Archive for the ‘Bolivia’ Category
Matias – Today’s Photo
May 26th, 2010 | 
Author: 
Matias
This is Matias. He’s a teddy bear. I sat next to him (and his owner Jenny) on a 10 hour bus ride in Bolivia from Sucre to Uyuni. When I first got on, he was actually sitting in my seat but he’s a very well brought up bear so he moved. When Jenny’s Dad died her Mum bought her a parrot to stop her being sad, but the parrot died, which didn’t really help Jenny’s sadness. So her Mum bought her Matias instead, and now she’s much happier. They made a nice couple. I liked them.
Doesn’t Do What It Says On The Tin
- Vodka purchased in Paraguay – ingredients: Ethyl Alcohol, Water
- Whisky purchased in Bolivia – ingredients: Whisky (20%), water, caramel flavouring
- 100% Cranberry purchased in USA – ingredients: Grape, Cranberry and Apple Juice
Posted in Bolivia, Food, Paraguay, South America | 
Tags: disappointment, fraud, ripoff | 
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Salty Goodness
After Sucre, caught a good ole Bolivian bus and headed off to Uyuni, passing through Potosi (highest city in the world), getting to Uyuni at about 6 in the evening. Now, the phrase “the middle of nowhere” can be used to describe lots of places, but Uyuni literally is in the middle of nowhere, or more accurately the middle of nothing. As you come over the ridge, an enormous flat open plain opens up with matching mountains in the distance and in the middle of this flatness sits Uyuni. Nothing else is visible apart from the town and desert. The town itself is nothing much to write home about (or indeed in a blog) so I won’t. We sorted out our tour of the Salt Flats leaving the next day, had a bit of llama (not sure which bit) for dinner then went to bed.
The tour was a 3 day, 2 night jaunt around the altoplano of SouthWestern Bolivia. Altoplano means High Plain which is a pretty accurate description of what it is. The town of Uyuni is something like 3600m above sea level and at points we climbed up to 5000m. Which is higher than Mont Blanc. A lot is made of the altitude in Bolivia and I’d heard tales of gringos flying into La Paz (world’s highest capital at 3600m) from sea level and turning blue with altitude sickness and having to be flown out. None of the people I was with turned blue (well not from altitude anyway) but you do feel it. Not when you’re just walking around, but climb a set of stairs and after 20 seconds you’re huffing and puffing away for real.
Anyway, back to our little tour. We were told to be ready to go at 10. Which we were. And at 12 we actually left, this being Bolivia after all. Our first stop was the highly photogenic Train Cemetery, a rusting collection of steam engines from the 19th century. Uyuni is not on a paved road, but there is still a working railway there, left over from the days when the silver from the mines in Potosi was shipped out by rail.
Train Cemetery
After we all took far too many photos there, we headed off to the days main attraction, the Salt Flats themselves. We stopped in a little village which makes a living a from extracting the salt for tables across Bolivia and Peru then drove on to the Salt Hotel for lunch. It’s one of those places easy to describe (it’s flat and white) but impossible to give an accurate feeling of what it feels like. Formed when seawater was trapped by the mountains around rising up, the water has long evaporated away, leaving just the salt. Lots of it. It’s 12,000 km2 and in places the salt is 10m deep. It’s so flat GPS satellites use it for configuration and it apparently contains 50% of the world’s lithium. Whatever that might be.
Salar de Uyuni
And it’s a road. Well, there are roads across it anyway. No signposts but a fair bit of traffic. After lunch (more llama) we were allowed an hour or so to take those pictures everyone takes, using the perspective to make it look like you’re standing on someones shoulder. Everyone else did, not me as my sodding battery ran out.
Isla del Pescado
Last stop of the day was Isla de Pescado (Fish Island, not much of that around) which is an island standing in the middle of the flats. With all the flat around, it did feel like an island, except we drove there. It was stunning.
Getting to Bolivia
It’s hard to believe that I was only in Bolivia 10 days, but in that time I certainly managed to squeeze a lot in.
The plan was to meet up with some of the people I’d shared the house with in Buenos Aires in Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia. They had left Buenos Aires early on Sunday morning, but I had a pub quiz to attend (and win) so I left on Monday morning. Of course, this being South America and despite the fact that Bolivia shares a border with Argentina this was no easy task. The bus to the border took 28 hours (and I had to travel in Semi-Cama which regular readers will know is not my favourite mode of transport) and once there I had to wait in the border town of Villazon for another 4 hours before leaving for Sucre.
Sign in Ushuaia
Bolivia hits you the second you cross the border. The town on the Argentine side, La Quiaca is a typical, small, dusty, fairly quiet Argentine village, but on the other side of the little bridge you enter chaos. There is life everywhere in Bolivia, people selling all manner of things, local women wearing bowler hats carrying huge loads in colourful blankets, kids running round, dogs sniffing everything, it’s a little bit overwhelming to start with.
Sign in La Quiaca
Anyway, I sat in Villazon a while taking all this in and bought my ticket to Sucre, another 13 hour bus journey away, And what a trip! The bus was a kind of huge 4 wheel drive affair, raised a good 2 feet off the ground. The seats were pretty basic, with no heating, no blankets nothing. For the first 8 hours we bounced down one of the worst gravel roads I’ve ever been on, all the while having to shut the window every 10 mins as it refused to stay closed on its own. It was hell. Everything I’d heard about Bolivian buses was right there on my first trip. It didn’t have any chickens on it though, which I was thankful for.
Safely got to Sucre, a little dusty and tired, met up with the others (we were now a group of 9) and spent a good day there. It was a complete change from Villazon, with a pretty central square and old cobbled streets leading off in all directions. I liked it. We went to a football match in the evening, Sucre against La Paz. Was very wierd, the highlight being a dog running across the pitch and then being “arrested” by a police dog. Sucre won 2-1.
High & Cold
Ok, so I haven’t given you a Brasil part 2 yet, but it’s on the way, honest. So, if you’ll allow that little omission I can continue with my dispatches from my current location in Bolivia. Have had a very busy week here and am having a day off from all the madness in La Paz. I’ll fill in all the details when I have the photos, but the highlight has been the 3 day tour of the Bolivian desert and Uyuni Salt Flats which were truly out of this world.
