By this Author: sianmy

We arrived San Pedro de Atacama very late last night and I had already noticed the sky was just full of twinkle glitter stars!!

We woke up at 10am today and the tour guide was already busy with booking our individual activities in this town. We planned to go to the sunset in moon valley in the evrning and then to the Astronomy tour at midnight.

I quite like San Pedro de Atacama. There are only a few main streets in this town so it is really easy for us to get around. We did some shopping in the day while ee were waiting for our evening and night tours.

I was really blown away by how good our astronomy night tour was and i went with little knowledge of constellations and stars. We were taken to this vast open space and the guide/astronomer/stargazer was already using his laser gun pointing out the different types of constellations and stars! It was freezing cold in the night but it was just so interesting. I got to see my star sign- taurus!! Second part of the tour was to watch stars/planets via different types of telescopes!! I saw Jupiter, neptune and saturn!!

Uyuni is such a small town. We arrived quite late last night aftet 5 hour drive and we were told to get our own water for the next 3 days whilst we drove across Salar de Uyuni (salt lake Uyuni) and Atacama desert.

Day 1 of our 4x4 expedition, i think there were 6 Toyota Landcruisers to get all of us and a cook across the mountain and desert to Chile in the next 3 days. We had an early start as there were quite a few attractions we needed to stop by while we got to our next accommodation in Puerto Chuvica. It was such a hot day and we had picnic at Salar de Uyuni after our stop at Train cementary. We spent quite a long time at Salt Flat taking creative photos!! Latet we stopped by Incahuasi island (but this is actually like a hill/mountain in the middle of this vast Salt Flat! It is so hard to imagine this place was once in the under water but yet it is now dry and in about 3600m above sea level!!

Day 2 there was no shower in our 'cool' salt flat accommodation place last night!! But i think managed to get some sleep - thanks to my eye mask!! After our breakfast, we continued with our 4x4 expedition and stopped at several places. We saw lots of flamingos at the beautiful Laguna Colorada. Unfotunately, while we were on our way to our next night stop in Huayllajara, we leant that there was a strike from the local community to close the national park . This means we could not continue with our journey and we had to make a detour to travel another 4 or 5 hours for the next town. It was such a pity that we would not be able to visit some glacier and Laguna Verde! I think we had dinner around 10pm...

Day 3 as our initial plan had been changed, we had no choice but decided to leave Bolivia early and drive to the Chilean border!! Unfortunately, our coach didn't arrive for some reasons and we were forced to wait at the Chilean border for about 8 hours! Whilst we were waiting for our coach, we met some tourists who were left and stranded at the border by some small local tour operator due to the strike event in Bolivia.

I must be half asleep whilst I got off the night coach last night... I can't believe I slipped and fell from the coach and now i would have to change the dressing of my wound myself till it healed!

Potosi is an old silver mine town which its mine is apparently also open to the public for tours . I didn't join the silver mining tour as i was told to be prepared for its worst working conditions. Besides, i don't think my allergy would go too well with the dust .

Martina and I walked around the city that morning. We wanted to visit the coin museum that morning but it was closed. Everywhere we walked, we saw plenty of 'abogado ' (lawyer) signs. I gather there must be lots of litigations between employees and the mining company.

The next morning we visited the coin museum as we would be leaving Potosi in the afternoon to Uyuni.

My first thought of La Paz is how crowded this city is and it is even higher than Cusco (at 3660m)!! There was no activity today apart from the meeting in the evening with our new tour guide and possible new comers to the group for the Bolivia crossing.

We signed up for a 2 hour city tour including one trip to the moon valley!! After the tour, we rested in the hotel for a while. Later we just explored the area near our hotel. I think our hotel is probably near the witchcraft street as we saw some disgusted dry baby llamas/animals hanging at some stalls on the street. We also met up with Martina's ex colleague and her husband for lunch and then visited the San Fracisco church.

Other people in our group joined the moutain biking at the world's dangerous death road!! I don't think i would be brave enough to do the mountain biking after hearing the latest casualty was a Japanese girl who jumped off the cliff while she was trying to film her boyfriend cycling down the mountain!!

I went back to the hotel to rest and decided to take the rest of the day easy.

I felt so much better today plus i'm now back on Diamox till i guess when we are not in high ground anymore.

We visited Tiwanacu in the morning. We had a guided tour which we first visited the museum and then we visited the site . Its basically about the pre-Inca culture and it was very interesting to learn how the Aymara civilization had a lot of influences on the Inca Empire.

We spent nearly half a day at the museum and the site and then we had lunch at the nearby place for the local famous specialty 'trout' before we headed back to La Paz.