Moglander's Travels

Who let the dogs out – Humberstone

Posted on August 14, 2013 by sarah

Sadly we were on our last few days in Chile, but as they say all good things come to an end. Lucky for us though we are traveling North and still have loads of new adventures, new countries and new places to visit.

Sarah checking out the general store in Humberstone

From leaving Chuquicamata Mine we decided to take the coast road to Iquique but soon had to turn back due to protests on the road, unfortunately the inland road to Iquiqui was rather boring but at least it was pretty quick. Iquique itself is a major resort in Chile and is dubbed Chile’s Miami, with apartment blocks, seafront hotels and restaurants (good for sea-food) as well as the beach. One of the other attractions here is that many people are drawn by the duty-free (Zofri) shopping. Its quite a big place as we drove all the way through it, thousands and thousands of vehicles for sale, also vehicle related supplies and services, no matter which way you looked. There is an electronics section which we didn’t even venture into. Too afraid a new camera might be purchased, lol.! We spent only one night here but managed to park our truck in the FlyPark School, next to where the para-gliders land. It’s a pretty cool place, loads of 40 foot containers converted into living accommodation ( all welded together and fixed very solidly to the ground so as to protect them from the many earthquakes that Chile experiences ) for clients interested in paragliding. They also provide toilets , showers, cooking areas, table-tennis ( had a re match with Merv, was like being back on Grimaldi) and of course hammocks to lounge about in after your hard day. People from all over the world come to Iquique for a couple of weeks/months each year only for this . Anyone interested please look up www.parapenteiquique.cl for more information. They also take some overland trucks, have showers , toilets , electricity, small little kitchen which you can use and a great plus you can fill with water when leaving.

Santa Clara

We spent a great day visiting Santiago Humberstone and Santa Laura. Both these places represent the nitrate industry in Chile, long finished now and these places are ghost towns except for the visits made by tourists. You can wander freely around and in Humberstone you can see the remnants of the Industrial Sector, The Plaza, The Company Store (Pulperia),The School, The Market, a Hotel , a Theater, The Hospital, Living Quarters for the employees and Professionals. In fact there were living quarters also for bachelors and as in all employment different levels of accommodation depending as to what level you worked at. I must say it must have been an okay place to work as after all it did have a tennis court, happy days it got something right! In Santa Laura you can see the huge liquefaction plant and the massive crusher that still stands there, a pretty impressive sight . A very good museum which displays the everyday items of that era can also be visited in Santa Laura. In particular I loved the handbags of that era, hopefully someday I might be able to buy one similar to add to my collection. We asked the security guard was it ok to park overnight here, he said ‘sure’ no problem ,but just make sure that you are in your truck by 6.15pm as by 6.16pm he lets the dogs out, all six of them, yes all six of them and their first stop was our truck. First time we had been locked into a secure area, surrounded by six guard dogs for the night, we were as safe as a house!

Oficina salitrera Santa Laura

Who let the dogs out comes to mind!

Even though both of the above places are now ghost towns, it was still easy to imagine what life was like back then ( Humberstone first founded in 1862), perhaps not as modern as everything nowadays, for example all the children’s toys and the tools were made by hand on site, but yet they had everything required and needed for their work and relaxation. When you see the sheer scale of the industrial sector and how these things were built, they were great people who managed to do this, a lot of it achieved by hand.

All documented in triplicate

Simple bedroom

Bathroom

Strange Sculptures abound.

