March 25 crossing the border into Bolivia

I was almost beside myself with excitement about heading into the extremely high country of Bolivia. It was to be a long day so we had to make a pretty early start. The drive to the border was uneventful and the border crossing? as border crossings are - a fair bit of waiting but we were eventually met by our Bolivia guide, Alfredo (Freddy) and our driver Eddy. 

We didn't see too many 'oldies' like us!

Terrific border!

Like driving dunes only flattish - our driver was excellent.

That morning particularly was a crazy mix of Gibb River Road, the Tanami Track and the Dakar Rally. Roads across the Altiplano are non existent. It’s just a series of wheel tracks winding across the sand, dirt, lava plains. Not for the faint hearted but for us it was outback Australia on super steroids. Wrap-around silence, snow capped volcanoes (mostly dormant), ancient, ancient Andean mountains/volcanoes, lower altitudes dotted with ‘straw grass’ so similar to our spinifex, adorably vicuña grazing in small groups. It was heaven. 

We drove on through this remote and fairly inaccessible landscape to visit the tranquil turquoise waters of Laguna Verde at the base of Licancabur volcano with its 6000m high cone and large summit crate lake which is among the highest lakes in the world.

Volcanoes? Active? This afternoon we wandered through clouds of warm sulphur-scented steam from Sol de Mañana, Morning Sun. It was otherworldly like what you imagine Hell might look like if …. The area is volcanically active which of course gave our visit a tinge of scary excitement. It is part of a huge underground lava lake that extends into Chile. What we don’t know about the Earth! 

Freddy got Eddy to stop the car and said "let’s walk". Waa? Whoa! We edged past craters of boiling mud and steam geysers. Mud and other stuff in rainbow colours. My glasses kept steaming up but Eddy kept a close eye on me. You just had to be there. It was a never to be forgotten experience.

We went right to the very edge and peered into deep cauldrons of boiling mud and gushing steam vents.

Finally, we collapsed back in the car and headed on. Not far from there we reached the astonishing height of 5000m on the Altiplano or Andean Plateau. According to our guide this region is sometimes called the Tibet of South America which makes sense as it is the most extensive high plateau on Earth outside Tibet which I know I've told you already but being there and being able to walk around was an astonishing experience.

Scenes like this made us hanker to just pitch a tent and stay

We stopped for lunch at hot springs which we could have plunged into but it wasn't for us this day. I have to say midday meals in South America are huge.  Always three courses and this one included a huge thermos of hot water and a large bowl of coca leaves for us to make tea which is supposed to help with altitude wonkiness (didn't work for me!).

Lakes and flamingos - there were more to come. Laguna Colorada (Red Lagoon) was our next stop. And I should say here that all along the route - not road because there were none - had us oohing an aahing, so spectacular were the vistas. But to Red Lagoon) .... Lindsay was in heaven watching flocks of flamingos trawling for food in the shallows. 

And the dainty vicuna wandered around us!

Threatening storm cloud persuaded us to head for lower territory - what? we were to stay in a 'cave hotel' that night so we pushed on. Along the road as we descended a couple of hundred metres! to our destination for the night at Villa Mar. This is a small village built on the side of a lave flow - our hotel was built into the rock. Along the way we stopped at a couple of places beside river beds where we found an ancient arrow/spear head as well as multi coloured Jasper and obsidian. Some of the obsidian pieces we reckoned may have been cutting tools or arrow heads. You can imagine I was in my element.  But we had a date with a hotel so off we went passing on the way a large herd of llamas being rounded up into their nighttime enclosures - although there are few puma still in the area there are foxes who would love a meal of tender young llama.