3 Days in Jeep

All right...after saying in the first post that I would put up pictures of Bolivia, I've finally gotten around to it. These photos are from our trip into Bolivia from Northern Chile. We left San Pedro de Atacama for a three day tour in Jeep that ended in southern Bolivia in a town called Uyuni on the edge of the largest salt flat in the world. I picked a few shots to show some of the highlights and mishaps...

Here is the entrance to Bolivia. I think we are already at around 4000 meters. For the entire trip the landscape is what I would imagine mars to be like, and the roads are just ruts that have been established by the Jeeps over years of use. At any given time there may by three or four jeeps all weaving in and out of some seven braided tracks cutting acros the altiplano.

This is one of the more impressive sights that we had along the trip. THis lagoon is at 5000 meters. We spent our first night at a refugio on its coast. During the day the lagoon turns due to a combinaiton of the microorganisms that live in it and the wind agitating the surface. When we woke up the next morning it was calm and the lagoon had a more vlue-green appearance. On top of the amazing color, its filled with flamingos. The guide told us that there are three varieties of flamingos that inhabit it, and that its one of the only places in the world where that happens. He could be full of shit, but its a nice story either way...

It didn't take long before we ran out of gas. The extra tanks were on the roof and our guide pulled out a hose to start funneling it into the Jeep. Bostjan offered to help and told war-stories about how "growing up in Yugoslavia we did this all the time!" He jumps out ofthe Jeep grabs the hose and starts pulling gas down out of the tank.

Appearantly, in Yugoslavia they don't keep their gas reserves on the roof because Bostjan got a mouth full of gas before handing off the hose to our guide to try his luck.

Success. After the gas clamied Bostjan's mouth as its first victim, it struck our guides mouth and eyes! Bostjan steps in to save the day and fill the tank while our guide rinses out his eyes, claming to be totally fine to keep driving....

This is a photo of the not-so-elusive Viscacha. Its like a strange cross-breed between a rabbit, a rodent, and a squirrel. It live in the altiplano and eats whatever you throw at it. They sometimes take on a green tint and bounce up and down these rock faces like spring-loaded mountain goats. They're used to the tourists and come right down from the top of the rock when they hear the Jeeps approaching, looking for some kind of handout.

Local kids from a town on the edge of the salt flat. Its a tiny village and a herd of gringos walking around attracts everyone's attention. We were all hesitant about taking photos at first, but they had obviously seen digital cameras before and were insistant about seeing themselves on the view screen. It was pretty sad and our first exposure to the kids begging in Bolivia. We were to find out that they were in every city, town and village and dealing with them never got any less uncomfortable. I don't like giving handouts and you don't always have spare food handy, so it was pretty hard to know what felt right most of the time. To justify their begging with money or stand by the belief that its better to discourage their begging by not giving. It the end, I don't think not giving does much, as the only other alternative is child labor. And as we saw, the child labor in Bolivia often turns from slling gum on the stret to going to work in the mines pretty quickly.

Part of group after a hike up one of the rock formations we encountered along the way. The terrain wasn't like a desert, as there was not much sand, but rather pure rock. Some times we crossed areas where the rocks were smaller, and some times larger, but always pure rock with little or no vegetation, save for the plants that found a crack in a rock where they could root themselves.

The group playing around on the Salar de Uyuni. In the front is Sarah, with Bostjan and Freddie in the second row, followed by Han, Dino and me in the back.

The far edge of the Salar near the town of Uyuni. You can se how they harvest the salt here to be packaged in the nearby village. The salt miners work every day of the week ankle deep in water shovelling salt into mounds to later be shipped by truck off of the salt flat.

Large parts of the falt were covered by a thin layer of water. It was incredible to be in the middle of it and feel like you were driving across the ocean. Here is bus leaving Uyuni and heading for god-knows-where. I have no idea how the drivers were able to navigate their way across the Salar as thee were no roads and it took a good seven hours to make it to the other side.

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