Bolivia - Salar de Uyuni

4 October 2010

Marius, Wendy, Geoff, Cecilia, Kerstin, Sean, Sarah

We spent the next four days in a group of eight in two 4x4s, piled high with fuel and spare tyres, travelling around the southwest corner of Bolivia. We had our two drivers/guides and a lovely wee cook called Maria who was doing this tour for the first time and was even more excited than us! Kerstin and I were in a car with Sean and Sarah from Oz and the other car had another couple of Aussies Cecilia and Geoff, a Dutch guy Marius and his Singaporean fiancee Wendy. All really lovely people.

The first day involved quite a lot of driving on dry, dusty, slightly perilous roads up into the mountains. There was lots of really amazing mountain scenery. We stopped for a really amazing sandwich lunch on a high plain filled with llamas, stopped in a couple of villages only to be surrounded by kids wanting money to have their pics taken, and got ourselves a flat tyre. We didn't realise what was going on till our drive, Alvaro, donned his boiler suit and started unloading the boot for tools. Clearly this is a regular occurrence as Alvaro got the job done quickly with minimum fuss.

We spent the night in what must have been part of someone's house. Maria cooked up a feast and we went to bed in the pitch darkness really early. It was absolutely bloody freezing. We must have been at about 4,000m altitude at this time, and despite sleeping in thermals, fleece, sleeping bag and a few blankets it was really really frosty and hard to sleep. The walls were made of adobe bricks and the roof just corrugated iron so there wasn't much in the way of insulation.

The following day, after copious amounts of warming hot chocolate and spoonfuls of restorative dulce de leche, we were on our way again, stopping off at a ghost town.  

Ghost town

Turns out their use of the words "ghost town" refers to the reason the place is abandoned rather than the fact of abandonment. Apparently the place was quite a thriving town with 27 churches, and a large population when foreigners brought food which killed off quite a few of the people. Then some of the remaining people left and at that point it was decided that the town was inhabited by the devil or ghosts so the remaining people left in the 1940s. The place is really eerie and strange now. It's hard to believe that such a large town could be populated in such an arid landscape. There is some llama farming and a bit of mining (there's still mining and piles of minerals lying here and there) but it doesn't seem enough to sustain a lot of people.

4,855m

We drove across little rivers (in big river beds - the place is prone to flash flooding in rainy season) which were still iced up until about lunchtime and on to some amazing high lakes, some with amazing colouring due to high quantities of minerals, and those with less toxicity were full of flamingoes. It always strikes me as so odd to see flamingoes out of what I consider their natural habitat of zoos and east Africa!!

Laguna Verde (green lake)

One of the lakes in particular, is green and apparently remains liquid at temperatures down to -21C due to the minerals in the water which is pretty impressive. At this point in the trip we were at about 4,500m and it was bloody cold in the wind and shade, but absolutely boiling in the sun, out of the wind. And despite the layers of fleeces and jumpers and raincoats we still had to wear sunscreen and sunglasses as the sun was so strong.

Vicuna

From there we drove past the Dali desert (so named because it looks like a Dali painting minus the clocks, rather than because he ever went there) to a series of geysers and hot springs which we all piled into. The springs were great in that they were really warm in a bloody freezing environment, and as an added bonus they didn't even smell of sulphur like most hot springs do. The only downer on the place were the composting loos located upstream from the hot springs which I thought a little odd!!

Geysers

After another freezing night we went on to see the red lagoon in the morning (which truly is very red and full of flamingoes) and from there past another series of coloured lakes and for a wee photo op at a series of very odd rocks in the desert.

Red lagoon

The rock that's supposed to look like a tree (and doesn't)

One looks like it should fall over at any time (some say it looks like a tree, but I reckon is more like a rock really) and others are just really odd shapes.

Poor excuse for an erupting volcano if you ask me!

Not quite garage calendar standard!

Lots more driving, some amazing scenery, and about a million photos of flamingoes later and we pulled up to a hostel made of salt for the night. 

Salt hotel

The walls, beds, tables, chairs etc were all made of salt bricks which was kind of odd. I resisted the urge to lick the walls. The special attraction of this place though, was not the salt architecture, but the opportunity for a shower which was lovely after three days of dust and strong sun!

Dawn at the Salar

Up before dawn we were up and on our way just as the sun was starting to pop up over the horizon. This was really the main reason for the trip - to visit the salt plains and see the sun rise over them.

Fact time:  the salt plains are the largest in the world at over 10,000 km2 at an altitude of around 3,500m with a variation of just 1m in altitude over the whole area. The area holds massive lithium reserves which will be needed if we all start driving electric cars. Apparently the World Bank tried to force Bolivia to invite international companies to mine the reserves but Bolivia has so far resisted which is completely their right. However, it seems that noone has any confidence of Bolivia's ability to mine the reserves themselves so it might all get a bit interesting if the world starts wanting the predicted amounts of lithium in the coming years.