Bottle shop

Machine workshop

Old belt powered Lathe

24h per day geyser

The next seven or eight days we spent traveling up through Parque Nacional Volcan, Salar de Surire and Reserve Nacional Los Vicunas ,stopping off at some great remote places along the way. For example a dead-end road brought us to Puchuldiza geyser field with pools of very warm water. One of the geyser’s is active 24 hours a day and every few minutes you can see the colours of the rainbow through the water. As it is winter here we were able to see the ice that forms due to the down wind around the geyser. Another lovely place to stop at, and even park overnight was Termas de Polloquere , you have the entire place to yourself , with the flamingo’s and Vicuñas close by keeping watch. We used this place for some maintenance, we had to replace a hose so as to have hot water again. All in a days drive I guess. The Salar de Surire was entirely industrial with big trucks taking out loads of salt, and from here to the Bolivian border the road was a little quicker as it was slighty better maintained for the use of the trucks. Many little churches along the way , one in particular really took our fancy, so cute and quaint like. Really the scenery and views the whole way to the border were stunning, but it was not all maintenance free as we had to do another stop to replace our dirty diesel filters, luckily we had two with us, and within an hour we were moving again. Merv, the mechanic could not believe the truck needed a fuel filter change as the old ones were only in there a matter of weeks!! Dirty diesel I guess.

Iglesia de Llocuoma

Not exactly a main road

The road got pretty small at times

Fellow over-landers we used the Chile/Bolivia border Tambo Quemado (not many do) as it is used mainly for commercial trucks. When we arrived , there must have been at least a line 2km long of trucks. It is okay to drive right to the front and park to do your paper-work ,an advantage of being a tourist helped for once. It took us about 2 hours to get through,as you are competing and queuing along with the truckers plus you fill in your own TIP form (Temporary Import Paper). They did check for fruit and vegetables which was unusual , as entering Bolivia from Argentina they didn’t bother, but as you learn all borders are different, also they took 2 photographs of the truck, one being the outside, and the other of the inside, also unusual! An easy enough border, just a big jammed with trucks! Don’t try to get through in a hurry, the big trucks have precedence here. You rush to wait, you wait to rush.

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Probably, for the last time we said good-bye to Chile, but what a great country to travel in. We both enjoyed many great experiences here and visited it so much over the last 10 months ! Hello, Bolivia, its great to be back!

Categories: Chile | 2 Comments

Chuquicamata Copper Mine – Northern Chile

Posted on August 12, 2013 by admin

Huge truck up close. Ted.

I had my heart set on going to see the worlds largest open-pit mine. It’s not hard to visit, in fact the Chuquicamata Copper Mine runs a free 3 hour-long tour, and this is a bus based tour that actually drives down a short way into the mine itself! I had seen some large mines before, there is a large copper mine near Salt Lake City in Utah, USA that we loved, and we got to see a huge open coal mine on a trip in South Africa so we had a fair idea of what to expect, but the sheer scale of what this mine means is mind-boggling.

There are 16,000 people employed at the mine. That is an incredible number of people. One of my previous employers, Guinness, employed 10,000 people back when things were done more manually, and they provided banks, health centers, social clubs, a post office, housing and even a sports club and a swimming pool. I always thought that was good, but the Calama mine actually built a whole town. The town of Chuquicamata is now a ghost town because for environmental concerns they moved everyone to the nearby town of Calama. The old town is one of the stops on the tour, and here they explained to us how the mine works, and from old photo’s we could see the town at its best and in full swing, but now its simply abandoned! The hospital in its day was the most advanced in South America. Many workers did not wish to leave this mining town, and when we asked why, it seems they were living rent free, and with free water (a big thing in the Atacama).

The decay in the ghost town is everywhere.

The trees still live in the ghost town

I loved the way that the statue that used to look out over miles of open country now just sees the new mountain of waste material

Old town square

Some of the old town covered in waste material.

now, about 20% of the town has been buried beneath the waste from the mine!

the biggest of the big. This truck carries over 400 tons

There are a number of large machines at work in the mine, some of the largest in the world. The ones that really catch your eye are the mining trucks, huge machines that can transport hundreds of tons of material up 10% and steeper grades all day every day. These machines are enormous, with up to 17 steps to get from the ground to the drivers cabin. Since we just have 2 steps on the Mog, we start to feel pretty small. The largest trucks that are working in the mine carry 400 tons of material at a time. That is more than 10 large road going trucks! These trucks work 24 hours per day, 7 days per week and are operated by both men and women. Women drivers are very popular due to the fact that they take a lot more care of the trucks than the men do ! hmmm. There are 91 of these trucks working, and as many loaders, graders, bulldozers as you could shake a stick at. Certainly more than I had time to point a camera at! It takes a loaded truck one hour to get from the bottom of the mine to the top! It’s a kilometer deep and 3 kilometers wide.

