Bolivia: Tupiza to Uyuni

Greetings from way up high! Writing to you from La Paz, at about 3700m. Been through Tupiza and Uyuni, and from Uyuni we took an absolutely awful 12 hour off road bus journey to La Paz. Words cannot describe how uncomfortable it is to be in an old, cramped, full Volvo bus designed for the smooth roads of Sweden, but instead subjected to the terrible dirt pothole filled roads linking Uyuni and La Paz. It didn´t help that I smelt some of the smelliest smells I have ever experienced, and that my stomach was not reacting well to the lovely Bolivian cuisine. But we made it, and now here we are.

Right lets get down to the nitty gritty (the neeety greeety). As you may have heard, Nads an I got the flu in Salta, so we spent a week getting some downtime and recovering. After the arrival of the Fonz and the improvement of our health, we felt ready to brave the journey north. After taking a night bus (driven by a man with a penchant for danger), we arrived in La Quica, the town on the Argentinian side of the border. Since it was 6:00am, and since it was near Bolivia, it was absolutely freezing. Nevertheless, the brave gringos took the short walk to the border, safe in the knowledge that the border control opened at 7am. Upon leaving Argentina, we soon realised that although an hour had passed, it was still only 6am, since Bolivian time is an hour behind. There we stood, in no man´s land, out of ARG but not allowed into BOL, shivering our bums off in the dark in a temperature we were later told was -10 celcius. Saffers just are not built for that temperature. After huddling under a sleeping bag for a while, envious of the many Bolivian citizens being allowed through (the first, and probably last, time I will be jealous of a Bolivian citizen), we were mercifully allowed into the poorest (and definitely coldest) country in South America.

Our first impressions of the Bolivian people were that they are very tough looking, and at first appear rather unhappy. A short history of Bolivia Being Continually Screwed Over by Everyone could explain this. First, way back when, the Incas expanded into Bolivia, annihiltating many of the native Bolivian tribes; then the Spanish arrived (and we all know what they did); then in the War of the Pacific, Chile somehow stole a large chunk of Bolivia, rendering them landlocked. Argentina and Paraguy have also helped themselves to the Bolivian pie, with both countries taking parts of the country as their own. The Bolivians are still rather pissed off, especially with Chile (they keep their navy in Lake Titicaca, ready to pounce on those Chileans should they ever be able to afford to - which they probably won´t because they can´t export anything cheaply).

Right, back to the story. Our plan was to take the train from the border to Tupiza, but within five minutes of being in the country our plan changed, since we found out the train had been suspended. We had met some English dudes at the border, so we decided to travel north together, for safety reasons, not because we liked them at all. Just kidding, Alex and Adam are rather funny blokes (especially Alex when he is drunk), and we are still travelling with them now. We then jumped on a very rural (and very cheap) bus headed for Tupiza. Once on the bus, the sun began to rise and we began to slowly thaw. About 4 hours later, we arrived in the dusty Wild West town of Tupiza. Tupiza is famous for being the town in which Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were finally caught and killed. Serious cowboy country, framed by bright red canyons and dusty empty streets where people defend their honour with their revolvers (although I did see a lawyers office in the town square). After finding a hostel (sort of), we decided to organise a Salar de Uyuni tour, and decided to leave on Monday, which gave us a couple days to explore the town. We decided to get a better view of Tupiza and its surroundings from a nearby hill, and we were amazed by the sheer isolation of the town and the harshness of the surrounding landscape. While strolling the town´s nearly deserted streets, we caught a glimpse of a man who has now been called ¨Charcoal Dolphin¨. There he was, an old man, calmly chatting to his friends while facing the street, with his penis out, pissing all over his pants and his shoes. The most disturbing part, however, was that his member was the colour of charcoal, and shaped like a sick dolphin. Nasty. The Charcoal Dolphin has been joked about at least once a day since we saw the bizarre sight. Since we were departing the very next day for our Salar tour, we decided to spend the rest of the day buying supplies (water, naartjies, quite a large amount of alcohol (for ten of us), toilet paper, chocolate, and other necessities).

In the morning, we loaded our bags on top of an old red Land Cruiser, and embarked on a four-day tour, covering about 1000km of South Western Bolivia, with the tour ending up crossing the Salar de Uyuni (the world´s biggest and highest salt flat) before finishing in the town of Uyuni. Our Red Rover was led by our driver, Alturo, accompanied by our cook and part-time girlfriend of Alturo, Deb (well at least thats what her name sounded like). As we left Tupiza, we witnessed a small bumper bashing, and also got to see the calm way in which the drivers sorted out the accident. Instead of exchanging information, they set about beating the living shit out of each other until they were too tired to continue. Nice.

