BOLIVIAAAAAA!!!

So at the moment I am in La Paz... I have been in Bolivia for about 13 days now (officially only for 7 because it took 5 days to get my visa). It has been a crazy ride so far, I apologize for the infrequent blog posts but the internet here is a bit more difficult than the other places that I have been, and it's really slow.
The photos below are a mishmash from my trip across the salt falts of Uyuni, which was amazing and slightly terrifying (lesson learned use the best tour company in bolivia regardless of cost because the not so good companies are really bad). The salt flat itself is the largest in the world and it is truely mind boggling. We also saw geysers, and hotsprings, along with bizzarely colored lakes... laguna colorada was incredible, and lots of amazing rock formations. After my tour I headed to Potosi the highest city in the WORLD! Yep its at about 4,100m (which is taller then most of the peaks in the US). There i experienced one of the most intense couple hours of my life... The town functions beacuse of mining, presently most people work as part of a mining cooperative. They mine in tunnels where ever they want and when ever they want, and then sell the ore that they collect to the cooperative. I spent about 3 hours in the dusty asbetos filled mine shafts, I went about 2km into them and we decended over 150m down to the fourth level of tunnels. At points we were crawling on our hands and knees and on the deeper levels the temperature was over 100 degrees. We saw and spoke with a twelve year old and a fourteen year old miner... both of them began working when they were 10! They worked about 10 hrs per day and 6 days per week. On a good day they would make arround 25 bolivianos, which is leass than 4 dollars! The mine was one of the most intense and humbling things that I have ever seen... I thought I had a hard job working in mines... nope. The worst part is that there is so much asbestos and silica minerals within the mine that the average life expectancy of the mines once they enter is 12 to 20 years, before they usually die of silicosis or lung cancer... The coopertive allows people to tour the mines so that people can gain a better understaing of what happens there, it is truely eye opening.

On a lighter note...I am heading into the joungle tomorrow. After I promise to spruce up the blog posts, and I will probably expand on this one. I hope all is well at home.
Miss you all! Sorry for the crappy post, but I didnt want to leave everyone hanging.



Altipano desert


Viscacha... aka half rabbit half squirrel, enjoying lunch


Laguna Colorada


Laguna Colorada


Me holding dynamite.. yes the fuse is lit. Sorry its sideways


The mine shaft that we entered. We went 2km into the moutain and decended about 100m


Decending into the mine


Masive asbetos crystal growing from the top of one the mine shafts...


Croutching in one of the mining tunnels


Before entering the Mine outside of Potosi


The train cenmetary of Uyuni


Driving acrross the salt flats

San Pedro de Atacama

I spent 4 days relaxing in the tourist mecca of San Pedro de Atacama, by far the most touristy location that I have been to. It is literally an oasis in the middle of the Atacama desert. When we drove up to it, it was the first green area that I had seen in quite some time. The town itself consists of dusty streets, lined with hostels, fancy restaurants, bars and a ton of tour agencies. I spent the first day sitting in a hammock drinking fruit juice and eating empanadas. That evening I ran into a girl who Forrest and I met in Puerto Natales. Kat worked at the hostel that we stayed in while we where there. That evening we headed out to watch the sunset over the Vally de la Luna (valley of the moon), which was beautiful. The valley is quite beautiful and reminded me a lot of the desert in southern Utah, but it is even more amazing because the valley is surrounded by volcanoes! The next day Kat and I went on a Tour to Laguna Cejar. A salty spring in the middle of the Salar (salt flat) of Atacama. The spring is over 150ft deep, with water that is 4 times saltier than the Mediterranean Sea. We all got in, but you can really swim… you just float, it was a really bizarre sensation, because you couldn’t put your legs down the salt would float them back up and you would flop over in the water. Afterwards we went to the Ojos del Salar (eyes of the salt flat) which were 2 agua dulce (fresh water or literally “sweet water”) springs in the middle of the desert, aerial photos make them look like eyes. Afterwards we drove further on the salar to a nice spot where we drank Pisco Sours and watched the sun set. The following day we got up at 4am!!!! To go and visit the geysers of the Tatio Volcano. It was a 2 hr drive on bumpy dirt roads. When we got out of our massive tourist bus thing (check out the photo). We were at an elevation over 14,000ft and it was cold. The geysers were cool, but not much compared to Yellowstone. There were also hot spring that some people went into, and then we had a nice pancake breakfast cooked on the stove that folded out of the side of our vehicle. On the way back to town we stopped by a small village, where I got to bottle feed an 18day old llama (yes I caved and paid to do it… it was sooo cute and soft). We also stopped to check out 400-700 year old cactus which were huge (4-7m tall, they grow 1cm per year). I spent the rest of my afternoon being sleepy. The fallowing day Kat and I boarded a bus to head to Bolivia where we would begin a 3 day jeep tour through the high Andes and Salars to Uyuni.


Sunset in Vally de la Luna


Floating in salty Laguna Cejar


Salty oasis in the desert.


Kat running along the edge of the Ojos.


Sunset


Perspective shot of me and Kat on the Atacama salt flat.


Geysers del Tatio


Pepita, my cute baby llama friend.