Proper sized workshop for the proper sized trucks

That is still one of the huge trucks, just far away. ted.

Their newer mine will be all conveyor belt, making it cheaper than running the big trucks

Busy busy busy

Busy road

Trucks at work

New loader being assembled

The town of Calama surprised us, it has a shopping mall that made us feel we had landed back on earth after having been on the moon for a few months. Great town to get the larder re-stocked. We even managed a few packets of rashers!

Categories: Chile | 1 Comment

El Tatio – Highest Geyser Field in the World

Posted on July 31, 2013 by sarah

Snow blowing across the road

Snowstorms on the way to El Tatio Geyser Field

At one stage we really thought the El Tatio Geyser Field was going to elude us as we had made two previous attempts to get to see them, and the weather created quite an obstacle for us, yes we had snow. The problem wasn’t driving through the snow for us, we could manage that, or should I say for the truck , it was easy, but the visibility was very poor, as when we got there (lst attempt) we could see nothing. So decision time, would be stay and park up there at 4,300 m.a.s.l with the wind howling, blowing snow, with the temperature to go as low as possibility -20 , and wait to see what tomorrow would bring,or travel back about 25kms, park up at a lower altitude with less of a gale and perhaps not so cold! Obviously we decided on the second option, and fancied our chances for the next day. It wasn’t too cold were we parked overnight, only went down to -11 , but as our truck is small it is always cozy and warm inside, believe it or not we didn’t use our heater. We do have a heater but doesn’t always work over 3,500 m.a.s.l.

a look in the mirror.

Visibility was poor in the Atacama snow showers

Some snow had fallen overnight, but not a lot where we were parked, and so at about 11.am we decided to give it another try. So our 2nd attempt, the sun was shining, clear bright blue sky above us, how bad could it be, we were soon to find out. In fact we met two back-packers walking towards us, whom had spent the night in a tent, now there’s hardy souls, so we asked if they would like ‘a cuppa tea’, but they said no thanks, they were all sorted as they were heading to a sheltered hut to have their breakfast!. We drove slowly back up towards the Geyser Field, stopping to admire the wildlife en route, the llama’s, the vicuna, ducks as they walked across the frozen ice on the lake, and of course my favorite the Andean Foxes.

El Tatio Geyser Field Wildlife

There are some areas of marshy water where there are a number of different types of birds living. This duck was at about 4200 metres, and the water was mainly ice covered.

Andean Foxes, cute or what?

Vicuna

We met very little traffic, that in itself was telling us something, but never the less we continued on, until we met with a 4×4 pick up stopped in the middle of the road who told us that he had to turn around due to the lack of visibility. He wished us luck, but I guess in his mind he knew we would be stopping also, how right he was. After another 5 kms or so, the visibility was just impossible, you couldn’t see the road/track with the wind blowing the snow from one side of the valley to the other. There wasn’t any snow falling, it was just been blown around by the wind, very freak weather indeed! We decided to have our lunch, wait out the storm so to speak to see if it would change , but sadly it didn’t and so we made our return journey to San Pedro de Atacama. We were like locals along this route now, and returning back to the town meant we could do all the other great things that you have read about in our previous posts.!

heading back down, less and less snow

So we had a two day window of opportunity for our 3rd Attempt, us Moglanders do not like to be beaten, so we reckoned 3rd time lucky, and we were not disappointed. A great 83km drive back up in glorious warm sunshine, the other extreme of a few days ago, see what I mean about the freaky weather and parked up for the night in the Geyser Field. The best time to see these Geyser’s really is between 6 and 8 a.m. There are about 40 different geysers , and when the steam meets the sub-freezing dawn temperatures spectacular columns of steam are formed, up to 10 metres high, amazing sight.