For the moment the place seems fairly unspoilt, albeit covered in 4x4s carting tourists about. Development on the salt plains themselves are not allowed, and salt hotels and the like are only built around the edges.

On the island

Resisting the urge to start taking silly pictures just then we were driven out to an "island" called Incahuasi which is like a little hill sticking out of all the salt. The hill is all coral rock (so strange!) and covered in cacti. After a walk up the hill (really tough at altitude!) and brekkie we were off again to drive to the middle of nowhere on the flats to take a variety of daft pics.

After a really amazing few days with some great people we were driven back to reality and the horrible little town of Uyuni and a train graveyard and dropped off whilst the rest of the tour headed back to the starting point of Tupiza. There Kerstin and I hung around killing time until the nightbus for Potosi left at about 7pm.

Train graveyard

The last bit of Argentina and the first bit of Bolivia

27 September 2010

Kerstin and I hung out in Buenos Aires for just a couple of days before geting another epically long bus journey up to Salta in the northwest of the country.  The bus was quite delayed by some traffic jams and terrible weather, but what we saw of the countryside was absolutely amazing, very green and very flat.
Salta is a lovely wee town, with the standard central square, cathedral etc.  There was a very interesting museum which had these frozen children that had been buried alive (albeit high on chica) on the top of mountains by Incas back in the day.

 

From Salta we took a few tours of the surrounding countryside, an amazing mix of very dramatic mountains, with amazing colours due to lots of different minerals, wine country and salt flats.  I guess we must have been at a reasonable alitude as it was lovely and warm during the day in the sunlight, but it became really cold in the shade or when there was wind and at night.

The hill of seven colours

We then relocated up to a town called Tilcara from where we managed to get ourselves around on local buses to a few more towns just to see more of the scenery and have a look around.

From Tilcara we then bussed it up to the border with Bolivia and spent about an hour waiting to get stamped out of Argentina.  It was much much quicker to get ourselves into Bolivia and we immediately organised a bus to take us up to a town called Tupiza from where we knew we'd be able to arrange our salt flats tour.  The bus was an absolute heap of rusty junk and the "road" was a mix of tarmaced sections running for about 100m, but mainly we were offroading through the desert which was kind of mad.  I was convinced the bus was about to fall over a few times.  And then it broke down!

As if it wasn't hot enough in the middle of the day in the desert, large amounts of steam started to pour through the bus from the engine compartment.  The driver lifted the hatch to the engine (a whole section of aisle) and tried to get the thing going again.  After half an hour we started up again and lasted a whole two minutes before breaking down again!  After another hour or so, another bus finally passed by and kindly pulled in in front of us.  Kerstin hustled off the bus, vaulting over the open engine compartment, to see if the other bus would take us, and I sorted out our bags.  We were extremely lucky in getting seats on the other bus.  I felt really guilty when we drove off leaving 90% of our original bus standing by the side of the road, but we hadn't done anything they couldn't have done.  All very strange.

That evening, the hostel we checked into in Tupiza immediately talked us into a four day tour of salt flats and surrounding countryside starting the following day.  We headed out to the markets to pick up the basics (snacks, toilet paper, batteries) and noticed in the market that quite a few of the stalls had large collections of dried llama foetuses for sale.  Apparently they're gifts to the Pachamama and also get buried in the foundations of houses.  Lovely!

Argentina - Iguazu falls, Buenos Aires, an Estancia and a day trip to Uruguay

10 September

So, after the aforementioned best bus journey, we found ourselves in Puerto Iguazu, the town on the Argentinian side of the falls (the river and falls mark the border between Brasil and Argentina).  We got ourselves checked into a hostel with an amazing swimming pool (!) and fantastic hot showers which was quite exciting and just hung out there for the rest of the day, eating and drinking beer.

The following day a minibus picked us up and took us back to Brasil to see that side of the falls.  The place was relatively Disney-fied with a bus taking you down to the concrete walkways to all the viewpoints, but it was really quite nice.  We were a bit unlucky with overcast weather, so though we had some amazing views of the waterfalls in their entirety the photos haven't turned out all that great.  We got up close to one part of the falls by walking out on a walkway over the water which was pretty cool.

There are about 275 separate waterfalls over a 2.5 or so km stretch of river and they're about 60-80m high and (according to the oracle that is wikipedia) Iguazu has the second highest flow of any waterfall in the world with 1700m3/second which is hard to imagine until you see the thing!

The following day we went to see the Argentinian side of the falls which were a lot more impressive.  There were still some great views of the falls in their entirety, but there was a lot more close-up stuff which was really amazing.  There are literally tons of water just thundering over the edge and it's amazing.  We even managed to scrape together enough cash between us to go on a massive rib and be dunked under one of the waterfalls which was bloody cold!!

