As I dragged myself towards my room after the volcano climb, the hotel manager stopped me and said that he reserved for me the Salar de Tara tour for the next day. It doesn’t go every day, and it’s a must see. I gave in, under the condition that he takes Euro as payment or waits until the next day. The volcano climb was expensive, and I was out of pesos, and didn’t feel like making the 4 km roundtrip to the village to exchange money. He didn’t want Euro and agreed to the next day, after the tour.
I looked up that destination on the topographic map I acquired the first day; it looked exciting. Salar means a flat covered with mixed salts and minerals. Saline means it’s only NaCl, table salt. This one was quite high up, but I hoped that a bus tour wouldn’t be too exhausting.
As I woke up the next morning, I had two surprises: First, I didn’t’ feel any after-effects of the climb. No sore muscles, no headaches. Maybe the rehydration worked. Then, as I walked down to the hotel’s main building for breakfast, I noticed that the volcanoes looked different: they were dusted white. I didn’t give it much thought at that time.
The tour used a small bus; we were maybe 6 only. The driver introduced me to the others as “the Canadian woman who climbed Vulcan Lascar.” Maybe I was the sensation of the tourist industry this week.
We started out towards Paso de Jama, the same highway that goes to Argentina and that the bus traveled when I came. Here the nature of the dust became clear. It wasn’t salt; it was snow. As we processed higher, more and more snowflakes were swirling in the air. And more and more snow was on the road. Snow veil floated above the pavement, the same phenomenon that we call “poudrerie” (blowing snow) in Quebec. We stopped at a viewpoint and the driver offered breakfast. That was weird; I had breakfast in the hotel, had my ratio of ham and cheese sandwich for the day, and the program promised lunch, not breakfast. As we ate, the highway patrol drove by, and informed the driver that the road was closed. We turned back. The driver tried to offer alternatives, but as we were 6, he couldn’t find any destination where nobody had been, thus he took us back to his boss to discuss reimbursement. I was lucky, I didn’t book with that agency directly, thus I went back to the hotel. I didn’t offer payment for the aborted tour; the manager didn’t ask for any. The others weren’t as lucky. I got an e-mail from a Finnish couple that they got only about 70% back. Which wasn’t fair, as we only saw the snow and that was probably nothing unusual for those from Finland. They were quite upset and complained to the tourist office, to no avail.
In retrospect, I don’t even understand why the tour took off. The snow was visible from the valley to the naked eye. Chile is developed enough to have weather forecast and road condition info. If I’m mean, I have to conclude that they took off, because otherwise there hadn’t been any excuse not to reimburse 100 % to everybody.
I booked tours for the following day and Saturday, and then walked up to the Pukara (the pre-inca/inca fortress) – quite impressive view and rock formations. Also blessed my luck that I jumped for the volcano climb at the first occasion, later on it would’ve been buried by the snow as well.
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