SUNDAY JULY 7, 2013
Today was the first day our our trek across the desert and the altiplanos, the elevated plateaus. We left for our tour at 7:40am in a small bus to the Chilean border. First up was Chilean immigration, then a 1 hr bus drive to Bolivian immigration. We had to fill out a paper, but Americans couldn't buy their visa papers or stamps until we got to Uyuni, so we had to wait, a little in limbo, until we could check into the real Bolivian border in 2 days. We switched our water jugs and bags to a 6 person Jeep with a driver named Jelly. Yep, en serio.
On our drive we stopped first at Laguna blanca, which was a solid ice lake... I think? I know it's weird but the climate was so strange there! We took our usual jumping pictures, but a little less enthusiastically, sine we didn't want to fall. Next up was Laguna verde, which was pretty beautiful, but not as green as I expected. The others sharing our Jeep were Gaspar and Corinne, from France, and Sara and Chantal from Switzerland. In the car on the way to the geysers, I started to feel motion sick again. I managed to get out and snap a few shots of the creepy looking pools. They were so full of minerals, that they looked like molten metal bubbling away in the ground! The smell was awful though, like sulfur, and did nothing to improve my nausea. By the time we made it to the place where we would be spending the night, I was at my breaking point. I'll spare you the details, but just know that I was suddenly very, very ill. Our "beds" were literally giant slabs of concrete that came about 2 feet up off the ground. I threw my rented sleeping bag on with some heavy quilts and tried to sleep. I spent the entire evening sick to my stomach, unable to eat or drink anything. Jess took my camera with her to la Laguna colorada. I napped intermittently from 3 to 9, listening to Harry Potter on my iPod to try and relax. I was suffering from altitude sickness, but I didn't know any way to cure it. Jelly tried to give me some maté, a special kind of tea brewed from South American herbs. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep it down so it couldn't help me. Jess and Jelly kept checking in, and he kept trying to convince me to continue because in another day and a half, we would be near a hospital. I didn't think I could make it another day and a half since I couldn't control how frequently I kept getting sick. Finally, Jelly said if I wanted to go back to San Pedro, he could get a Jeep to leave at 5am. I woke up again at three throwing up, so I was glad to try and return rather than get further up into the plateaus and further from medicine and bathrooms.
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