Monday, May 01, 2006
Salar de Uyuni
To Uyuni (tuesday)
After such a smooth trip so far, we hit our first snag on the way to Oruro. We were forced to take the overnight bus instead of the train as there was a strike on the line further down and they wouldn{t take the train to Uyuni. Thankfully we still had Mario with us and he recieved several calls advising us of the problem and sorting out the bus. We were the first on the bus to hear about the strike (actually the second one that effected us that day as we did some off-roading on the 1st bus to get around a retired minerss strike). So we had the afternoon in Oruro before leaving on the 2nd but at 9pm.
We arrived in the middle of nowhere at 4.30am and we were taken directly to the Salt Hotel for a few hours of real sleep and the placewas absolute luxury - everyone was impressed. We had a day just chilling there before starting the Salar Trip.
Salar de Uyuni Tour (thu, fri, sat)
Unfortunately we didn{t get to go to the Train Cemetry due to the mixup in planes, but the rest of the trip was pretty good. We had an extremely quiet driver, so we were never told anything, but the other driver was really good and gave us lots of history and info about the area. The tour notes became a bit like chinese whispers as the guidespoke spanish, one of the Canadians translated into French and thenbetween the Canadians they sorted out an english translation. Ourjeep would then get a delayed version of events when we stopped.So we arrived in San Pedro (chile) about midday yesterday after anearly start and a swim in the hot pools. THe swim was great. It was freezing outside (literally) and stripping off to get into the pools was a challenge. But so worth it! We were served breakfast once we were out and someone took a temperature reading of 0 degrees - about 3hours after we were up. So I was really glad to have a down jacket and several of us were still wearing our Mitchelen Man suits at 10am.
It{s somewhat hotter here in San Pedro and we are just chilling outfor the last day as we did the Valley of the Moon tour yesterday and had another really great guide.
smile
Hazel
After such a smooth trip so far, we hit our first snag on the way to Oruro. We were forced to take the overnight bus instead of the train as there was a strike on the line further down and they wouldn{t take the train to Uyuni. Thankfully we still had Mario with us and he recieved several calls advising us of the problem and sorting out the bus. We were the first on the bus to hear about the strike (actually the second one that effected us that day as we did some off-roading on the 1st bus to get around a retired minerss strike). So we had the afternoon in Oruro before leaving on the 2nd but at 9pm.
We arrived in the middle of nowhere at 4.30am and we were taken directly to the Salt Hotel for a few hours of real sleep and the placewas absolute luxury - everyone was impressed. We had a day just chilling there before starting the Salar Trip.
Salar de Uyuni Tour (thu, fri, sat)
Unfortunately we didn{t get to go to the Train Cemetry due to the mixup in planes, but the rest of the trip was pretty good. We had an extremely quiet driver, so we were never told anything, but the other driver was really good and gave us lots of history and info about the area. The tour notes became a bit like chinese whispers as the guidespoke spanish, one of the Canadians translated into French and thenbetween the Canadians they sorted out an english translation. Ourjeep would then get a delayed version of events when we stopped.So we arrived in San Pedro (chile) about midday yesterday after anearly start and a swim in the hot pools. THe swim was great. It was freezing outside (literally) and stripping off to get into the pools was a challenge. But so worth it! We were served breakfast once we were out and someone took a temperature reading of 0 degrees - about 3hours after we were up. So I was really glad to have a down jacket and several of us were still wearing our Mitchelen Man suits at 10am.
It{s somewhat hotter here in San Pedro and we are just chilling outfor the last day as we did the Valley of the Moon tour yesterday and had another really great guide.
smile
Hazel
# posted by Hazel @ 4:42 AM 