This was no place for lightweights! 🙂

Some information about the El Tatio Geyser Field!

4320 m.a.s.l. is pretty high

Yes, these are the highest Geysers in the World! According to some 🙂

They sound like many kettles boiling together

Pretty hot, don’t you reckon!

has it all

but you do have to be careful too!

El Tatio Geyser Field Photos

Some of the great pictures that you can get up here!

The steam from the El Tatio Geyser Field is amazing in the early morning cold air

Most tourists depart San Pedro de Atacama at about 3:30am to get to El Tatio Geyser Field about an hour before sunrise.

before the sun breaks through

the early birds!

Come on Sun

The sun at last, to warm us up

There is still some very rusty pipework here, as many years ago attempts were made to harness some of this energy , but it wasn’t successful, and is no longer working, which is obvious from the photograph!

old rusty pipework, no longer in use

Looks even more rusty before dawn!

El Tatio Geyser Field has a nice hot pool

The hot pool here is also a great attraction, so what better person than Merv to try it out. Mind you he did wait until about midday before hopping in, I guess he thought it would be too cold to be exposing his body to the elements before then, how right he was!!!!, but once in he said it was glorious, I believed him but still decided to take the photographs for a change.

one, two, three, here we go

Thumbs up, its warm, thank goodness

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Atacama Stargazing at ALMA

Posted on July 27, 2013 by admin

high precision antennas ALMA Atacama stargazing

Moglander is dwarfed by the high precision antennas.

If Carlsberg were to make the best stargazing location in the world, it would probably be the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. When you visit the main tourist town, San Pedro de Atacama you will immediately see loads of tour companies with telescopes outside their doors, advertising their stargazing night-time trips into the Desert. Interestingly enough the best star-gazing tour company has no such telescope outside their office, which is simply called Space.

After we had spent some time here in the Atacama (and previously in the Salar de Uyuni), we have gotten more interested in the night skies as it is so easy to see it so clearly here. As we learned more, we recalled a documentary we saw on TV before we started our trip and it was about the largest radio telescope that anyone ever tried to build. It is called ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) and it’s right beside us in the Atacama desert. ALMA are not receiving visitors, and it’s a closed site however they do allow media visits, and after making contact and explaining what we are doing in South America we received permission to visit the site, and take a look around. We felt lucky, as this would be a real treat.

Start of the drive in to ALMA

On the day we had arranged, we headed up to ALMA. They have a security building at the end of the road up to the site, and we had to sign up for our security briefing. A large part of this is about safety, and since there is so much construction and change going on that makes sense. Merv, as the driver, even had to have a breathalyzer test as there is a no alcohol policy, and if you fail the breathalyzer test, you cannot enter! Next, they took out a digital thermometer to make sure we did not have a fever, another reason you would not be allowed to visit. Once we got through that process, we were allowed to drive from the security building to reception. This is a mainly straight road, and we were given the instructions to take the second right. Off we went!

20 minutes later, we took another photo, and yes, we were still driving!

a bit closer to ALMA

Once we got to reception, we were welcomed very nicely, and were met by a member of the safety team whose job it was to accompany us around, and make sure we were safe. I don’t think there was any fear of us running away with a telescope….. Once we were parked up, and had taken our few photos, he introduced us to an astronomer called Juan Rodrigo Cortés. This was a bonus for us as we got to find out a little about life working at over 3000 metres. Juan probably knows more about other planets than he does about this one, certainly he knew his way around a galaxy or 2 better than we knew our way around Chile! We asked about what it was like to work on such a site, and Juan proudly told us that working at ALMA was the most challenging in astronomy. During the few nights before our visit, they had over 100mph winds, and temperatures of -12 Celsius, which was lower than -40 Celsius when you include the wind chill factor. During these conditions, they did not stop the receivers, they had to stay working. This is a pretty Extreme site, everything is a bit tougher than normal. At most outside doors, there are factor 50 suntan location dispensers due to the very high radiation levels from the sun, the sunshine through the windows is so strong that full blackout blinds are needed if you want to be able to read your computer screens.