Our beefey transportation vheicle.... complete with fold out grill.

Back Tracking... The Nitrate Ghost Towns of the Aticama

On our way to San Pedro we stopped at the Chilean national monument of Chacabuco. It was a nitrate mining town built in 1924. The turn of the century created a nitrate "white gold" mining boom in portions of Northern Chile in the Atacama. Due to inhospitable nature of the Atacama the towns were built as self sustaining villages with everything inside the outer walls. The village was only operational for 14 years before synthetic nitrate was invented in Germany and put most of the mines in the Atacama out of business. At its peak the enclosed village housed over 7,000 people within it’s walls. It had playing field, a store, a swimming pool and tennis courts within the same walls as the nitrate refining facility. It produced both liquid iodine and powdered nitrate in very large quantities. After the late 1930’s the town and facilities were abandoned until Chacabuco became a concentration camp during the Pinochet regime in 1973. To this day, it remains surrounded by approximately 98 lost landmines, left by the Chilean military when Chacabuco was used as a prison camp.

National Parks of Northern Chile

I am presently in Northern Chile, and I have spent the past two weeks working my way up here from Santiago, at the moment I am in San Pedro De Atacama. About 4 days ago I visited the National Park Nevado de 3 Cruces located near the Argentine border, high up in the Andes over 14,000ft. We visited the park and the surrounding area and spent 2 nights camping on the side of a saline lake called Laguna Verde at almost 15,000ft. The season for the park is over, it ended about 2 weeks ago, but while we were there we encountered 4 exploratory geologists! We arrived late in the evening and they invited us into the refugio that they were using to have coffee and snacks. They explained to me (in Spanish- my geological terminology in Spanish isn’t so good) that there is a volcanic formation under the lake that is leeching titanium into the water, so it’s dissolved in this freezing salty lake. I assumed they were their checking things out on land, but I got the full idea of their field work the next morning when they suited up in full dry suits and got in a tiny motor boat! They were diving for water samples in a lake 4 times saltier than the Mediterranean (this required lots of belt weights), and the water temp because of all the salt is below freezing (-2-3deg C), the air temp wasn’t so warm either! I think the only thing that made their diving bearable were the hot springs located on the edge of the lake!

Near the lake is the highest active Volcano in the world, (Ojos del Slado) and the tallest peak in Chile (only 70m shorter than Aconcagua) we hiked part of the way up to 18,000ft. After we left the park we headed back to the coast to another national park Pan de Azucar, where I saw Penguins in the desert!! They live on an island that is covered with cactus. I never thought I would see a penguin and a cactus in the same place, but Chile is full of surprises.

I have never seen so many mines in my entire life, Northern Chile is one massive mining complex. I saw a monitoring well at 16,000ft in the middle of the desert. It seemed funny to me because it is one of the driest places on earth and no one has to de-water their pits here b/c there is no water. I also met a hydrogeologist in the Park he was from Canada working for Golder, he was looking for water so they could being operating a new mine- but he wasn’t finding any. He informed me that AMEC is their biggest competitor here and that seemed to be true, I saw a few AMEC trucks driving around.

I have toured an old nitrate mining ghost town, from the 1920, and visited an abandoned copper smelter from the 30s. At the moment I am really close to a massive copper mine that was formerly run be Anaconda Copper CO (people here actually know that Montana is a state b/c of this), it’s about 3x the size of the Berkley pit!

I am heading into Bolivia on Thursday, to continue my journey north.


The fishing boat that we hired to take us to "sugar loaf island" to view the penguinos!


The endangered Humbolt Penguin!


Pan de Azucar Natl. Park


me in the spring


Hot spring by Laguna Verde


Our geologist friends


Base camp of Ojos del Salado, 5,200m base camp, where we began our hike.


Geologists out in their boat on Laguna Verde


Beched boat in a dried up section of Laguna Negra


Guanacos


Refugio at Laguna Santa Rosa in Nevado de Tres Cruces Natl. Park


Flamingos in Laguna Santa Rosa

Valley Del Elique and north!

I spent 2 days in La Serena before meeting back up with Phillip (the german fellow I met in Santiago). On Saturday we headed up the Valley Del Elique to the towns of Vicuna and Pisco Elique. We visited a Piso distillery and saw lots and lots of grape vines growning Pisco. The vally is famous for prosucing Pisco (traditional liquor of Peru and Chile), and also for observatorys. The sky is very clear with few clouds so the hills are scattered with observtorys both big and small. We headed up to Maraculla Observatory at 10:30, we spent 2 hrs up there looking through various sizes of telescopes and we learned some constillations (in the southern hemisphere). Yesterday we headed up the Pan-American highway (ruta 5) up north to the small National Park ...... where we camped along the beach. We then headed further up north through the desert, stopping at an abdoned mine smelter to snap some photos. We saw more wild Vicuna, and are presently in the funky mining town of Copiapo. We are headed out to Tres Crucez National Park for the next 4-5 days, it's supposed to be amazing and thanks to my new friend I actually get to see it because you can only access it in a 4x4.


Abandoned mine smelter in the middle of the dessert.




Northern Chile is dry... and barren.


This is where Pisco comes from...


Swan in the Japonese garden in La Serena