ODO: 330,562
Can you believe it?! We wake up RIGHT NEXT TO Gato de Nazca!! This is a weird Nazca line because it doesn’t match the style of anything else. But there are several styles of lines and pictures around here, so maybe it makes sense after all? We need to do a little bit of backtracking to see the main lines. These are the ones you can view without taking a flight over the area. The tree, the hands and the lizard are visible from the tower. For whatever reason, the Pan-American Highway runs right through part of the lizard. Viewing done, it’s time to lay down some miles. The landscape, like all of Peru so far, does not disappoint. Changing from ocean, to dunes, to green valleys and finally a beach camp spot. This is a solid way to end our time in Peru.
Thanks to the beach cleaners we are up and on the road nice and early. Some last minute border/VISA information causes a change to our plan, luckily we got it early enough that the change doesn’t put us off schedule. Americans need a VISA to enter Bolivia, and not every border crossing will issue them, so we head towards Lake Titicaca, and one additional unplanned night in Peru. Lake Titicaca is at 12,500ft, so back into the mountains we go, hitting 15,500ft, 34 degrees and snow along the way. There is a sign for a llama, and immediately after we see a wild llama. Then we see a sign for a Great Rhea, and shortly after see a couple of those too! We drive into the night, and into a heavy storm before ending up on the shores of the lake. Giant rain falls on us most of the night. We forgot to get diesel for the heater, so we make due with extra blankets tonight.
The morning weather is perfect, sunny, warm, and calm. And the views! It’s border crossing day, so we start by getting the truck cleaned up and everything put away. Today Berne is less confident that we can cross here, but we’re going to try before driving four hours out of our way. The crossing is an adventure. Mostly because we show up completely unprepared, no forms printed, missing information, the whole thing. KoKo has an easy time (score Canadian passport!), but Berne needs to fill out extra forms, and give information like our hotel reservations (we have none), and our itinerary (our what now?). We think everything is going well, until the online form won’t submit and we’re told we need to print it out. Where do we do that? In town. Ok, easy, we hop in the truck, but no. The truck can’t leave the border controlled area. Nuts. Into a tuk-tuk we go, fingers crossed we can find a place that will print our files. When we return with our paperwork, everything goes VERY quickly. We pass through the border quite fast, and they don’t even inspect us! Welcome to Bolivia!
In Bolivia the roads are much worse, and there are no real grocery stores outside of La Paz, the capital. Bolivia is also experiencing an economic crisis and fuel shortage, so we are trying to be mindful about our expectations in urban areas. A nice toll booth operator lets us through the booth for free because there is nowhere to get cash in the first town we drive through. As soon as we can, though, we get cash and a little bit of fruit and hit the road. Our first, second, third and fourth planned camps are all busts, so we drive well past when we had planned to stop for the night. We said no to: someone’s active quinoa field, a sketchy abandoned truck stop, and a couple of places that didn’t exist. It’s 10pm by the time we find somewhere reasonable, and started putting up the tent. Nights like these we are extra grateful our tent and bed set up in less than five minutes.
Our spot turns out to be pretty good! You never know when you roll in at night….There is a pond, and a variety of birds fussing about. We have a slow morning to recover from our long, late drive. Berne sleeps until almost 11am! That’s unheard of for him. Once we get packed up, its all day to Uyuni. Along the way we see several gas stations with miles long lines for gas, so we’re all eyes peeled for anything that looks like less than an hour of waiting. Somewhere along the way we also meet up with our friends! The plan was to meet in Uyuni, but this is great. We convoy through some cool landscapes and crazy weather. We even drive, slowly, through a town covered in several inches of snow that is experiencing a lot of snow melt flooding. The weather is very cold when we arrive at our camp spot/hotel parking area in Uyuni. Its very small, barely fitting our two trucks and the small car that is already there, but we make it work.
Let the adventure begin! Stop number one is the train graveyard in Uyuni. There are several abandoned trains that have been run off the tracks into the desert for us to explore. Lots of tetanus here too. It’s serious resupply time because we’re heading out into some really remote areas and have no idea what we will find. After some breakfast, it’s time to head to the salt flats, the Salar de Uyuni. The weather is perfect, no wind, clear, sunny skies. The salt flats is like a giant frozen lake, hard crust on top, water underneath. We have no idea how deep the crust is, or how deep the water underneath is, and we try not to think about either (looked it up later, it is up to 130m deep in some places with a 10m crust!!).
There is a thin layer of water on the top as we head out, making a very, very large, very, very perfect mirror. The whole place doesn’t look real, we are pretty sure we have found the end of the simulation. The Dakar Rally was held here in 2018, so first stop is the Dakar monument. After that, it’s a free for all, drive wherever you want across the Salar, but also generally in the direction of one of the “islands”, Isla Incahuasi. There is a small campground and store set up here. They even serve cold beer! So we spilt a very dusty, very large bottle before heading off to find our own wild island to camp for the night. There are several islands throughout the Salar, and we find one with a nice beach and beautiful sunset views. An after dinner hike up the hill reveals even better views! And several vicochas, a chinchilla-esque animal. We have no idea how they got out here, or what they eat. As the sun sets, the wind picks up so it’s time to head inside for the night.
Leaving our island, we head towards the maze, which is locked when we arrive. Bummer. The salt brick mine is nearby, this is an interesting spot. There are stacks of salt bricks that have been pulled from the flats. The area where bricks have been pulled from feels very soft underfoot so we avoid walking there. This is our last stop on the Salar. Now we need to find a car wash and some gas, both vehicles are coated in a crust of salt. The car wash is easy, we find a DIY one shortly after hitting the dirt.
Gas proves more tricky….Three small towns tell us they’re empty. Uyuni was empty when we left. We have enough gas to try one more town, and then head back to Uyuni if need be, our friends do not. Luckily San Cristobal has gas for us! After about an hour wait. Waiting for gas is better than no gas, so we have no complaints. The town is out of money though, so now all four of us are out of cash. Shoot. We’ll figure it out.
Fueled up, it’s time to start part two of our adventure: The Lagunas Route. This is a famous, multi-day off-road route that goes from flamingo filled laguna to flamingo filled laguna, including through a national park. Day one is pretty mind blowing. There are crazy rock formations, snow capped mountains, wide vistas, a Greater Rhea, and so, so many flamingos! Our camp for the night is a raised spot in the middle of a flamingo filled laguna. The wind kicks up once the sun goes down, so we gather around the heater (thank goodness for the heater!). Not many people come out this way, we can tell by the way the wildlife responds to us. A fox wanders into camp, not to beg, but just curious. It comes by a couple times before moving on. We make it a very, very late night, and head to bed around 3:00am.
Waking up to the noises of flamingos is not the same as waking up to song birds. They make weird gurgling and giggling noises, some of which are fun and some of which are unsettling. It snowed up high (higher than we are) last night, so we have views of snow capped hills all around us as we ease into the day. Plan and map made, we pack up and head into more crazy landscapes, another Greater Rhea, and more llamas and flamingos than we can count. There are no roads, so we can drive wherever we want, which is a fun treat. The wind out here is aggressive and chilly, pushing storms around us all day. We find some sleet when we turn onto the “road” for the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avoroa. There is a canyon not far into the park where we hope there will be some shelter from the wind, but instead it’s the kind of canyon that funnels the wind straight down it. Freezing, we have a very early night to offset our very late night yesterday.
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