TAKING THE HIGH ROAD

The infamously inhospitable route from Chile’s Atacama desert to Bolivia’s otherwordly Uyuni salt flats has been upgraded. New lodges and guiding alternatives are reimagining this well-trodden andean journey. At the nose-bleed altitudes of the altiplano, Indigenous communities eke out a remote existence and rare wildlife stalks barren mountain plateaus

- JAMIE LAFFERTY

We left the trees far behind as we climbed up to Bolivia’s Altiplano, but this was no place for them anyway. The dryness would be fatal, and even if they could find water, the ferocious winds wouldn’t allow them to stand. On this high-altitude plateau, life has had to make some extreme adaptations to survive, finding ways to eke out water and nutrition over 4,250 metres above sea level. Trees are yet to find a solution.

Up here, the landscape inspires a plethora of similes; the mountains look tie-dyed, psychedelic, rainbowed — like technicolour dream coats. When we pull over in our 4x4 — a swaying cross and rosary beads finally falling still beneath the rear-view mirror — my Chilean guide Micaela Díaz explains that the surreal valley we’ve found ourselves in is known as the Salvador Dalí Desert. “Because it looks pretty weird, no?”

This is one of the early stops on a new version of a classic journey that travel company Explora is calling La Travesía, meaning ‘the crossing’ in Spanish. It’s an adventure tour linking two of South America’s most bizarre landscapes: Chile’s Atacama, the driest nonpolar desert in the world, and the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the world’s largest salt flat. It’s a remote road trip of around 325 miles, but the ‘roads’ are mere suggestions of routes that run through much of this high desert. We are travelling by 4x4 and the plan is to make stops at three new lodges Explora has built along the way to break up the journey. The roof is laden with spare fuel and tyres, reminders that we’re about as off-road as it’s possible to be.