San Pedro de Atacama and Salar de Uyuni

San Pedro de Atacama and Salar de Uyuni

The Paso de Jama pass from Salta to San Pedro de Atacama, takes you over the mighty Andes mountain range, and up to altitudes of 5000m. The scenery is just breathtaking, from driving past the seven coloured mountain to winding up mountains that seem to have no end, it was definitely the most scenic bus ride we've ever experienced! It took us nine hours to clear the mountains and reach the Atacama desert.

We reached San Pedro just before sunset, tired from the long ride and with slight headaches from the lack of oxygen. The town with its sand coloured buildings and dusty streets fits in beautifully with the surrounding desert...it's not big on street signs though which made it rather difficult to find our hostel. Luckily a friendly stranger pointed us in the right direction.

San Pedro is a very popular backpacking destination with travelers arriving daily from Chile, Bolivia and Argentina...however that can make finding a nice warm bed on short notice quite tough. We were very fortunate to find a double room in the Mama Tierra hostel. Which is a very clean and well run hostel not too far from the town centre. The staff there are extremely helpful and helped us book some day trips around San Pedro for the next couple of days...We also received some great advice on which tour operators to go see for the 3 day Uyuni salt flats trip, which was a big help since there's about a thousand of them in town!

San Pedro is a small oasis-like town set up initially as trading post for the goods coming from Argentina and Bolivia to supply the mining settlements nearby. It's got a lot of charm, especially during the day with all the backpackers roaming the streets, enjoying the respite from the harsh surrounding elements.

Our good friends from South Africa, Simon and Joh-nell, were meeting us in San Pedro, one day after we arrived, so we spent the first day exploring the town and visiting the different agencies that were recommended to us.

When you travel the way we're doing, you meet a lot of new people, literally every time you check into a new hostel, and make some new friends along the way. It was, however, very refreshing to meet up with some old friends for a change! Simon & Joh-nell reached our hostel around half past nine in the evening, we greeted then with cold beer and chatted nonstop until we were literally told to go to bed! It was really good to catch up...

Because of the high altitudes that you have endure on your 3-day Uyuni trip, they advised us to do a couple of local excursions to some higher altitude places around San Pedro to acclimatize a bit to the conditions. We decided to do two day trips before heading into Bolivia, first the Valle de la Luna, and then the renowned Tatio Geysers...

Seeing the sunset in the exceptional moon valley was awesome but our favorite was definitely the Tatio Geysers...

We had to get up at 04:00 am because it's an hour and a half drive to get up there and the cold morning air makes the sprouting fumes of the boiling geysers seem all the more dramatic. It's the third largest hydrothermal field in the world, after Yellowstone and Kamchatka and thus an amazing site to see...

You need 3 ingredients for a natural geyser: agua, heat and porous volcanic soil...the magma heats the water sending the violently hot air and water surging up to the surface. 

There was a natural hot spring not far from the geyser field and the four south Africans didn't think twice about going in for a dip...lekker Goudini spa!

The water was not quite as warm as we hoped and so we scurried out almost as quickly as we got in! It was a good outing and one that took us up over 4500m so also good prep for our mission into Bolivia.

That night we went into town to buy all the provisions we needed for the 3 day drive through the desert (mostly water!). Our company, White & Green, was picking us up at 07:00 the next morning so we decided it best to hit the hay early because we didn't really know what to expect for the next 3 days...

3 Day Uyuni excursion

It's about a 45min drive from San Pedro to the Bolivian border, which looked more like a second-hand Toyota dealership, with all the land cruisers parked about. 

A nasty surprise waited for us at customs where we had to pay a 100 USD per person fee to get a Bolivian Visa! En net ons Suid-Afrikaners, die Amerikaners en die Israelis moes betaal...wat het ons ooit aan hulle gedoen?!

Anyway, afterwards we were spoiled with a delicious breakfast at our land cruiser where we also met our driver, Bladimir and the other two passengers, two young German girls, Elena and Karla...

Just some side info, there's a couple ways to get Uyuni from San Pedro, you can take a bus on a tarred road and get there within a day...boring...or you can hitch a lift with a land cruiser and cross the desert in 3 days Dakar style (just not as fast and with a lot of scenic stops!)

Our first day's drive took us to the highest point of the three day trip, so a lot of climbing, we stopped at some awesome salt lagoons with the most amazing turquoise water, poised in front of the 6000m high volcano Licancabur! 

We also visited some more geysers and another hot spring...We were assured that this one was warmer than the one at Tatio! It was, and it was really cold outside so we felt like we could stay in there forever!

The afternoon drive took us over barren, yet ever changing landscapes. From the rugged and hostile volcano valleys, to the dry sandy terrain of the desierto de Dali, speckled with odly formed volcanic boulders, and then we were surprised by the warm golden mountain slopes as we descended into the pajabra grasslands at sunset...

We reached the small mountain settlement of Villa Mar just as the sky turned a soft pink, fading into the distant blue horizon - this was where we were going to spend our first night...at 5000m above sea level!

Fortunately we made it through our first day and night with no-one succumbing to altitude sickness! 

The next morning we headed off to the Valle de la Rocas, which as the name portends, is a massive rocky outcrop formed by millions of years of volcanic activity and the surrounding elements...the one area is named "la cuidad perdida", the lost city, because the way the rocks and canyons are situated almost look like an ancient city turned into stone! It's really cool...

We stopped for lunch in a beautiful river bed with frozen streams of water, but luckily it was a sunny day so we could bask in the sun on the surrounding cliffs.

That afternoon we passed through valleys with the ruins of old Inca farmlands spread out all over the mountain (very steep) slopes...Bladimir said they used those terraces to grow potatoes...ek weet darem nie of 'n John Deere daar sal kan operate nie!

As we approached our second night's resting place we also started to drive into the salt flats, which was quite cool because suddenly everything gave way to white nothingness...

The name of the settlement where we stayed was Chivuca, and the hostel, Hotel Sal, or salt hotel, because it was literally and completely made out of salt! At least we didn't have to worry about snails...;) that was my icebreaker for the evening...

Our final day we got up before daybreak to drive to a rocky island, Incahuasi, in the middle of a sea of salt where we could climb up the Cactus covered cliffs to watch the sunrise over the desolate landscape...which was definitely one of our tour highlights!

Afterwards we set off deep into the salt flats until we were sufficiently surrounded by the white landscape to alter any perception of depth or distance...which makes for some crazy and bizarre fotos!

We ended our trip driving through the endless salt flats, passing train wrecks and abandoned settlements until we reached the outskirts of Uyuni, the nearest Bolivian town...you could feel the mood drop when we hit our first tar road in three daysbecause we knew our "South American Dakar" adventure was over...it was a really cool way to drive across and see an amazingly diverse landscape.