Bolivia and Chile High Desert

 

We went on a vacation to Bolivia and Chile with S&A expeditions the last week of October this year. We flew into La Paz Bolivia, arriving at about 3:00 a.m. and were met at the airport by our guide and driver who took us to our hotel for a little sleep before a tour of the city in the afternoon

This is an unidentified wildflower outside our hotel in La Paz Bolivia

La Paz has a little park a lot like our Badlands here in Nevada.  This is our guide and Brenda posing for photos . This park was on our walking tour of the city and it's  a hoodoo area with a lot of erosion. Just like you see in Nevada or parts of Oregon or even Anza borrego down in California it had cactus and clay spiers. The steep sections were hard because the area is near 12,000 feet in elevation

 The valley of the Moon. The tour company handled all the entrance fees for everything.

La Paz doesn't have street cars or city buses. They have gondolas overhead because the city is so dense and on so many hills that buses wouldn't be able to run through the streets. Some of the mountains around around La Paz are over 20,000 ft high.

An example of how dense the housing is there

In that Park that looks like Nevada it has hoodoos and on this hoodoo there's there was a little cactus garden

That hoodoo you see is the one with a cactus garden on top

This is a variety of ephedra, Mormon tea like we have here it's a little bit different there but the same

One of the flowering cactus and the garden

The Valley of the Moon has  houses encroaching upon the edges of it

Another view of the city from the gondola

Some of the mountains surrounding La Paz are around 20,000 ft high. La Paz itself is at 12,000 ft at the airport look more like 11,000 ft in the main city

Pigeons are found everywhere

Guards in front of one of the government buildings

A lady in a carnival outfit practicing for the upcoming carnival season

A bunch of people doing the same thing

Narrow streets with shops. Cobblestones.  This was a Sunday so there weren't many people there

A guitar shop on that same avenue

After the tour of La Paz we caught an airplane down to Uyuni, the salt flats,  and this is a sunset picture there

The sunset showing the patterns in the salt

From our hotel on the edge of the salt flat, our guides took us out into the middle of the salt. 42 mi of salt driving to an island sticking out of the salt that has cactus and we hiked up on the mountain. Made a loop and came back down. Had a lunch out on the flat.

The island consists of tufa formations. You know,  formed by Hot springs under the water when there was a lake there. Like the ones in Mono lake.

The view from the top of the island

Black-Hooded Sierra finches  coming around where we had our lunch

Our vehicle in Bolivia. Most roads in Bolivia are dirt. Some of them rough.

Salt block picnic tables

Lunch on the playa

The location for the start of a Dakar rally

The original salt hotel out on the playa.

The view from there back to our hotel on the edge of the playa. A few miles away.

Springs on the salt flats.

There were springs out on the salt flat where bubbled up from there. We could look back and see the hotel still 

Vicuñas were often seen on the side of the road. They have the most expensive wool of any animal.

Because they are not domesticated. You have to catch a wild one and shear it. 

After some time in Uyuni we headed out to a railroad museum where they had these metal sculptures of movie replicas.

And trains with graffiti

The front of our hotel at night. It is built entirely of salt blocks cut from the salt flats.

Our sunset excursion with wine and cheese.

The salt block dome over our bed in the salt hotel

Brenda inspecting the salt blocks

Along the edges of the wood floor are salt patches.

Part of the hotel.

Inside the hotel

The wood floor and salt patches

The domed roof over our bed made from blocks of salt.

The area of the playa right next to our hotel where it gets a lot of vehicular traffic and potholes develop .

This is a stack of salt blocks at a factory that converts them into table salt

Piles of table salt in the factory

Llamas on the side of the road. Llamas are domestic animals that they let roam across the countryside and you could see herds of 50 or 100.

Wherever there was water there were flamingos

An Andean goose



Andean Ibis

Different species of flamingo

Andean Gull

vicunas

A rock garden all tourists get to see

A rare desert plant that looks like a green painted rock. It feels hard just like a rock and grows about 5 millimeters per year.They get very old.

They have very small flowers

Grains of sand have blown onto this one.

The road south to Chile. There really isn't a real road . Just tracks across the desert. There were about 250 miles of this on the way to Chile.

We came to another rock garden with younger green rock plants

A Darwin's Rhea on the edges of Laguna Colorado. Just before this area the road passed over 16,100 feet of elevation.

Some old snow left over from winter

This is a thermal area at 15,000 feet elevation.

The way they mark the domestic llamas

Getting closer to Chile

Rock squirrel, Viscasha, living in the rocks next to the road. They are relatives of the Chinchilla