1200 kilometers in four days at the altitude of 4000 meters

Our next plan was to take a four day trip in Lipez near the Argentinian and Chilean borders. We chose a four day jeep ride trip in the mountains leaving from Tupiza and ending at Salar de Uyuni. Our companion in this trip was three guys from Uruguay who only wanted to communicate with us in Spanish. So we spent four days (24 hours a day) only communicating with hand gestures and our mediocre Spanish skills :) Our favourite thing to do with them was playing cards (their deck of cards consists only of 48 cards!).

We became very familiar with coca leaves on this trip because of the altitude sickness we both suffered from. Coca leaves are supposed to relieve the symptoms of altitude sickness. We later found out that drinking coca tea also reduces fatigue and hunger. No wonder we couldn't sleep at all in three nights and weren't hungry at all! The feeling of altitude sickness was horrible and indescribable, we had a headache for four days and felt nauseous, dizzy and ready to vomit occasionally. The first night was the worst of all the nights, nobody in our group could sleep and it was freezing cold the whole night. We were sleeping approximate at 5000 meters altitude in a local village that didn't even have electricity. (The temperature can get as low as -20 degrees in Lipez during night, we don't actually know how cold it was there then but we were freezing even though we slept under five blankets!). We were so accustomed to use the natural toilet that we didn't even realize that our first accomodation actually had a real toilet until the next morning :) We spent the second night also in a local village. The third night's accommodation was a salt hotel where everything was made of salt! Even the floor was made of salt crystals.

Hotel de Sal

Katja learned to speak a lot of Spanish on this trip. Our guide Pedro and cook Ana did not speak any English at all so when they were asking how Katja was feeling (because of the altitude sickness) she would just answer either muy mal (very bad) or mejor (better) or occasionally mujer (a woman) :) Well I guess evebody gets confused sometimes especially when you're feeling sick :)

We saw a lot during this trip, everything from colourful lagoons to pink flamingos and active volcanoes.



Mountains we saw on our first day, the weird formation is due to heavy rain and wind

Llamas

Katja at 4855 meters altitude

It's not snow! This is a mineral that is used e.g. in shampoos

Laguna colorada at 4270 m.

Lili in the hot springs

View near the Chilean border

Geysirs

Lili at our lunch spot sitting on lava rocks

Arbol de piedra ( tree of stone)

These mountains have seven different colours

Laguna blanca and flamingos



Salar de Uyuni

Isla del Pescado



Sunrise at the salt flats

Mountains and Salar de Uyuni



Lili "sitting" on a stone



Still not snow!



Kids are healthy when they are playing :)

Tupiza, the city where we booked and started our tour, didn't have an atm so our hostel told us we could pay our tour on the last day when we came to Uyuni because there is an atm there and we didn't have enough Bolivianos to pay the tour in Tupiza. (The four day tour including all meals, accommodation and transport cost us approximately only 25 € per day!). Well we arrived at Uyuni on a Sunday and the city's only atm wasn't working. We asked a lady when it would start working and she said it would probably work on Monday. Our plan B was to find a place where we could take out cash advance with our credit cards. Well the same lady told us that there is only one machine in the whole city and it doesn't work on Sundays! We didn't have a plan C! So we went back to our tour guide and told him our situation. Luckily after waiting for a long time and discussing our alternatives, he took us to a hostel that could give us cash. You should have seen our faces when the lady in the hostel took out an ancient machine and wiped Katja's visa to get a copy of the card details. She even made a phone call to confirm that the card was valid. It all felt like going back a few decades in time (like many other things in Bolivia as well). This was for almost two weeks ago and they still haven't charged Katja's visa for this.

We took a night bus to La Paz the same evening and the next posting will be from Amazonas!