile and nod… Also, he is the first person in the world to guess that I am around 30 years old, and so obviously I have to hate him for that.

We had the most amazing night sky, I’ve never seen so many stars, and the Milky Way too! The Atacama is supposed to be one of the best places on earth to stargaze. Also, it is so incredibly silent. If you are not making noise yourself, there is none.

It got really cold at night, I was freezing, even though I was wearing all my clothes on top of my pyjamas, but the sleeping bags that we borrowed from the hogar weren’t so good. When we woke up the next morning, all the water jugs were frozen.

i had a hard time taking good pictures because a) i was on a moving horse and b) the sun was very strong and bright and all the pictures were washed out.

The scenery was amazing, we mainly rode through the oasis the first day and the second day we were in the desert all day, in the cordillera de la sal. We rode through ravines and up sand dunes, and on a scary little path with a million-meter drop-off to the side.

It doesn't look so scary in the picture, but our guide was really impressed with us on that bit, since we didn’t even bat an eyelash. Supposedly those wimpy women are always screaming and dismayed at that part. Whatever. Now he is convinced that all German women are hardcore.

After the beauty and silence of the desert, once we got back to San Pedro, I thought the town, which I had found so cute before, looked so squalid…and the tourists were even uglier.

We were groaning and moving like little old ladies for days afterward.

All in all, it was utterly amazing, and one of the best things I’ve ever done, I’m so glad I didn’t give up on the idea. And I want to go back.

pictures: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#21.0

 

el tatio

Sunday morning we woke up at 4 am to see the el tatio geysers. We were picked up at our hostel by the tour agency we booked with, luckily the van had heating. It was a 2 hour drive out to the geyser field, however the road was very rough so I couldn’t do more than doze a little bit. The van took us directly to El Tatio geyser field, which according to my guide book is the geyser field at the highest elevation in the world, at 4,400m above sea level.

ugh, it's still dark.

The geysers aren’t geysers of shooting water, they are steam plumes. The lava underground from a volcano heats up an underground river, which begins to boil. (At least that’s what our guide said, I haven’t been able to find any information on it) The hot water boils out of holes in the ground and produces plumes of steam on contact with the cold air. The reason we had to go so early in the morning is because that is when the temperature difference is the highest, causing the most spectacular plumes. Our guide said normally it is around -18 degrees C, but we got lucky and only had -12. I was not prepared for the cold, if I had known, I would have worn tights under my pants, as we were hanging out there for a while. My camera hand, which didn’t have a glove on it all the time, was freezing and the next day the skin on my hand was all messed up and dry and ugly.

Our tour guide set up breakfast: coffee/tea, balogna, cheese, bread, and cookies…he warmed up the milk for the coffee by sticking the carton in a geyser…and after about 20 minutes the balogna was frozen. I had my first “mate de coca”, tea made out of coca leaves, which, among the many other wondrous properties ascribed to it, is supposed to be good for altitude sickness. I don’t feel sick, but walking uphill is difficult, that is, breathing is difficult.

There is one geyser they call the “killer geyser” because in the last year or so 6 people fell into it and died afterwards from the scalding. The water has a temperature of around 86 degrees Celsius. The ground in some places is not really firm, just a crust, and can break under your feet.

the killer geyser

There was also a thermal pool where we could swim, but I didn’t have a bathing suit, also, did I mention that it was -12 degrees outside? Yeah, so, no. Steffi swam though, I guess she is just a bit more Teutonically hardcore than me...

After the geysers we drove to a tiny one-street town called Machuca, with an official population of 40 (and year-round population of 7). on the way we saw a bunch of vicuñas (wild camelids, smaller than llamas), vizcacha (chinchilla family), and llamas. Also we drove by a field of huge cactii.

baby llama

Once we got back to San Pedro we had a great lunch and walked around a bit, and went to the museum, on the history of indigenous Andean cultures. We bought some bread and sardines to eat for dinner in the hostel common room, and drank the half-bottle of red wine someone had kindly left, yessssssssssss.

All the fotos of San Pedro and the geysers are already online here! I don't know if i mentioned it yet, but in the two weeks of the trip i took over 1,500 fotos...so these are just some of them.

trip

so, ich bin wieder da. ab sofort wird mein blog auf englisch sein, da sich einige beschwert haben. ich vermute, dass die meisten deutschen die mitlesen englisch koennen, meine ganzen amerikanischen freunde koennen aber gar kein deutsch.


so, steffi (the other german volunteer) and i set off for 2 weeks of vacation. every three months we have to renew our tourist visa by lleaving and re-entering the country. we used this as an excuse to go north (where it is warmer than here!)
in temuco it had been rainy and cold for days. the day we left the weather was great and the sun was shining.

our plane

when we arrived in santiago, it was pouring, all the streets were flooded, cars were stalling, etc. etc.
from santiago we took a bus to san pedro de atacama, a bus ride of about 25 hours. the first half was overnight, when we woke up the next morning, we were in the atacama desert and the scenery was pretty much the same for hours and hours:





until all of a sudden, behind a hill a town appeared:


and then the ocean!

the town is antofagasta. from there it was only a few more hours (about 5) of desert until we reached san pedro.
san pedro de atacama is a very cute, tiny oasis town with adobe housing. it looks nothing like a typical chilean city. it was a center of atacameno indigenous culture before the arrival of the spanish.





i really liked san pedro a lot. the only problem is, it is overrun with tourists! it was pretty hot in the sun (20 degrees) which was a welcome change from the cold of temuco. but at night it was very cold. also, the air is really dry (duh-the atacama is the driest desert in the world, and every morning i would wake up completely parched.
we stayed in a nice hostel which cost only about 8 euros per night. we arrived saturday night around 7, after 25 hours on a bus. since we only had a few days in san pedro, we decided to go see the geysers the very next morning, meaning we had to get up a 4 am....! but i will save that for the next post, i'm off to lunch!