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."

Bolivian Snow

After some amount of driving we came upon an unexpected sight, snow! Yes, we had seen snow on the tops of peaks for three days but I didn't know that we would encounter snow ourselves, I mean it was summer time after all.

The snowfall was just another one of the amazing aspects of this Bolivian journey. It was also an element of beauty in and of itself and we were blessed to get the chance to see it.

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.