Juan’s workstation

We were surprised that Juan’s work station was just like any other office job. No blackboard and chalk, no telescopes, no globes, no hanging mobiles of stars, no huge box of charts. All the work is computerized now, and this is as high tech as it gets. They run a supercomputer, but Juan refers to it as a giant calculator. Interpreting all the information that ALMA captures is a bit like sifting through a box of clues, and that’s where the skill comes in. They can tell what chemical compounds are in different parts of space by the colors of it burning for example.

The idea of ALMA is to have a 16 Sq Kilometer sized telescope dish, but as that is not really practical in a machine that must be able to move, they will have over 60 separate smaller telescope receivers, each one 12 metres in diameter, and have them all integrated to act as one large dish. They have been building this for a few years now, and it’s not yet finished, however there are 33 dishes up and running already. in 2012 when they had just 16 dishes up and running they were able to start work and capture some of the ALMA’s first images. Some of these images are available on the ALMA website, and are simply stunning!

high precision antennas in the Atacama stargazing

Juan works in pretty extreme lighting conditions every day. Blinding sunlight or pitch black dark.

The large dishes look out over the mog like it’s not even there

28*28 beats 4*4 any day. ALMA’s transporter is an amazing machine.

Working at the ALMA location means you can be on-site for 8 days maximum, then take 6 days off at a lower altitude, or back at one of the other lower altitude ALMA offices. Only then can you go back up to the higher site. The actual antennas are located over 5,000 metres above sea level, so working up there is especially tough. There are between 200 and 300 people working on the site, and due to it’s location, there are no handy nightly trips into town for a little R&R! The site is completely self contained, with a Gym, canteen, Cabanás (little houses) and of course, great working conditions. We were really impressed by how clean and organized the whole place is. Of course, you will have to get along with your work colleagues 24*7 from Japan, Italy, Spain, USA, Australia, Germany, France….

The real question is how do they get these huge high precision antennas up to the higher site, which is over 5000 metres. The antennas go up the mountain fully assembled AND working while they go up. This means their transporter must provide power to the antennas as they are transported up the mountain. No problem for this machine.

Categories: Chile | Tags: ALMA | Comments Off

San Pedro de Atacama – A great place to Chill

Posted on July 24, 2013 by sarah

San Pedro de Atacama was our destination after our wonderful journey in Bolivia through the Salar and its surrounding lakes and volcanoes. This is probably our last visit to Chile and we expect to be only here for ten days or so, maybe a little longer. It is a small dusty town of unpaved roads with small adobe houses, dim-lit streets in the evening time, bars , restaurants, funky shops which are certainly the best for many miles around.

Sarah spots a funky shop, I wonder what gave it away….

It also has great archaeological interest and many places for hiking and adventure tourism. We hadn’t expected anything like this when we arrived so it was a pleasant surprise, also the temperature, 21 degrees during the day, a little chilly at night but a big change from -14 in the Salar. It was off with the layers, and the exploring began. There are many interesting and different places that you can visit from here, so as you can imagine there are endless tour companies . It is a really good town for people to base themselves in, loads of really nice and funky accommodation too, and once here you can organize your own trips. You could easily spend a week here and not see or do everything!

We did a trip to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and Valle de la Muerta (Death Valley) Here wind-blown sand has made weirdly shaped rock formations by slowly carving out amazing shapes and curves. Some of them feel very dry and crumbly and they would probably be washed away by now if there was ever any rain here. There is no animal or vegetable life here so its a pretty deserted place. There are many places for great walks with interesting little alcoves to explore, but the best of all is when you watch the sunset. We saw the rocks turn red, gold and amber but immediately the sun left us, it was cold and amazingly dark until the moon starts to appear – amazing sight! When we went to see the Valley of the moon, we parked on the cliff overlooking the valley at about 4 p.m and at that time we had the whole place to ourselves, but this was soon to be shattered at about 5.30 p.m when ‘the tourists’ arrived, obviously ending their long day on a mini-bus watching the sunset. All of a sudden there was about 100 people, but within half an hour there was just 2 again (yes us). We parked over night here and as it was during the full moon the colours on these rock formations changed many times during the course of the evening. We welcomed the next day with a beautiful sunrise and had the entire place to ourselves. It was like we were living on top of the world. Oh, the joys of being independent!

