Sunday, July 30, 2017

Day 9 - July 26, 2017 Uyuni, Bolivia

Breakfast was served at 7:00 am, with local fried bread that tasted delicious, along with scrambled eggs. Instant coffee, assorted teas, and yogurt drinks were served.

Our journey for the day started at 7:30 am.  We visited two caves that were accidentally discovered in 2003. The Galaxy cave contains some amazing fossilized seaweed and algae that are paper-thin and delicate. The other one is a burial ground for the ancient village people and contains a number of skulls and a mummy on site.

The next stop was called "rock army". Ancient fossilized gigantic coral reefs lined up for kilometers along the road resembling a gathering army. Their shapes were quite interesting.

We took some special effect pictures on the new rail road tracks to Chile. Afterward, the tour took us past one of the 4 active volcanoes in Bolivia today. The snow capped mountains and the desolate landscape were just amazing.

After, we stopped at one of the numerous high Andean lakes to see the flamingos. They like to congregate in these Andean lakes full of algae and minerals. We were told that three different kinds of flamingos come to the lake each year and locals identify them by the color on their legs and knees. They also built nests in the lake and hatch their eggs in December.

The road to the Rock Tree stone park was covered with thick layer of snow. We had to walk gingerly so as not to fall flat on our face or worse still, injured ourselves.  For some reason, my altitude sickness came into full force and I had to slowed down considerably
to adjust to the 4800 m altitude.

It costed 150B to enter into the national park where we stayed for one night with minimum facilities and the plan was to visit a number of fascinating sights there next day and then drive back to Uyuni around 5:30 pm, have dinner in town and take the flight to La Paz.

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