Having spent the best part of three months in Chile and Argentina, the cost of living and transport are beginning to take their toll. Our meagre budget of just £45 a day is frequently blown and, were it not for the money we banked by scadging Antarctica, we'd be almost £800 in the red.
With that in mind, a dedicated tourist town in Chile is pretty much the last place we should be, and yet we find ourselves inextricably drawn to San Pedro de Atacama, an oasis in the middle of the world's driest desert.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
On the plus side San Pedro is an eerily fascinating place – one of our favourites in Chile. That, added to the benevolence of a host who upgraded us to a double from the dorms for free (he charges £12 per person per night for the bunks, without breakfast, but with a straight face) means that our final few days in Chile will be some of our most memorable.
Strange that we enjoy it so much, really, as the whole place has an unreal feeling about it. It's as though it's been created in the image of what tourists expect a desert town to look like, rather than something that's evolved naturally. The majority has been tossed up in the past 10 years or so, but the authentic look is convincing enough to make it genuinely difficult to tell what is original.
Outside of town, however, everything is a good deal more genuine and ridiculously photogenic.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
However, the real reason for being here isn't to blow money – or even to take photos – but so that we can get a ride to our next country. There are many ways to get to Bolivia from Chile, but by far the most interesting is a three-day, off-road Jeep tour that ends in the bizarre, ethereal gleam of Uyuni. And no, we can't really afford it at almost £110 a head (plus another £20 each to get into a national park) but being spread over three days and including food and drinks, we can just about take the hit.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Given our recent problems with border control, arriving at a shack at 4000m above sea level to get into Bolivia doesn't really fill us with excitement. Nor, in all honesty, does the prospect of being stuck in a 4x4 with six other people for the entire time.
But ramshackle as the little hut is, we are stamped-in quickly and, thanks to the honesty of the Cordillera Tours, our journey is comfortable too. Rather than cram everyone and a driver into one vehicle, they spread the eight of us (variously representing Scotland, England, Bosnia, Switzerland, Brazil and Holland) between two.
Plus, what was somehow left out of the blurb is that what lies ahead is the best non-road trip of our lives.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
The general rule for altitude sickness is that once you go beyond 3000m above sea level, you should only ascend 500m a day. We start at 2500m in San Pedro and within a few hours pass Laguna Verde and Laguna Blanca at 4000m, then bump through a literally breath-taking valley at 4500m that is said to look like a Dali painting.
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Finally we top out to watch the weirdness of some prehistoric mud-geysers somewhere around 5000m. That's three times the height of Ben Nevis – hell, it's more than double the height we reached in the Himalayas. The dryness, altitude and radiation from the merciless sun make life up here pretty difficult, even in the short term. We feel endlessly thirsty, despite the water flowing right through us, and are the new owners of gnawing headaches. Standing up too quickly or trying to scale slopes in a hurry feels like running and ultra-marathon with a hangover.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
The ancient, Inca way of coping with this is to chew on coca leaves – as in Coca Cola, as in cocaine. Alas, chewing these little green things taste like a cross between raw tea and the sickly, earthy rankness I imagine magic mushrooms might have. There's scant trace of the numbing, euphoric sensation I imagine cocaine might have, either. Suffice to say one in the group observes that they “prefer it the white way”. As for fighting off the altitude sickness, I barely notice a difference, feeling no better or worse than those who opted to simply guzzle water.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
The first day ends at Laguna Colorada, somewhere around 4000m in the sky. Here a great flock of skittish flamingos feed and flee most attempts to take pictures. Luckily for us, a Jeep arriving late chases some right towards us.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
While it and another 10 Jeeps head to a sprawling borstal-looking place half a mile away, our two park up at private accommodation. It's still not posh – it's barely more than a bothy with curtains – but they serve warm food, and give us two rooms to share.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
After dinner, we lead the group out onto a nearby hill. Being this far away from humanity, and with only a few weak lights running from car batteries to illuminate our refugio (bothy) there is near perfect darkness up here, which, if you know what you're doing (and Wee Mo does) allows for some pretty spectacular pictures.
We call it a day at just 10pm, with everyone exhausted by altitude and excitement, then head to bed, steal as many free blankets as we can and concentrate on not freezing to death.