If you look close, you can see people sandboarding. Yes, it’s a big valley

Overlooking Valle de la Murte, Atacama, Chile

Detail in Valle de la Luna, Atacama, Chile

Valle de la Luna, Atacama, Chile.

Tourists turn up for the 30 minutes around sunset on the overlook over the Valley of the moon, Atacama, Chile

Valle de la luna just after sunrise

Moon set as the sun comes behind me. Gotta love the Desert and its clean air

The hat keeps my camera warm photographing in the Atacama desert

We also spent some time in The Salar de Atacama, which is the largest salt-pan in Chile. (very different from the salt-pan in Bolivia, I might add.). It has a rough broken up surface and is an attractive place in its own right, the vastness of the whole place, the emptiness.

Bell tower in Toconao

In this part of the desert we really had the whole place to ourselves ,the silence, disturbed by nobody ! Even though it is very dry , there are many drought-resistant plants that survive here , many animals, but we only saw foxes and vicuña and of course birds like coots, Andean gulls and condors (only in the distance). The Salar has quite a Flamingo Reserva, with a few small shallow lakes in which all three Chilean species of flamingoes can be found – James, Chilean and Andean flamingoes, so we visited the Chaxa Laguna so as to see the Andean Flamingo . We passed through a very small village en route called Toconao with 700 inhabitants, which had a very old church, with a separate bell -tower built in 1744 and the roof was just mud and straw.
I guess a bit like the ‘thatched’ roof’s in Ireland is a good way to describe it. This town is famous for its carvings in liparite, a volcanic rock which comes from a quarry near by. We had a lovely afternoon by Laguna Cegar which is saltier that the dead sea. At this time of year if you floated in it, you would float higher than in the dead sea, but you would FREEZE! We saw a few brave tourists running in for a swim, but by the time we picked up a camera they would be running out doing a great impression of Mel Gibson in Braveheart – Blue all over and screaming! No doubt in the summer its the place to cool down from the really hot temperatures that they experience in this area. A lovely place for walks through the rushes, and to watch the sun glistening on the water, lovely colours appear all over the place.

Rushes around a lake in the Atacama salt flats

Moonset in the Atacama

Flamingo Reflection

And one is awake

Andean Avocet, Recurvirostra andina

The salt and minerals end up forming a very strange rock like substance

The wind can lift the sand pretty high and can get so bad to block visibility

Why walk around when you have a friend with you?

Iglesia De San Pedro de Atacama in the main Plaza itself, is built of adobe walls, the roof is made of algarrobo wood and the ceiling is covered with cactus mixed with mud and straw. One of the days that we were here, the celebration of The Virgin of Carmen took place. This is an annual event, and we were lucky enough to have picked the right weekend to visit. Maybe all our detours due to the snow were a good thing. The festival involves bringing the small statue of the Virgin for a walk around the town, and loads of brass bands and dancing.

San Pedro de Atacama Church.

Music galore

Someone likes pink

Taking a virgin for a walk in San Pedro de Atacama

Dancing in the hear of the day is tough

Crowds gather for the festval

Traditional dress for the festival

One of the very popular tours in San Pedro de Atacama is an evening Star Gazing. We had heard of a French guy who did these tours, and his company is called SPACE, so we booked an evening with them. We were collected in the town at 7 pm and taken a few kilometers out-of-town to their site, where they have 10 telescopes permanently erected. Our tour guide was Canadian , Les, and he explained and showed us many different constellations, stars and planets. We could then use each of the telescopes to do our own Star Gazing and the most amazing for us was the Moon and the Rings of Saturn. To round off our great evening , we were treated to steamy mugs of hot chocolate inside with a Question and Answer session. Les really knew his stuff!

