Weeks Five to Seven

San Pedro de Atacama - Uyuni (Bolivia) - Potosi - Sucre - Santa Cruz - Samaipata - Trinidad

We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama to a small town with dirt roads, dust everywhere, hot temperatures during the day and cold at night. It was beautiful. On our first day we biked out to Valle de la Muerte (the valley of death). This was a bumpy ride into a valley of gigantic sand dunes. On our second day we took a van at 4am for 2 hours, up to 4200m above sea level to see the geysers at sunrise. It was absolutely freezing - I got blue lips for the first time in my life - and unlike the rest of the tourists who had been aptly warned and were rugged up in skii jackets, we were told only touring a jersey as it is cold. Needless to say, I sat in the van with the heater on for most of the time. The geysers where not the kind we get at home. Because of the high altitude, the geysers are just small pools of bubbling water. We were a little disappointed. That afternoon we biked out to Valle de la Luna (Valley of the moon) to watch the sunset over the desert.

We then embarked on a 3 day, 2 night trip across the desert to Bolivia. This was in a 4 wheel drive truck that sat 6 and had 4 seat belts. It was an extremely bumpy ride but the scenery more than made up for it. We saw many Laguna's (lakes) including the blue, green, white, black and red Laguna's. There were a huge number of flamingos at the red Laguna's. We saw wild vicuña (deer-llama animal) and llamas. The llamas all had hats on, each owner putting a different coloured hat on to identify hither llama as there were no paddocks in the desert. There were grand rock formations, and the tour ended at the Bolivian salar (salt flats). We joined the masses of tourists and took a number of strang perspective photos.

We stayed one night in Uyuni then hoped on a bus for Potosi. Here Ollie did a tour of the silver mines while I went and did a tour of the money museum. The tour was solely in Spanish, and I coped pretty well at getting the gist of what the guide said - thorough the mummified babies were pretty self explanatory.

From Potosi we bused to Sucre, listening to the same Bolivian cd on repeat for 6 hours. However, when we caught a taxi from the bus station, our driver put in the exact same cd. In Sucre we visited the textiles museum and walked to the lookout over the town.

From Sucre we bused to Santa Cruz. There was very little to do in Santa Cruz, though we did visit the zoo just to see the sloth. The people in Santa Cruz were extremely unhelpful, and after an hour of asking around the bus station and micro centre, we finally got a bus to Samaipata. Samaipata was an amazing little town. It was Samana Santa (Easter weekend) and everyone was out drinks from dusk till dawn. We went on a private tour thought the Yunga forest (giant fern forest) and into the hills of Amboro National Park. The forest was very similar to New Zealand forests - I could have sworn I was back home - but once we got to the top of the hills we saw the amazing horizontal rain and mist covering the hills. It was spectacular. On our second day here we visited El Fuerte, a previous fort and religious ground, then made our way back to Santa Cruz by long distance taxi.

From here we bused to Trinidad. If Santa Cruz was the town that boasts very little, Trinidad boasted nothing. granted I am biased as I was sick in bed with a tummy bug in humid temperatures.

THE BUS TO RURRENABAQUE the "12 hour bus trip":
9:15am - arrive for bus
10:45am - leave Trinidad after loading 'bags' (literally households worth of stuff both under, on too and in the bus)
11:45am - arrive at port to cross river on a barge. Turns out a car was in the water in front of the barge. We wait will the 'geniuses' attempt to get the car out with a (a) rope, (b) bamboo shot, (c) plastic pipe, and (d) small crane on the back of a ute. No method works.
3pm - turns out we could leave on the barge the whole time by moving the barge over, but the man who had his car in the water wanted it back - I'm not sure why because it definately wouldn't work.
3:20pm - unload from bus to cross second river.
3:45pm - wind along dirt road with water on either side. Stop when we reach part of the road that is flooded and the bus can't go on. Unload entire luggage, transport it by dug out boat. And reload luggage 100m down the road on a new bus.
5:45pm - bus finally loaded, leave down mud road. 6pm - bus stuck in mud. All males ordered off the bus to push and pull the bus with a rope. (I am the only woman to get off the bus as I don't understand that the order is for makes).
6:05pm - bus out of mud, all covered up to ankles in thick mud and on the go. Bus tips 30-40 degrees from verticle and I think the bus is about to tip and we are going to get seriously injured. A local woman laughs as Ollie and I, and the rest of the bus, fling ourselves over the aisle to try and rebalance the bus.
6:10pm - safely back on dry road (very bumpy). Beautiful wetlands on either side, with giant lillys (1m wide) and a wild capybara.
8:45pm - dinner stop.
9am - 22 hours later (10 hours late) we arrive safely are a bumpy, sleepless, and slightly scary night. Phew!