Day 43

This was the last day of the tour, and so we woke up at 4am. We had a quick breakfast and were ready at 5am to leave. However, contrary to the six of us, our driver was nowhere to be found. After checking every room in the hostel, one by one, we finally found him asleep in one of the rooms. He hastily woke up, put some coca leaves in his mouth and off we went. We first stopped at Geyser Blanco, a big and natural geyser. It was freezing outside, and even though the car was nice and warm, we all wanted to be outside because the view was so special. After a couple of minutes we continued our way. We arrived at hot springs and even though the baths were so hot, we could not get ourselves to change while it was freezing outside. So, after enjoying the view over the nature surrounding the hot springs, we went onward to our last stop of this tour; Lago Verde. The unfortunate thing was that the lake only has its iconic green color a little after noon, while we were there at around eight in the morning. Nevertheless was the view again breathtaking. These were three amazing days of driving through the desert, looking at incredible views, chewing coca leaves, talking only in Spanish and being happy. The car took us to the border of Chile, where we said goodbye to the Italian couple and our driver. We took the bus, together with the two French guys and made our way into Chile.

Uyuni's highlights:

• Three day Salar de Uyuni tour

It took us quite some time to cross the border from Bolivia into Chile. All the bags were searched by hand, one by one, and after a not so thorough inspection, they were considered non-threatening and everyone could go through. We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama a little after noon. However, we had confused ourselves by a day when booking the hostel, and so there was no place for us yet. We went out looking for another hostel and found one fairly fast. We settled in and got some lunch, and then left on an excursion to the moon valley. The landscape was amazing, and as the name already gives away, it was like standing on the moon. All the rocks were shaped weirdly and the ground was dry and hard. The surroundings were very satisfying, yet odd. After walking and driving through the moon valley, the van took us to a higher place in the desert, to watch the sunset. It was very beautiful and there were people cooking, drinking mate and enjoying life. We arrived back at the hostel at around nine at night, however there was no time to have dinner, as we left for the Astro tour at a little before ten. We drove for a bit and were then dropped off at an open space in the middle of the mountain with two telescopes. We had a close up look at Saturn, the moon, the star signs, wormholes, and galaxies. Truly beautiful to see and it looked so close. We returned to the hostel at around 1am feeling like zombies as we had been awake for so long and went to sleep.

Geschreven door Romymatse