We then began climbing up and up, and the landscape began to get more and more spectacular. The views seemed to go on uninterrupted until the horizon, and were littered with high mountains, blood red canyons, deep valleys and fields of giant jagged rocks. We ascended to a lofty 4700m, where not much grows, and the rivers are partly frozen over. After stopping for lunch, where we ate ham rolls and llama meat parcels (mmmm...) we continued driving into more and more isolated and rugged terrain, stopping every now and then to gasp at the views. That evening we stopped in a tiny little rural town in the middle of nowhere, at about 4000m. We had purchased some Coca leaves in Tupiza, which we were chewing for the altitude. Although they taste awful, they do take away the nausea and headaches you get at that altitude. Our accomodation for the night was provided by a local family who provided us with a very basic dorm, which had no electricity and got rather cold at night. While the sun was setting, we admired the landscape, which was so remote and other worldly that it felt like we were on another planet. We attemped to play some football, but the altitude made us exhausted in about 2 minutes. Even Adam (The Adam Doyle of Fanborough FC, whose kit you can buy at http://www.fanboroughfc.co.uk/, failed to shine in these conditions). We were then given some tea and biscuits (very civilised), before being given some delicious soup for dinner (soups by Debbie). We were slightly sceptical about what our dinner would consist of, since moments before we had seen a family nearby proudly displaying a giant dead Andean Condor in their dusty yard. Fortunately the soup contained veggies, Although the temperature was quite high at midday, as soon as the sun began to set, the temperature drops well below freezing, and the only real way we could keep warm (no, not brokeback Bolivia) was to drink some wine and huddle together in a room.

The next day we woke up bright and early and set off into the Mars-like landscape before sunrise. After driving some way through the rugged mountains we emerged over a hill at the foot of a huuuge mountain, where there was an incredibly eerie abandoned village which lay in ruins. The story goes, according to our guide, that some Spaniards found tons of gold in the surrounding area and set up a camp nearby to begin extracting the gold. The town began to grow and the families mining there began to get seriously wealthy. But since they were so isolated from everything (including any laws), the gold began to get to their heads, and they started killing each other for gold (there will be blood?). The survivors packed up and abandoned the town 30 years ago, leaving it as a ghost town and leaving the gold in the hills. Scary stuff ne?

We then continued through some unbelievable scenery (no use trying to describe it because its nothing like i´ve ever seen, so just look at all the pics on picasa while you are reading this blog). We entered a national park filled with high altitude lakes, volcanos, geysers (Oy! Geyser!). After appreciating some amazing views of +6000m Volcanos (dormant), we arrived in a desert-like landscape, with frozen rivers and ice on the ground, where there was a thermal spring. Though the temperature was barely above midday, the springs were hot and we quickly disrobed and jumped in shouting, I AM THE WALRUS, COO COO CA CHOO!. After washing our dirty bodies in the minerally rich hot water, we enjoyed another one of Deborah´s lunches (oh Debbie)! and continued down the road. As we moved closer to the Chilean border and further into the Atacama desert, things began to get very deserty (as you`d expect in a desert). As we climbed to 5000m, we arrived at the Laguna Verde (Green Lake, for the linguistically challenged). As it turns out, its not just a clever name - the lake is a bright greeny blue colour and is framed by some large volcanos which seperate Chile and Bolivia. As our driver pointed out, quite bitterly, the land beyond the volcanos used to belong to Bolivia, not so long ago. When I asked him what the relationship is like between the Chileans and the Bolivians (in my ever-improving Spanish), he replied with a simple `We are enemies`. Bit of a touchy subject then...

We continued driving at 5000m above sea level, and soon arrived at some geysers, bubbling and squirting 200 degree water into the air. Alex attemped to wash his face with the geyser water, and promptly died. That was a joke, he survived with severe facial scarring. Ok I´ll stop, he did not touch the geyser water. If I thought the landscape could not get any more other worldly, the sight of a field of geysers steaming at 5000m corrected me. A 50m walk at that altitude completely tired us out, and we were relieved to get back in the car (where the altitude is much lower... ummm....). Chewin on the ol´coca leaves helped with the altitude headaches, nausea and shortness of breath. Chewing Coca seems to be a national pasttime in Bolivia, you often see people with a wad of the stuff in the side of their mouths. It really does help with the altitude though, although it tastes absolutely foul! After more spectacular driving, we descended a bit to 4500m, and arrived at our pitstop for the night, a rustic building on the shores of the Laguna Colorada, a lake that appears crimson red in the sunlight. However, since it was late when we arrived, there was no sunlight, and the lake did not appear as red as it should. Since we were still so high up, the temperature began to drop well below zero, and we decided to huddle around a fire while eating our dinner, before shiverring the night away in our freezing cold concrete rooms. We were told that the temperature that night was around -15 degrees. While lying in my bed, I began to wonder why the sods who built the room had decided to put a huge hole in the roof as a skylight. Buggers.

