Snowy Border

Little did we know, that shortly after encountering the snow we'd be at the Chilean-Bolivian border. This is the place where I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt three days earlier.

"Hi from Bolivia."
Sita was talking to the French couple while having breakfast outside our jeep. The man spoke fluent English and a bit of Spanish but the women only spoke French.
They closed the toad on the Chilean side because of the snow, so we had plenty of time for photo ops while waiting at the border.

The bathroom looked different surrounded by snow.



The Bolivian flag.


Filling up the tank.








Within minutes a lot of this snow melted away.This is the same viewpoint as the photo above with much of the snow melted.
"Welcome back to Chile."

There were road signs on the Chilean side of the border.
Standing in both Bolivia and Chile.
This mound extended a couple hundred feet from the border station and represented the border between Chile and Bolivia.
Taking a picture of ourselves. As you can see I got slightly sunburned. At first I couldn't figure out how, with sometimes cloudy weather and having spent all day in the jeep. Following the stream of thought about how sun could've reached me inside the jeep, I realized it reached me as it reflected off the water as we drove across the salt flats the previous day.
We waited an inordinate amount of time for the Chilean border to re-open, so I filled my time by walking up part of the mountain in the background of this photo, and by walking up an down in a zig-zag across this mound of dirt. Sita thought I was being juvenile, but, with nothing better to do, I thought it would be cool to be able to claim that I'd been in and out of Chile and Bolivia a hundred times. As the first vehicles of the day approached the border from the Chilean side, signaling the reopening of roads, I finished the task I set for myself. "I've been in and out of Chile and Bolivia a hundred times."

Lunch Stop - The Most Active Volcano in South America

At lunchtime on our second day in Bolivia we stopped at the base of the most active volcano in South America. It is the border of Chile and Bolivia. You may remember from an earlier post that we climbed the second most active volcano in South America. It's funny how things work out, seeing the two most active in Volcanoes in South America on the same trip, especially since they're so far apart.

Follow the left side of this volcano up until it makes a slight peak and you'll see the smoke coming out of this volcano.

The venue of the lunch stop also provided some interesting rock formations to explore and climb.


We must have dropped in elevation a bit at this point, because this was the first place that I didn't have to use my jacket all day. Actually I remember the sun getting pretty intense here prompting us to put on sun screen.

I asked Sita to take a picture where it would look like I had the smoke shooting out of my head. I wanted to have an accompanying angry face to make it look like I was "steaming mad", but I couldn't suppress the reflex to smile in front of a camera.

Entrance into Bolivia - the border

We really had just a very little idea of what the Bolivian experience would be when we signed up for the tour. The minibus that took us to the border was a Mercedes and it was new. So I thought the booking/touring companies must have some dough, so the vehicles on the other side of the border ought to be pretty new, right? Wrong. There was a fair amount of people in the Minibus with us and all of them would be on tours, so we had to wait a while for all of the people to go through the border patrol, so I took pictures while we waited.

Sita next to the Mercedes minibus in front of the Bolivian border station. This station had one wall (in the left of the picture) that was dilapidated that showed the evidence that this building is made out of adobe as well. I was surprised that the Bolivian government would allow for such a ramshackle building to be the first thing that greets many tourists from all over the world. I was especially surprised later when we encountered other more well-built government facilities.

The view was already amazing forget the infrastructure, or lack there of, this giant mutli-colored snow-capped mountain was right in front of us.
Sita needed to go to the bathroom so we asked if they could oblige us in the border station, but they said they did not have a bathroom. So we thought, how can that be, especially since there are no trees or bushes to duck behind. "Hey, I have an idea let's check out that skeleton of a bus a over there."

Looks like we weren't the only ones with this idea.There were some other adobe ruins and apparently a dwelling also at the border. This dwelling was even more ramshackle then the border station, I think this is where the Bolivian officers working there lived.

The fleet of Toyota Land Cruisers ready to take the new wave of tourists. Everybody talks about "Jeep" tours in Bolivia, but you will never find anything but Toyota Land Cruises being utilized in this terrain, this is a testament to the quality of Toyota vehicles. Especially since some of the Land Cruisers were of the late 70's/early 80's variety. We were lucky enough to score a mid-90's model (for the first few days of the tour) that was still in pretty good shape in the interior especially since a properly functioning or clean interior is certainly not a priority for the touring companies or drivers.




I was surprised to find snow in the shade of this adobe wall. After the heat experienced in San Pedro, I thought I would be appropriately dressed for most of the tour in the clothes I'm seen in here. Boy was I wrong...

Travelling to the Bolivian Border

One of the reasons we did not make it to Valle de la Muerte, was because we rented our bikes late in the afternoon. The reason we rented the bikes so late was because we spent time planning out trip to Bolivia. We got up early after one night in San Pedro de Atacama to start our Bolivian tour.

At the edge of the town of San Pedro you go through the Chilean immigration before driving an hour or so to the border. This immigration facility is a modern facility that you would expect to see at an airport with a staff of luggage handlers and x-ray machines, keep that in mind for when you see the Bolivian border station.
After seeing such aridness it was interesting to see peaks with snow and plants in the ground. These next few pictures were taken from the minibus that took us to the border.




We had made quite an elevation gain by this point as you can see in this picture.
Alpacas grazing.
We may not have settled into the Bolivian "Jeep" that would practically be our home for the next four days, but we were certainly already on a tour. The bus taking us to the border made a picture stop to enjoy the short-lived Chilean part of the tour.


Around this point I don't even remember seeing a sign but the bus turned off the pavement onto a parallel dirt road.

As we approached the Bolivian border I had to take a picture of it through the front windshield of the minibus, because I was so amazed by how ramshackle it was. I thought there would be some kind of fence and a facility similar to the one on the Chilean side, but nope. Welcome to Bolivia.