Most people do the salt flats tour from Uyuni, so they do the salt flats on the first day and then go round the so-called South West Circuit anti-clockwise. Doing it from Tupiza meant we built up to the salt flats on the last day, getting up early so we could see sunrise there.
We were in a Toyota Landcruiser with two others: Noel, a porter at Guy's Hospital (I think), who was on a 6 week trip around South America, and another Paul who'd quit his publishing job to do a 6-month trip. We also had our driver, Juan Carlos, and a cook, Patricia. We were in convoy with a group of friends from Ireland the whole time, as Patricia was cooking for them too.
Neither Juan Carlos nor Patricia spoke English, but we managed to understand a bit of what Patricia told us about each thing. The Irish friends had paid the extra £60 for an English-speaking guide, Milton, so we got extra bits of info off them.
We took loads of pictures of stunning scenery over the 4 days. Too many for a blog post, they'll end up on Facebook at some point. In the meantime, here are some of my favourites.
This is El Sillar or the Valley of the Moon, just outside Tupiza.
On the first day, we stopped for lunch in a little mining village. One of the guys from another group, Walter, had a frisbee with him and got the village kids all fighting for it!
There were also various stops to see llamas, bred for both their wool and meat. We think we were fed llama more than once on the tour, although Patricia insisted it was beef. More on that in another post.
We also stopped at lots of lagoons including Laguna Colorado, made red by the algae which flamingoes feed on.
At one lake, we bumped in to John and Linda whom we'd met in Talampaya, Argentina. They'd been further north in to Bolivia and were now heading south to Chile. The border wasn't far from the lake.
One of the highlights was a stop at a thermal spring on the second day. The water temperature was about 30C....could've stayed in there for ages, but we were warned no more than 20 minutes. We realised why when everyone felt light-headed when they got out! Hot springs and altitude don't mix.
Some more sights: a stone tree - volcanic rock eroded by wind and sand.
An active volcano on the border with Chile (see the smoke?)
And a bizarre stop at a market on the border with Chile, where Milton bought 2 mattresses and a cooker for his mum.
Not officially part of the tour... Was quite cool to be able to stand with one foot in Chile and the other in Bolivia though.
The roads throughout the tour were unpaved gravel roads - I found myself constantly assessing whether the van would've been able to get through them (no, on all counts, although I'm sure Paul would've had a go) but it was really good fun being driven on them in a vehicle designed for it.
We managed to go the whole trip without any flat tyres or mechanical problems. Juan Carlos was a careful driver and we felt safe throughout - we'd heard a nightmare tale from another traveller at the hostel in Salta. Her driver had been drunk and they had multiple breakdowns, including one which required a 4-hour wait for a replacement vehicle.
One of the cars in our convoy suffered several flats, which meant other cars had to donate their spare tyres. This was Juan Carlos donating ours:
There were no petrol stations at any point on the tour either, so the vehicles were laden with extra fuel, with the drivers refuelling at the end of each day.
It was a generally comfortable trip apart from a couple of days when we were tortured with awful 'music' dominated by a man shouting in Spanish over very bad drum and bass. We'd started off with some decent music from the last decade, but it had been taken off us after the Irish group had complained about the awful drum and bass MC (the drivers had a selection of USB dongles with different music). It took 2 days for the car of Englishmen to complain, though we did eventually get the 'good' dongle back.