The next morning we woke up before the sunrise, put on all the clothes we owned, and stumbled to the shores of the lake to appreciate a fantastic view of the sun rising over a red lake with bits of bright white ice floating on the top, and some giant volcanos looming in the distance. From our vantage point we spotted a few pink flamingos standing on one leg. We had not taken any hallucinogenics that morning, there were actually pink flamingos on that lake, unless Deb the Chef spiked our morning coffee.

That day we made our way North, heading towards the Salar de Uyuni, driving past more flamingo filled high altitude lakes and spectacular mountains. We stopped in the middle of a desert where there stood some huge strangely shaped rocks, which made the scenery look like a Dali painting. We approached a massive active volcano, and stopped for lunch in the remanants of a lava flow. The volcano had errupted a long time ago and the lava had flowed down in a river, eventually drying up to form some incredible rock formations, upon which we ate our pasta salad.

After two hours of crossing the desert, we arrived in the town of San Juan, famous for its Necropolis, a cemetary of pre-inca tombs, incasing mummies which date back 1000 years. As the story goes, the people believed that the moon was God and the sun was the Devil, and thus entombed themselves in a closed mound made out of clay so as to escape the Devillish sun. For 5 Bolivianos, we were allowed to walk around freely in the Necropolis, and peer into the tombs. Most of the tombs had been eroded on one side, and when we looked in, we were face to face (so close we could touch them) with pre-inca mummies, mostly skeletons with clothes on, but some with hair and skin. If all this sounds rather scary to you, it was rather scary. Some of the mummies couldn´t have been more than 7 or 8 years old, and all were in sitting positions. What was amazing was how unprotected they were, and how un-touristy the place was. We were walking around, completely able to remove a skull, or steal a mummies 1000 year old cloth. Not that we wanted to mess with the mummies, but the point is that we could have.

From San Juan it was a short drive to the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, the biggest salt flat in the world. Since it was already late afternoon, we did not enter the salar, but rather got settled at our checkpoint for the night, a small house on the edge of the salt flats. The floors, walls, and our beds were all made of salt. Alex licked the bed to confirm that it was indeed salt. That night we hung around in the common room with the many other groups of travellers on their own jeep trip, playing guitar, singing Britney Spears and being booed at, while Alex charmed a romantic interest. Later that night, however, Alex lost his charm by drinking far too much cheap rum (Ron!). He lost the battery of his head torch in the bathroom, and when a travelling companion (Uter) of Scottish German descent tried to help him, he took of her woolen llama hat and repeatedly beat her with it. As it turns out, we didn´t like her very much, as she followed us around like a third nipple (even after the beating). Upon finding the battery, now covered in urine, Alex left the bathroom, triumphant, and when asked by a girl in the passage where he was from, he calmly proceeded to attempt to put the battery in her mouth. She was not impressed, although we found it hilarious. Adam consoled her with a ´Calm down love, it happens´. Classic.

The next day we woke up really early and made our way onto the Salar. We were then treated to quite a special moment, with the moon setting on our left, and the sun rising on our right, over miles and miles of endless white flat salt. We spent the day marvelling at the sheer space of the salt flat, and also using the large distances to take rather funny photos, which you shall see. The salt flat was an enormous prehistoric salt lake, and had some islands in it. We visited one island on which sat some very large (12 metres) and very old (1200 years) cactii. We managed to climb up to the highest point on the island from where we could truly appreciate the sheer size of the salar.

It took us most of the rest of the day to drive across the Salar, and on the way we visited some salt mines, and a hotel made entirely out of salt (in which there was a Pillar of Salt, probably some poor sod who´d been there since Biblical times). Sadly, that afternoon, we arrived in Uyuni, meaning that our incredible journey had come to an end. We checked into a hostal and relaxed in the town for a while, but we were unable to get rid of our third nipple (the german scot), who followed us around without saying a damn word. We got rid of her eventually, and made our way to La Paz.

Right, we´ve been in this internet cafe for far too long, and the smell of dead fish is not good. Off to get a good Indian curry tonight (in Bolivia!). Our plans are to head into the Amazon basin later this week, and to get there we will either be paragliding in, or mountain biking down whats charmingly (and officially) known as The World´s Most Dangerous Road. The next blog should be exciting.

Links to the amazing pics are up on picasaweb.google.co.uk/steveo.zogg/TupizaToUyuni

Chau for now!