Valley of the Moon

Here are some pictures of my recent trip to Bolivia. Iwent for two weeks with two of my friends from England, Alison and Alan Vaughan. We met on a previous hiking trip to Patagonia a couple of years ago and really enjoyed hanging out. I chose Bolivia for this adventure because I had heard so many great things about it from other travelers. It far exceeded my expectations! We spent the first week traveling in thes outhwestern part of the country. The main reason forthe entire trip was to see the Uyuni Salt Flats, the largest Salt flat in the world at more than 4000sq.miles. It was extremely impressive, but so were the multiple geological oddities we saw along the way! Forthe second week, we were dropped off in the Andesmountains and spent 6 days hiking through mountains and villages and camped along the way. We had a guide, a cook, and two horsemen, along with their 7 horses tocarry gear. It was amazing! This was definitely a "roughing it" vacation, but by far one of the most scenic. Enjoy the pictures and please write if you are curious about anything else!







Isla Pescado- Fish Island- this was one of the most
spectacular things we saw! So strange to see obviously hearty
cactus in this environment.


Piles of salt at the Uyuni salt flat



Bolivian woman bagging salt to sell




We had a picnic right beside Fish Island. It was amazing
what the cook could whip up in the middle of nowhere!




Fish Island

Me and Alison

Volcano in southwestern Bolivia



Uyuni Salt Flat

Vicuna - a relative of the alpaca

The Stone Tree in the Siloli Desert

Me and Alan and Alison near a lagoon.

One of the multiple rock formations we climbed-

all are volcanic; lots of the lava covered rocks

looked like hot fudge on a sundae.

Laguna Colorado- the red tint to the water comes from

red algae.

Alpaca- the red ribbons aren't for determining the owner

as we assumed, but are placed on the alpaca to celebrate

the importance of them according to our guide.

The gorgeous view from the top of Volcano Licancabur.

Although we weren't really acclimitized for it, we sumited

after six hours of intense hiking. We reached 19,500 feet

and stayed about 5 minutes- long enough to take these

pictures. We needed oxygen!

We look pretty good, despite feeling like total crap!

The next day we took this picture of what we climbed!

Soaking in a natural spring- this is one of the few bathing

opportunities we had- without soap of course, but you

take what you can get. And, we smelled like sulfur, but

that's better than no shower!

Fumaroles and steaming pools at Sol de Manana

Valley of Rocks

bolivia man and woman we saw while driving. I didn't

mention that the reason we took a tour is because there are

no marked roads, no road signs, and often, very few cars

on the road.

Bolivian women waiting for the bus

Women in the market cutting a fruit

called a tuna.

View of the Andes before we got dropped off for our trek.

This was a livestock sale in the city near the drop off point.

Morning coffee near the campsite.

View of our destination

A homestead near the camp

Narcisso and Luis- our llameros

Due to the clouds, this was one of the only

pictures of the summit of Illampu we could

get the last few days.

This was our bathroom on the last

day- the campsite had no big rocks

to hide behind like in the other places

we had been. They just dug a big hole

in the ground and put this tent

around it.

On our last day- we couldn't see a thing

through the clouds!