Impressive moon shot for a canon G9, even it was shot through a telescope eyepiece at SPACE

Categories: Chile | Tags: desert | 1 Comment

Minus 14 on Salar de Uyuni

Posted on July 18, 2013 by sarah

The town of Uyuni

We arrived into Uyuni, the town which most Bolivians refer to as the ‘extreme cold’ place of Bolivia. I wonder why ? We were about to find out, but find out in a good way. This part of Southwestern Bolivia has few roads or inhabitants and just a few scattered settlements here and there. For adventurous travelers this is heaven, as you are rewarded with salt deserts which are some of the world’s flattest terrain, the steaming towering volcanoes, loads of hot pools and springs, and last but not least lovely lakes with Flamingoes. The remoteness of this area is magical in one way, but yet you must be aware of the difficulties that might occur, so when travelling in your own vehicle you need a good measure of resourcefulness – make sure you have loads of food, water, fuel, and even some spares, not every day would you see another vehicle. Our first job was to fill both tanks with diesel to the neck, plus our three gerry cans as we were going to travel approximately 1000 kms before we would be able to get fuel again. Also we knew that we would reach over 5000 m.a.s.l hence more diesel used . However, buying diesel in Bolivia is a bit of an adventure in itself.

First view towards Salar de Uyuni

Fuel (Petrol and Diesel) is very cheap in Bolivia as it is subsidized by the government (as in, the opposite to taxing it!). The government however, do not wish to subsidize it for foreign vehicles, so there are 2 prices at every fuel station, the tourist price (9 Bolivians) and the local price (3.27 Bolivians). Remote cameras force the attendants to be sure they give the right fuel to everyone. With a little bit of gentle negotiation, the actual price paid often ends up between 6 and 7 Bolivianos, which is well under a Euro per litre so that’s fine for us. They are not allowed to charge over the tourist price either which is good . The negotiation usually involves explaining that we do not actually need an invoice, and it all takes its own course from that point on. There are however some fuel stations that are not allowed to sell fuel to foreign registered vehicles, and they will direct you on to another station.

Unimog all set to take on whatever comes in Salar de Uyuini

Great road from Potosi to Uyuni

Salar de Uyuni is Bolivia’s largest salt pan, 12,106-sq-km. It is a center of salt extraction and processing mainly for human consumption, a small percentage is for livestock. There were no roads, if you were lucky you might spot another vehicles track, but most times we made our own.

Amazing salt ridges in the evening sun on the Salar

The surface was dry when we drove and camped on it and it was like a blinding white expanse of nothing really, but its like you are flying through the clouds, hard to describe but fantastic. In a few spots you could see where cold underground water rose to the surface up through the salt layer and created eruptions of the salt. Sometimes these can be quite big and if there is water on the Salar it can be dangerous for vehicles to drive across them, yes , you guessed , you might get ‘stuck’. Mostly driving on the Salar is not dangerous, the most important thing is when you are exiting to visit an island, or to exit altogether is to make sure that you follow a track that has many tyre marks, as then you know it is pretty solid, so you won’t get stuck. The silence at night on the Salar is unreal, you would hear a pin drop, nobody next or near to you for miles, and oh my god the sky, so so so many stars , no air pollution whatsoever! Yes it was cold, but once you are wrapped up warm you can watch the sky for quite some time, mind you a little warm Jameson also helped! One of the bigger islands that we visited called Isla de los Pescadores is a hilly spot in the middle of the Salar covered in Cactus, with a walking track to reach caves at the summit, and from here we got a great view over the Salar. That same day we went to visit a smaller island, and as we ate our lunch sitting with a clear blue sky, not a cloud to be seen, we had the entire island to ourselves, what more could you ask for, Robinson Crusoe , here I come.

Sarah manhandling the unimog camper

Sunset on the Salar

Driving at night on the Salar by starlight is amazing!

Star circle on the Salar

Breakfast time while we wait for the Mog to warm up enough to start

Merv’s Mum’s boots came in useful. Thanks Ruthie!

