Salares de Uyuni & Potosi

A HUGE update, hope you enjoy it! Finally back to a computer and civilization (relatively).

We arrived in Potosi yesterday. Potosi is the highest city in the world at 4070m. It was once a thriving, very rich city and the most prolific silver producer in the world. This was perhaps a curse as well as a blessing. We went on a tour into the mines today. The mines are cooperatively mined, meaning the workers work together and each keeps his own share. The conditions are extremely hard and as many as 8 million miners (most African and Indian slaves under Spanish rule) have died in the past 300 years. The tour was incredible, but I will write more on this tomorrow, don´t have enough time now.

First I have to write about one of the parts we looked forward to the most. The trip from Tupiza to Uyuni through the vast and extreme geography of the Bolivian altiplano. On the morning of the tour we packed everything and waited for the jeeps. There we met our travel partners. Three Argentineans from Buenos Aires: Pablo, Martin and Veronica. They spoke English pretty well (which helped a lot considering the guide was spanish) and we got along brilliantly. They were SO nice and it was great fun seeing the differences and similarities in our cultures. We swapped music and they really enjoyed Arbor and Klopjag! When the jeeps arrived our guide quickly loaded all the food and backpacks and we were on our way. Because the Salares is one of the biggest tourism pulls in Bolivia there are many agencies offering these tours. We went with the Lonely Planet recommended Valle Hermoso and were not dissapointed. They were excellent and our guide was extremely knowledgable, friendly and more importantly spoke Spanish slowly, very clearly and used his hands to illustrate his point. We actually understood most of it, and if we missed something Pablo was quick to translate. There are between 4 and 6 tourists in jeep and a guide/driver and a cook. There are many jeeps leaving at more or less the same time and going to the same places. This is great, because we made a lot of friends on the way! Most of the trip is a long way from civilization and is far from the beaten track. It is impossible to do it without 4x4´s.

off the beaten track

The trip is four days, therefore I am going to divide it into four parts and describe the route and highlights. DAY ONE: The first day is the least impressive of the four. It is along rough ride through spectacular mountain terrain and canyons. This is the main climb. Almost everything after this happens at more than 4000m above sea-level!

one of the many impressive canyons

higher than mount blanc (europe´s highest peak)!

The effects of this extreme altitude does get to you. Firstly it is extremely cold (up to -30) and you are out of breath most of the time. Even if you are really fit. A gentle 100m walk up a hill, leaves you gasping for air. After that it´s headaches, dizziness, slight nausea, tiredness and very strange dreams. To combat soroche cocoa leaves are supposed to help. Yes, the leaves you make cocaine with. Most Bolivians chew these leaves the whole day. We tried some, but they are not very good. They have a bitter taste, but apart from that no effect (at least what we could detect). You have to mix it with bicarbonate of soda to get more of a kick! Also I don´t think they helped for the altitude! After a long exhausting day we finally came to San Antonio de Lipez, the tiny village (about 200 people) where we spent the night. We stayed in basic accomodations and there were no showers. I spent some time playing a version of basketball with some of the small local kids, but had to quit after a few minutes because I was so tired! We spent the night chatting with our Argentinean friends over a tasty dinner and then went to bed early, because we had to get up at 5 AM!

one of the locals

San Antonio de Lipez

thin-air basketball (got my ass kicked!)

The highlight of the day, except for the scenery and company, is arguably the tamales. A typical Bolivian dish that we had for lunch. It is a ball of spicy corn with charque (dried llama meat) in the middle, wrapped in corn leaves.

tamales! hmmm...

DAY TWO: Day two is one of the biggest days of the tour and an extremely long drive (12 hours). We started with Pueblo Fantasmo, a ghost town in the foothills of Lipez mountain, the highest mountain in the region at 5 900m. This was a spanish mining town from the 17th century, but has since been abandoned. We saw some vizchachas, one of the many weird mammals of this continent. They look sort of like big rat-rabbit-squirrels.

a vischacha

more llamas

Once again the scenery was amazing, but desolate. The altiplano is very dry and the only plants that grows there are grassy little shrubs and strange high altitude mosses. There were millions of llamas though! We stopped at a few lakes on the way. These lakes are all very rich in minerals and are therefore distinctly coloured. They are all white, blue, green or red. After lunch at one of the lakes we went for a dip in one of the many thermal pools in the region. The water was a lovely 30 degrees althoug it was very cold outside (climbing out was very difficult).

nothing like a steamy dip with our friends Veronica and Martin

After that we went to the Laguna Verde. This brilliant green lake lies at the bottom of a massive inactive volcano. The lake is very poisonous (full of arsenic). Legend has it that the Incas threw all their gold into the volcano (also a lake) and then the Sun God poisoned the waters so that the Spanish conquisitors all died when they drank the water after crossing the desert. From here it was on our way to the hostel. On the way, though, we stopped at the highlight of the day. Sol de Mañana (Sun of Tomorrow). At 5000 m (the highest point of the tour), these geisers blow super-heated steam and boiling mud into the frigid Andean air. It is absolutely amazing! The landscape is utterly surreal.

Sol de Mañana

We finally got to our hostel at 18h. Again it was very basic and you had to pay extra for showers, which we decided against considering the thermal bath. The night we spent learning a wonderful Argentinean card game called truco. It is played with spanish cards and the rules are incredibly strange. We finally got the hang of it and will definitely teach you how to play once we get back to South Africa. DAY THREE: We slept a bit later. Our first stop was a red lake called Laguna Colorado. What made this lake so incredible was the hundred of flamingos (all three species). I took 70 photos and it was only the first hour of the day!

Laguna Colorado

landing...

After that it was a long drive through the desert to Arbol de Piedra (tree of rock). This is a bunch of amazing rock formations in the middle of the desert. We spent some time climbing around (VERY tiring) and taking photos.

Arbol de Piedra

mucking about...

The rest of the day was more lakes and our first active volcano. The volcano was not quite so impressive, you could see a tiny amount of smoke rising if you looked carefully. We also saw some vicuñas. This species is related to llamas but are endangered. If you kill one you get the maximum sentence in Bolivia (30 years). Our hostel was very interesting. It was on the edge of the great salt lake we came to see. And the beds and floors were all made of salt! It is kind of weird sleeping on a block of salt, but it was comfortable enough!

salty beds

DAY 4:

Finally our last day. Although the tour was incredible, four days of jeep rides do get a bit tedious. Luckily we saved the best for last. The Salares de Uyuni. The largest salt flats in the world. 12 000 square km´s of blinding white salt.

the group on the salares

We spent the morning crossing the salares, stopping for an hour at the Isla de Pescadores (Island of Fish) an old Inca waypoint. The whole island is covered in cactii which made for some great photos!

Isla de Pescadores

Just before exiting the flats we went to the Hotel de Sal. This hotel is made entirely of salt (except the roof). Walls, chairs, tables, beds and floors! It was pretty interesting, but strange!

Hotel de Sal

me being silly

The last part was Uyuni. Except for tours into the Salares there´s not a lot going on. We said goodbye to our guides and Argentinean friends (not without first playing a few hands of truco). We spent the night in Uyuni and left the next day for Potosi.

the train cemetary

modern caveman

It´s been a really long day and I have a HUGE migraine...

Neil