January 12-13
We woke up early and got picked up from our AirBNB for our three day trip to the Bolivian Salt Flats. First step – crossing out of Chile for the last time on this trip and entering Bolivia. The border crossings were pretty easy – we had our visas in order. Being two of the few people from the US, we were also two of few people who actually need visas to get into Bolivia. They make us do it because the US makes them.
Day one in Bolivia was kind of boring. There was a few interesting things, but mostly we were just moving along from one lagoon to the next. We hit the white lagoon, the green lagoon and the red lagoon. Here’s the red lagoon. It has flamingos.
We also saw the Dalí Desert – so named because the rock formations look a bit like surrealist art from Spanish artist Salvador Dalí.
I like the concept – but we were too far away for me to actually see the rock formations. Even super zoomed in I didn’t have a good handle on what was going on. But the clouds were cool:
Our first day ended at a really rough hostel. No hot water – outdoor bathroom – no wifi. The indoor bathroom wasn’t promised, but I didn’t think that was something I had to inquire about, but the hot water and wifi were promised. Mostly it was tough because I wasn’t expecting it and wasn’t prepared. But it was cold in the room and coming off a few nights of bad sleep, we slept pretty well.
Day two was more interesting that day one. We were in some new terrain with lots of rock formations of compressed volcanic ash.
There were also a lot of really beautiful valleys that we got to check out like this one from up top:
And this one from below:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_6022.movTell me those llamas aren’t the cutest jumping over the small stream.
There were also some cool rock formations that looked like a variety of things, like…
The World Cup Statue:
And a camel:
And then another formation that I also thought looked like a camel but our guide says I was wrong. There can only be one camel and it’s posted above.
And this formation which if you focus on the negative space for a minute, where Michael and I are sitting, this is supposed to be a man (on the left) kissing the forehead of a woman (on the right). The negative space defines their chins/necks/shoulders.
A few notes on this tour so far – it really wasn’t going that well. Bolivia was beautiful but our guide was terrible. He was really dry and he told long boring stories that would go on for 30/40 minutes at a time in a monotone voice while we were driving. Plus he didn’t really answer any questions that we asked – he would just adjust the question so he could talk about whatever he wanted to talk about. The second night was supposed to be the fancier hostel per our guide. It was… and we got hot water, and the bathroom was just down the hall (inside the building) but still no wifi. We were getting increasingly low on patience and were looking forward to seeing the salt flats and then getting off this tour.