It was minus five degrees when we woke up at five in the morning for an early start. It was indeed difficult but it was worth it!
Pueblo Fantasma is 4690 metres above sea level and it’s been completely abandoned since the 1800s, now only home to curious chinchillas and vicuñas. The village lies in the shadow of Monte Lípez, which although unstable for mining, has massive supplies of gold, sulphur and zinc. In the next ten years the Japanese will begin extracting minerals from there, but not until they have finished up in San Cristobal, near Uyuni. Pueblo Fantasma was inhabited only by indigenous peoples until the Spanish came over in the sixteenth century, making slaves out of them to gather mineral ores. Much interbreeding occurred between the Spanish and the indigenous, and also close inbreeding within families. This lead to malformed children and the Spanish abandoned the settlement, taking the cures for western diseases and medical expertise with them, leaving the helpless remainder for dead. The city itself is currently stone ruins that may be comparable to that of Machu Picchu in Peru, very different to the mud brick settlements that surround the area even though these villages only seemed to occur very rarely.
We stopped at a small shack in the middle of this Andean desert and bought tickets to the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. Perhaps this would compete with the salt lake finalé? Time will tell.
We proceeded past Laguna Morejon and observed Volcano Uturuncu, which stands at 6,008 metres high. We then passed though two more villages where the mud architecture continued to be the prevalent style. We firstly visited the village of Quetena Chica and then Quetena Grande, both of which have Chilean inhabitants thus also the absence of the Quechua language, unusual for this region of Bolivia. It turned out, however, that Quetena Chica was actually ‘grande’ and Quetena Grande was actually ‘chica’.
It was at our next stop, Laguna Hedionda, where the another group’s jeep decided to break down and keep us there for three hours. Not to worry though as we were plentifully occupied by the two beautiful flamingos that were frightened off by a telltale sparrow that warned them of our presence. It was a shame to have spoilt the flamencos’ dinner of algae but even more of a pity that we haven’t got the best flamingo pictures yet. Talking of dinner, ours were delicious tender steaks of llama, which, in terms of meat, had oodles of flavour and went well with the delicious salad of tomatoes and onions.
We then headed past the Kollpa Laguna and the Salar de Chalviri towards the Laguna Verde. At the Laguna Verde we got a fantastic glimpse of the Volcano Licancabur, who’s shape fits the pointed, conical stereotype and lies in the high Andes on the border with Chile.
The Rocas de Dali were soon to follow and these are named after the artist who painted them in landscapes. The most novel part of this day were the hot springs that are heated to thirty-five degrees by lava far below. Quite a nice contrast to the almost chilling air temperature! We had great fun splashing around with some great friends we made throughout the tour, including Martin, Christian and Shirley. Not only did we manage to dip in the hot springs, but we also managed to gaze at the nearby geysers, which were 5200 metres above sea level and we were sure to remain upwind of the bitter stench of sulphur that leached into the air.
In just over an hour we arrived at Huallajara, which was where we got our heads down that night. Beforehand, we managed to practise a lot of Spanish at the dinner table!
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