Boliva

La Paz 12/10/11

Capital of Bolivia.

The bus trip from Puno to La Paz was probably the worst and weirdest so far. We arrived early to the bus station and waited where we were told to by the bus company’s office. When the entire platform emptied on to another bus that obviously wasn’t ours, 10 minutes after our bus was supposed to leave, we knew something was wrong. We asked the bus driver that had just left the bus that we were supposed to be leaving on, showed him the ticket and he immediately ran inside. Next the women from the office came running out of the bus terminal and started to make phone calls on 2 different phones. Eventually another bus that was supposed to leave 40minuets before came around the corner and we boarded that one instead, a completely different bus company from the one that we were supposed to be going with. We guessed that they didn’t have enough people to fill our bus so, lumped us with another companies instead. It would have been nice if they had told us.

It was a 4 hour ride to the border and the border crossing was the easiest that we have done so far. From the border it was another 15minuets to the lake side town of Copacabana. Its’ an odd place to have a lake side beach resort, as the lake is a 4000m and freezing. We had to wait an hour to transfer buses, so managed to get some lunch. The next bus took around 40minuets to reach the headland where we had to cross the lake for mainland Bolivia. The bus had to go on a wooden barge that barley floated and all the passengers had to board a tiny speed boat to cross the very choppy waters. We weren’t expecting to have to pay anything extra, but in less we wanted to swim we had to pay. After that it was another 4 hours to La Paz, so the 7hour trip stretched to 9.

Once we got to La Paz we booked into a hostel. We managed to get the price for an en-suite room down 20 Bolivianos, about US$3, and got an apartment, that was 4 times bigger than our flat in Malvern. It contained 3 bedrooms, for 7 people to sleep, 2 bathrooms, a huge kitchen, front room, dining room and hall way, all that for US$17 a night. So it more than made up for the bad trip during the day.

We spent a couple of days walking around the capital, buying a few souvenirs and trying to avoid the smell of preserved alpaca foetuses and stuffed baby alpaca, none of which added to the smells of the city in a nice way, and trying to decide if we could fit a mountain bike trip on the World’s Most Dangerous Road, but the Bolivians seem to have decided to have an election in the middle of our travels, which would mean being stuck in La Paz for four days, and we are starting to run short of time, that will have to be on another trip. We decided to book some bus tickets for Uyuni and the salt flats before we got stuck.

Uyuni 15/10/11

Salt flats.

Overnight bus took 12hrs from La Paz to Uyuni. It was so cold in the bus in the middle of the night that ice was forming on the inside of the windows. We didn’t get much sleep. The first part of the trip was on paved roadways, but the second half of the trip was on gravel roads. It was very bumpy and your teeth rattled in your mouth as the bus rumbled down the road, whilst we tried to sleep.

We arrived in Uyuni before most of the town had awoken, and after some searching managed to book on to a tour across the salt flats to Chile, that some of our Inka trail trekkers had booked on to and had heard that they were fairly reliable. It was due to leave at 10.30am so we found breakfast and stocked up on water for the trip.

Day 1

The first stop on our trip was to a train grave yard. Tracks had been laid next to each other in the desert, next to the main line and 30 or so trains had been left to rust in the desert. Due to the lack of rain, the rusting wasn’t very quick; some had been there over 100 years and still looked the same. There would be a lot of money in scrap if they all got weighed in.

After a short drive we came to the salt harvesting fields. The salt in mounded up in piles to dry out, as there’s a very thin layer of water over the salt flats, more in the rainy season. From here its loaded by hand before being taken away for processing, only 12000 tons a year are removed, and as there are billions of tons here, up to 10m deep in places it should last them a few years.

Next it was a few hours drive across the flats to Cactus Island. Here the cactuses grew to around 9-15m all over the island. Just before lunch we headed out onto the flats to take some perspective photos, giant chocolate bars, and people standing on others hands.

That night we spent in a dust bowl of a town, nothing much there but a concrete football pitch and tumbled down houses. It was cold that night as soon as the sun went down.

Day 2

Next morning we headed out into the mountains, leaving behind the flats and going up in altitude around the volcanoes, and mountain peaks, in the distance we could see Vicunas. It was very dry up here so it must have been difficult to find enough to eat. We kept rising in altitude till we were at around 4900m.

Just before lunch we came across a lake surrounded by huge snow-capped peaks, and in the lake were hundreds of Flamingos. I wasn’t expecting to see flamingos in the mountains at altitude, as you usually see them in Africa at low altitudes. Here there were 3 species of flamingo. We got to walk along the edge and get pretty close to a few getting some good pictures on the way. That night we spent next to the red lagoon, again with flamingos, but they were further out and a bit more difficult to see.

The lake gets it colour from a tiny creature which reflect only the red in the sun light, but it also has to be windy at the same time. The creature’s in the water are what give the flamingos their red colour.

The room that we were to be given that night only had room enough for 5 people, three singles and 1 double, there were 6 of us. Thankfully 4 of us were couples, but you would have thought they could have arranged for the beds to equal the number of guests. Apparently all of the tour companies are this dis-organised, it’s just a question of getting the least dis-organised company. Our driver was particularly unhelpful, only replying to questions asked and not offering any explanations to the things we were seeing. Most of the other people we spoke to had the same experience, and all of their driver/guides asked for tips at the end. Not many got them. The cook in our group was good, and prepared some good meals, so we tipped her but ignored our driver.

Day 3

We left early in the morning of day 3, 5.30am, and headed for the geysers and steaming mud holes. The first geyser that we got to was man made, with a piece of pipe in the hole to make the jet of steam fiercer. The next one was natural, a lot bigger and a lot noisier. After a short visit there we headed for the hot springs. It was a hot spring on the edge of a lake and some concrete put up to create a pool; it was difficult to see the pool from the steam and all of the bodies. It was cold to get changed before getting into the hot spring as there was still ice on the ground, and the nearby lake was still partly frozen. After 20mins in the spring it was time for a quick breakfast and from there it was another long drive over rough ground to the border where we swapped to a bus for the border crossing. You immediately know that you are in Chile, we came across a tarmac road, with signs warning about sharp bends and escape lanes for Lorries on the steep downhill sections. We haven’t seen anything like that for almost 4 months.