¿Cachái?: May 2012

san pedro - laguna cejar

we made it back to san pedro de atacama around noon, after waking up at 5 am to make the final journey across the bolivian desert back into chile. this drive was easily the most uncomfortable, as the sun still had not risen when we began and the jeep had no heating. to top it all off, our chofer (not edgar, he stayed in bolivia at the end of the trip. we had a new guy named javier) turned on the AIR CONDITIONING at one point. it was freezing.

while my 4 day bolivian adventure was easily one of the coolest things i've ever done in my life, it was nice to be back in warm san pedro!

we found these adorable funny llamas :) !

this stray dog was intrigued

and this was really awkward and hilarious

hello there!

llama spitting at another llama!!!

after watching the llamas for an entertaining 10 minutes, we went to laguna cejar - a lake with a 40% salt concentration so that you float without even trying!

the water was actually pretty cold, but not unbearable. it was easy to find warm currents where the sun was shining

superman pose

they were pretending to drown, and i wasn't going to save them.

jumping attempt

touching the top of the mountain =P

showing off

snacks during sunset. i was still chewing.

sylvia, me, brian, justin

going to laguna cejar was an awesome end to my vacation away from my real life in santiago!

i successfully made it to the airport that night (however, 4 hours before i thought i was going to be picked up *i purchased a round trip shuttle ticket*, i realized i was supposed to call and confirm my transportation from the hostel to the airport a minimum of 12 hours in advance. i then freaked out for a good 15 minutes trying to call the phone number but it wasn't working on my cheap phone, but our nice driver that took us to the lake was nice and called for me to confirm everything)

at the Calama airport during the hour wait before boarding my plane i attempted to study for my quiz i had the next afternoon, but this was slightly unproductive because i was so exhausted.

i landed in santiago at 2:00 am, and was at my apartment by 3. considering that i lost my keys on day one of our jeep tour, this was a slight issue. luckily my housemate was nice and left the keys under the door mat, but this didn't help me getting into the building. normally the doorman is there all night, but this particular evening he was nowhere to be seen. so i rang the conserje doorbell for a good 10 minutes before i see him slowly walking down the stairs to let me in. he was really mad because apparently i probably woke the whole first floor up. filo! it was 3 am and i wanted to go to sleep before being abducted off the street corner

bolivia - uyuni

after spending all morning and the majority of the afternoon on el salar, we headed to the town of uyuni where we stopped at this abandoned train that has pretty much been turned into a playground

and then we went to the actual downtown area - for very little time. we had to go to immigration to finally pay for our visas so that we'd get our passports back. this was a hectic process because my friend really wanted to get out of paying the full fee and was arguing with the immigration people for a good 10 minutes while we did the exact same calculation on the calculator at least 20 times. granted, people kept telling us different prices for how much the united states visa fee really was, combined with everyones different opinion on the true exchange rate made it pretty frustrating and misleading. the fee is $135 US dollars but we were paying in bolivianos so they were definitely trying to rip us off. we did successfully get the conversion to be a little more in our favor than what immigration initially told us we had to pay.

here is a few photos of uyuni...i'm just going to say that all the travelers that ended up here after the jeep tours found bus tickets out of town ASAP so they didn't have to spend a night

after the bolivian visa fiasco we loaded up into the jeep once again to head back to san pedro. we were the only group going back to chile (due to an only minor obligation - school), everyone else was continuing their travels in bolivia

after a good 4 hour journey it was already dark by the time we ended up at our last shelter

we stayed up for hours playing lots of card games! so much fun :)

i had to get a picture of how many layers i had been sleeping in every night :
2 pairs of thick socks
3 pairs of sweats
4 layers on top - long sleeve shirt and 3 sweatshirts
in my negative 20 degree celsius sleeping bag
under 4 thick bolivian blankets

this is the only way i can make anyone remotely understand how freezing it was.

bolivia - salar de uyuni

the grand finale of our tour was the famous salar de uyuni salt flat! we stayed in a "salt hotel" - definitely not hotel status, just a shelter made almost entirely of SALT!

i licked the walls just to make sure.

our shelter, with large stones to keep the roof on:

i woke up nice and early to watch the sunrise over the salar, so worth it!

hello sun!

this is when it became ridiculously bright. there was a thin layer of water over part of the salar, which the sun was reflecting off of. essentially, there were 2 suns!

blinding

after packing and loading up into the jeeps once again, we headed out onto the salt flat!

the first part of our journey we were driving over water. parts of the salar weren't completely dry, which created incredible reflections of the sky. seeing this in person was pretty unbelievable

i had to take pictures of the other jeeps driving through the water to see what we looked like

i also took a video:

eventually we made it to solid ground!

and then we spent the next few hours trying to take advantage of the crazy loss of perspective in this vast white territory and take cool pictures. this was harder than it sounds

lining up...