The day before, I had stopped by Cordiellra Travel to verify that they were picking us up at our hostel at 8am, to which they said “yes”. A backpacker from France, named Greg, was also staying at our hostel but was told to be at the agency at 8am. With 2 conflicting stories, Greg ran down to the Travel Agency office and we stayed behind with the understanding that which ever the bus came to, we would direct it to each other. About 10 minutes later, the bus showed up with Greg waving from the window saying, “I saved you, you owe me a beer tonight!” Everyone on the bus was happy, excited and clean. None of us truly understood what was in store for us, but for the moment, we were all in our happy place.
Two days prior our arrival at the Bolivian border, Bolivia had closed its borders. The area known as Santa Cruz is trying to succeed from Bolivia and become their own country-- due to their oil reserves. There was a vote in which 86% of the people voted “Yes” for succession, but that was only 25% of the country’s population, so the government suspiciously said it was invalid. Also, 5 months ago, Bolivia began to require a travel visa for all Americans. The cost of the Visa was $100. These two things (the border closing and the visa) would play a huge role in the 4 days to come.
We exited the Chilean border with ease, getting a new stamp in our passports. Next stop was the Bolivian boarder and Bolivian immigration (located 50km away). The boarder and the Bolivian immigration office is in the middle of nowhere. Upon showing our passports, our names and passport numbers were written down on a random piece of paper and we were told that we would have to surrender our passports for about 30 minutes while they filled out paperwork. Only American passports are subjected to this. We were also told that upon our arrival in Uyuni (3 days from now), we would have to go to the immigration office there and buy our visa. Thirty minutes later, our passports were handed over in a stapled brown bag to our guide/driver Emilio. We were not happy with this and wanted to make sure that our passports were truly inside this mysterious brown paper bag, sealed with staples. Emilio was on top of the 4WD strapping down the gear. I said nicely, “Querimos los passaportes.” He shook his head and put the bag in his pocket. I asked again to no avail. And then said, “Darmelo!” (Give it to me!). Then Greg (our new French friend) also jumped in and finally we had our passports back.
4WD trucks were retuning to the border as we had our breakfast and we divided into our travel groups of 6. Each jeep has 7 people, the driver plus 6 passengers. Our group of 6 consisted of Matt & I, Jose (an American who lived in Madrid), Greg (a Frenchman from Paris), and Barbarah and Simon (a couple from Vienna, Austria). We would quickly become a little family. We should have paid more attention to the condition of the people who were returning from the trip, but we were all too excited and we loaded up in the jeep and headed out into the desolate and awe-inspiring Altiplano of Bolivia.
There are no “roads” in the Altiplano. It is all non-stop 4WD hardcore driving, often times without any point of reference beyond “aim for that volcano”. Sometimes we would bounce so high from our seats, we would hit our heads on the ceiling, but we just laughed through it all. The scenery was so spectacular. There were milky green lakes that changed to deeper shades of green as the winds stirred up the minerals. We were surrounded by towering volcanoes that were an incredible array of desert reds and oranges. Everything took our breath away both figuratively from how beautiful it was and literally due to the altitude. We also made a stop at a vast geyser field of boiling mud and gases. It looked like planet Mars. Everyone brought snacks and we all shared. However, no one in the group liked the root beer barrel candy we brought. The looks on our new friends’ faces was hysterical. Even our driver, Emilio, who ate anything anyone offered him, did not want a second one. Greg just thought the idea of “rootbeer” was the funniest thing he had ever heard. After a full day of brain-jarring 4-wheel-driving, we arrived at the refuge around 4pm. The refuge was across from the reddest colored lake I could ever imagine. The red is due to a high concentration of algae. There were bright pink flamingos walking through the red lake searching for brine shrimp. It looked completely unreal. I was trying to get as many zoom photos as I could and Matt was suppose to get the overall landscape images. When I saw he was not taking any photos, I knew something was wrong. We put our bags down in the refugio. The beds had thin hay-stuffed mattress on a cement slab. Each bed had 4 wool blankets, but several of the windows of the refugio were broken and there were large cracks in the walls. Our family of six stayed in one room together and looked around nervously because we knew how cold it was about to get.
Lunch was Perro Calientes (hot dogs) with cucumbers, tomatoes and mashed potatoes. At 4:00, I considered this more of a dinner. Matt was looking more pale by the minute. A French couple, from the other jeep group, saw this and gave him some type of goo that smelled like Ben-Gay to rub on his temples, but that was useless.
I took him back to the refugio to lay down. I was able to rent 2 sleeping bags for us for 30 Bolivian pesos each (about $5USD), so those combined with our bed liners and the wool blankets would hopefully be warm enough. While the other 4 went out for a walk with our guide Emilio around the red lake, I stayed with Matt and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. At 15,000 ft, he was really suffering. With the help of an Ambien he was able to sleep through some of it. I had a very mild headache and it was easy to over-exert myself, but I’m sure my Swiss blood helped a lot. That night, it got down to -7 degrees Fahrenheit. The small amount of water in the toilet bowl froze. The water in the water bucket that was used to flush the toilet froze. Water at the refugio was scarce since very little to no rain ever falls. We all went to bed in our dusty clothes without a shower. I wore everything I had to bed and managed to get some sleep, but it was a horrible night for the other backpackers who did not come prepared with the proper gear.
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