After getting a little sun by the pool the following day, it was time for another night bus, this time down to Buenos Aires.  This bus was even more impressive as they served us food, red wine and champagne!!

Plaza de Mayo and the pink palace

Buenos Aires has turned out to be one of my favourite cities in the world (Rio is also up there on the list).  The places is split into neighbourhoods which have distinct feels, from the centre of town with massive plazas and grand (mostly French style) buildings, to the massive parks, the Palermo area which is full of the cool people, San Telmo (where we stayed) with an amazing Sunday market, Puerto Madero with new fancy apartments and restaurants and La Boca with multicoloured houses and the famous Boca Juniors football team.  There is also a large nature reserve just on the edge of town.  The scale of the place is just amazing, but as it's in neighbourhoods it feels quite manageable.  There are also massive avenues connecting various parts of the city with some roads 8 or 10 lanes wide which is kind of crazy. The city is built on the edge of what is apparently the largest river estuary in the world, but other than the Port (Puerto) area and the nature reserve you don't really get the feel you're in a city on the water.

Puerto Madero

We took a bike trip round on the first day to get a feel for the place which was a really nice way to do it (especially as it's quite a flat city) and then spent the next couple of days mastering the subway system and exploring all the areas properly.  We visited most of the parks, including some amazing Japanese Gardens (with fantastic Japanese restaurant attached), and the zoo which could be so amazing, given it's got all these cool buildings in the style of where the animals come from (eg a Balinese temple for the elephant house), but the whole place is really run down and many of the cats and bears were walking round in circles looking very sorry for themselves.  Quite a sad moment.

La Recoleta cemetary

We also went up to Recoleta cemetary which is terribly exclusive and like a mini city with all these spooky above ground tombs including that of Eva Peron (Evita).  And we also checked out quite a lot of the architecture with visits to mansions, the museum of decorative arts and a lot of the churches.

Sarah, being a hell of a lot more organised than me, also got us booked on a couple of really great tours, one being a night out at a tango show (entrance including pudding and as much red wine as we could drink!) which was a little touristy, but really good, and probably the best way to see some tango, and also a night out at the football which was at the Bonboneria the home of Boca Juniors (Maradonna's team).  It was very much like the football in Ecuador with people going absolutely nuts and fireworks & flares being set off, and drumming and singing and all sorts.  When Colon scored against Boca the Boca fans were upset for about 2 seconds before they started singing again, cheering their team on.  I think Boca won 3-1 in the end.

The food was also pretty damn good, including empanadas (sort of like mini Cornish pasties, but I always had the cheese & onion ones), and oodles and oodles of Dulce de Leche which is this thick, syrupy, sweet, fudge flavoured, boiled up sweetened condensed milk.  And we ate icrecream almost daily.  Mostly dulce de leche flavoured!  Not quite up my street, but we also ate out at what was supposed to be the best steakhouse in town.  It was quite an amazing place, and completly packed.  Sarah ordered a steak rare and ended up getting a steak medium (I sent it back!) plus about 10-12 side dishes of things like mashed potato, salad, chillies etc.  It was absolutely amazing!

Sarah also booked us on a great 3 day trip out to an Estancia just south of Buenos Aires which was really lovely and relaxing.  The Estancia was built on a lake and had tons of farmland around (though we think little still belonged to them).  We were the only people there for the first few days and we were lucky enough to have great weather, amazing food, horseriding on demand (we swapped our slow horses for fast ones on the second afternoon and I got some pretty impressive bruising!).  There were also tons of chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl, geese and dogs pottering about, a fire constantly lit in the main hall to keep us toasty and unlimited quantities of (fairly rough) red wine to drink.  We also managed to get a little bit of sunbathing in, and Sarah, going out in a kayak on the lake, managed to dunk herself in!  Sarah also managed to get dunked when her horse decided to sit down in a flooded part of the field!

Back in Buenos Aires we changed to a more backpackery hostel and met a lovely English girl called Holly at the bar.  We went out to visit the rose gardens (I'm sure they'd be even more beautiful if they were in bloom!) and then took ourselves on a day trip to Colonia in Uruguay.

The ferry crossing was only about an hour and it was all very organised with immigration checking us out of Argentina and into Uruguay in one fell swoop before we got on the boat.  We were really lucky with the weather in Colonia too and had a nice day walking around the ancient town and visiting about five of the most ridiculous museums I've ever been too (they had collections of things like tiles, stones with grooves in them so that ropes could be tied to them and used as weapons, reproduction glassware etc!).  But we had some great food, some white wine, and the place was really nice.

The following day Sarah left and the day after that Kerstin (German friend who I started the year in Colombia with) arrived.  No rest for the wicked.......!