Is that the truck in the distance?

We were nervous of parking the truck on the salt lake all night, so we left it on the table

Merv chilling out

We did spot a few holes in the salt crust.

As we left the Salar and headed South we encountered some bleak but wonderful scenery . Some days the terrain was rough and slow, our slowest was probably 3.5 kms per hour but you were never bored as there was so much to see. We went from being surrounded by volcanoes (one semi-active called Volcan Ollague at 5865 m) to driving across the desert, to great Laguna’s with Flamingoes were we spent the night.

Great colors on the James Flamingo

We also spent nights at Laguna Colorado and Laguna Verde. It was pretty cold at night, the lowest temperature we encountered was -14. One disadvantage of an old truck like ours is that it has no glow plugs. This basically means it’s not so keen to start when it’s much below freezing! To prepare for the night we used to make sure that we parked facing east so as to have the sun heat the engine in the morning. We also put our boots up close to the windscreen so as the sun would warm them too, and we always make sure to fill the kettle with water for the coffee in the morning as on two nights our water froze. As we were prepared for all this in advance, and knew what to expect it was no big deal. Instead of driving at 9ish each morning, it was 10.30 ish, we were in no rush. During the day we had loads of sunshine, the temperature rose to about 6 degrees, not too bad.

Laguna Colorado is red in colour and this is derived from the algae and plankton that live in this mineral rich water, Flamingoes also breed here. Whereas Laguna Verde is a stunning blue-green lake due to the high concentration of lead and sulfur, and behind this Laguna you have a great view of Volcan Licancabur standing at 5960m. Here at this lake was really icy cold, our coldest night but we parked on a height (facing east as usual) with stunning views both in the evening and morning. Mind you I didn’t venture out until the sun was well up, after all I didn’t need to take pictures, that’s why I brought a photographer, lol.

Lone Flamingo in the reflection of the mountain

James Flamingo

Flamingos holding their wings open to warm up in the morning sun

Sarah resting while rock climbing

You will always find a place for a hat

Merv’s boots in the cold morning air

Sarah’s boots ready to warm when the morning sun hits the windscreen

We also saw some great unusual rock formations, Stone City I guess you would call it. One in particular was Arbol de Piedra ‘ stone tree’ which really does look like a tree, is made of wind-eroded igneous rock. Apparently climbing competitions used to take part here, but very few people made it to the top, I did try but unsuccessfully.

Another cool spot we stopped at was the 4850m high geyser basins with bubbling mud fumaroles which had a great aroma of sulfer fumes. The sounds were amazing, I guess a good way to describe it was like thick soup boiling like mad. Also close to here were many hot pools of mineral rich water suitable for bathing , and to see the steam rising from them, with the air so cold was just fascinating. The water was warm as we tested it , about 28 degrees incredible really.

As we entered the national park we asked about the Paso San Pedro de Atacama, as we had heard it had been closed due to the snow, we could see that for ourselves now, plus we were hoping it was open as our diesel was getting low, but we had made sure that we still had enough to return a slightly different route back to Uyuni if needed be, (not that we really wanted to) so we were delighted to hear that it was open and could continue on as planned to the Atacama desert in Chile. At 5023 m.a.s.l is a mining operation that extracts borax and it was here that we did the paper work to take our truck out of Bolivia , just for a few days I might add ! . We then had 24 hours to have ourselves stamped out of Bolivia (this rule is not enforced) as we took our time to enjoy every last-minute of this wonderful environment.

Border post between Bolivia and Peru

We did this route during July, which is winter here. Winter is colder, but it is also the dry season. It is possible to make this trip year round, but I would not like to drive my vehicle across the salar when it is flooded with water as you are driving through a few hundred KM of salt water! We would do this drive again in a heartbeat, it was an amazing spin.

Laguna Verde, the green lake was frozen over so we did not see the colors

Early morning sun heating the engine bay from -14 overnight temps

Well dressed scarecrow

One of the better roads on the route between Bolivia and Chile

And a map for those who really want a good look!

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