CLAUDIA & CARSTEN'S WORLD EXPEDITION

Plaza de Santa Cruz

Last stop on the South American leg of our trip was Bolivia. We took a bus from Campo Grande into Corumbá and crossed the border into Puerto Quijarro to catch the train that would take us to Santa Cruz, where we would spend New Year's. While our hotel was terrible, it was very well located and Santa Cruz was a pretty town, so we ended up having a very good time.

Plaza

New Year's dinner

Happy New Year!

Old car

Bus to Sucre

OK, when we said the bus ride from Recife to Salvador was terrible, we had no idea we would later go on this bus...The road between Santa Cruz and Sucre is in terrible condition and the driver drove 14 hours non stop, during the night, as fast as he could. Needless to say, we didn't sleep at all and were happy we were alive at the end.

Bus ride

Uyuni

We arrived to Sucre the next morning and waited for the second bus to take us to Uyuni. We finally arrived to Uyuni around 30 hours after leaving Santa Cruz.

Off to the salt flats

In Uyuni we booked a 3 day tour which would take us into the Uyuni salt flats and all the way to the border with Chile where we could go to San Pedro de Atacama later.

Uyuni

We arrived to Uyuni a few days before the Dakar race, so there was a lot of people and the hotels were full and more expensive than normally. On the dates of the Dakar race, everything was fully booked.

Lunch the first day

The people from our tour were these two Japanese ladies plus Rosaria and Nadia, two very nice Italian girls.

Incahuasi Island

Kiwi biking the desert

When we stopped to take some photos, we saw a shape in the distance and it looked like a horse (in the salt flat??!!), but it turned out to be a New Zealander who was biking all the way from Alaska and he expected to reach Ushuaia three months later. After meeting him and listening to his stories, we decided we are clearly not the "bike around the world" type and our adventures would need another mode of transport.

Standard Uyuni photo tricks

Our team

Hotel de sal

Hotel de sal

This hotel is fully made of salt.

Ollagüe Volcano

Cañapa Lagoon

Hedionda Lagoon

Chiarcota Lagoon

Árbol de Piedra

Laguna Colorada

The lagoon is red because of the algae that lives in the water. It hosts a large population of flamingos, which unfortunately were too far away to be photographed, and this is where they make their nests and breed. Thousands of flamingos are born here every season.

Laguna Colorada

Geysers Sol de la Mañana

These are the highest geysers in the world at almost 5.000 meters altitude. Tatio, the geysers we have in Chile, are at around 4.300 meters.

Laguna Blanca

Border between Bolivia and Chile