Bolivia – snow, salt and hot springs

ARGENTINA (AGAIN)

To get from Brazil to Bolivia, we first had to venture back into rob-tastic Argentina (plus we wanted to see the pretty waterfalls of Iguazu Falls). It was a sleepy week and half… Hez, Nik, Ty and I ALL got sick at some stage so a lot of time was spent sleeping, weakly requesting glasses of OJ and putting damp towels over our inflamed foreheads. But we survived and saw the absolutely MAGNIFICENT falls… I’m not one to throw about words like `magnificent´ but it really calls for it here. They were enormous and so powerful. We also encountered a rare little animal that looked like a cross-breed of a racoon and an anteater. It was very alarming when 20 of them came galloping towards us first thing in the morning, however, by the end of the day we saw them so often we were shooing them away like mosquitos.

BOLIVIAAAAAAAA!!

I hope the dragging of the letter `A´ conveys just how in love we are with the beautiful little country of Bolivia. I´m going to put it out there… it is the best country in the world! Ooooh bold claim, I know, but there you go. We saw and did so much that its going to be tricky fitting it all in here (there might have to be a sequel people! You’ve been warned!)

Tupiza

At the border crossing into Bolivia, we realised we didn’t have any money so we asked these two Canadian girls to borrow 20 bolivianos (about $5 aus) for a cab, which turned out to be a monumental mistake as we then had to spend the next week with two of the most boring girls in the world. Their names were Tammy and Tina and if I never see them again, that would be lovely. Anyway we caught a train to Tupiza, a small little village that remarkably resembles the wild, wild west… red desert, cactuses (or is it cacti?) and men who tip their hats at you in the street. We relunctantly followed the awful TammyTinas to our hotel (we had already booked) where we were roped into doing a four-day tour of Tupiza to Uyuni with them. NOOOO!!!! We didn’t know how to politely say ‘no, we dont want to do the tour with you as your actually the most boring people on the planet’, so instead we just meekly said ‘sure! that sounds great!’

The next day we went horse riding!!! It was sooo much fun! In line with tradition of me getting the faulty forms of transport, my horse was, of course, the naughty one, constantly swerving off the track to eat shrubs and nipping the other horses who tried to pass him. Hayley’s horse was a fat lady horse named Sewa who had a severe case of wind. Nikola took to horse riding like a fish to water. She was always the one up front, her feet nearly touching the ground (for some reason they gave the smallest horse to the tallest person???). TammyTina tagged along as well, but it was worth it when Tammy’s horse broke into a gallop and she fell off, hahahaha! At one point the horses had to cross a river and my horse did a jump over it!! Sooo exciting! By the end Hez, Nik and I were letting out yee-ha’s and making our horses canter every 5 seconds. TammyTina got off their horses and were like ‘well, that was o-kaaay I guess’.

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day One

Bright and early the next morning, we got all rugged up and loaded our packs on top of our jeep. We were introduced to our driver/guide Alberto, who didn’t speak a word of English and our chef, whose name we all forgot so she became simply known as ‘chef’. We spent the morning driving up mountains, spying goats and llamas and the most beautiful views. We chewed coca leaves to help with the altitude sickness ,which made our mouths numb (not surprising considering it is the stuff they use to make cocaine). It tasted a little like chewing grass, but it definitely worked. We stopped for lunch in some old ruins, but it was too cold so we just ate our sandwiches in the car and oooh-ed and ahhh-ed from the safety of behind the window. After lunch we went to an indigenous village where they didn’t even speak Spanish, but a native language calld Quechua. We attracted mucho staring, especially from the children who peeked shyly around every corner. One brave soul (who we’re fairly sure was retarded) came bounding up to us and stood so close to our faces; it was soo hard not to laugh. Hayley gave him her lolly wrapper, which he seemed to treasure as much as if we’d given him a 100 dollars. We saw him showing his friends it as we drove off. Later we arrived at our sleeping quarters, which were absolutely horrifying but hilarious. A cluster of small, thatched huts with cement slabs as beds and dirt floors. Then, to make matters more extreme, it started SNOWING!!! We were sooo excited. All the other people in tour groups (mainly a collection of Brits, Canadians and Scandinavians) all looked at us like we were crazy as Hez, Nik and I pressed our noses against the chilled window and squealed with delight at the sight of white. I wasn’t so cheerful later when I had to sleep next to Hayley, the human vibrator. It was absolutely freezing!!

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day Two

It felt like we’d barely shut our eyes when Alberto was rapping on our door shouting “amigas! amigas! vamos!” It was actually painful getting out of bed and getting ready. It was 5am, pitch black and still snowing. We were heaving and puffing just from putting pants on… we were at an altitude of 4200m above sea level, which makes even the most mundane things seem like a marathon. I actually witnessed Hayley red-faced and trembling in the arms as she tried to put her hair in a ponytail. It was worth all the pain though when we got to see the sun rise over a beautiful snow covered scenary! It was glorious! We drove for ages, Nik, Hez and me chatting the whole way, probably annoying the Canadians, but not giving a shit. They were probably too busy air-guitaring in the back seat anyway… they were both really into “mental, man”. We stopped at Laguna Celeste where we saw flamingos!! They were a bit far away, but so amazing. I find it really weird that flamingos live there, where it is sooo cold. I always imagined them to be tropical creatures. We saw heaps of other lakes, lagoons and gorgeous scenary that day. At lunch we stopped at a hot springs! It was pretty rock bottom putting our dry, white and hairy bodies back into bikinis but the hot springs were sooo nice. One guy nearly fainted though from the heat at such an altitude. We befriended four Scandinavians that day. There names were Pear, Jacob, Hega and Kristy (at least, this was the nearest we could get to the hocking sounds they were making when introducing themselves!). Our last stop for the day was at the Geisers Sol de Manaña, these amazing geysers that come from a volcano. They looked like big, bubbly vats of mud and emitted an eggy-fart smell that had Hez, Nik and me running back to the car, scarves over faces. We got to new place, which was a slight improvement from last nights accomodation but still had no heaters or showers.

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day Three

The next morning we actually got a sleep in – 7am!!! Our first stop was Laguna Colorada, which is normally a deep shade of red but was actually the colour of dried blood when we saw it, as it was too early in the morning. Next we went to the Valley of the Rocks, which is all these weird rock formations, including one shaped like a tree. They were awesome. We spent the rest of the day driving through the desert. We even saw some mirages! We thought we were looking at big lakes, but it was really just the naughty desert playing tricks on us! We went to a few more lagoons, which were beautiful and we pretended to be flamingos which was fun. We had another delish lunch then set off to see a real live volcano!! Now, when I heard this was next on the itinerary, I imagined we’d be side-stepping lava, dodging magma and fogging up in the sunnies from all the steam. Really we just parked at a random spot and Alberto pointed into the distance at a thin flume of smoke travelling gently into the sky. I was a little disappointed, to be perfectly honest. We took a couple of photos then just sat on a rock and bitched about TammyTina. Tina is a siliac, which means she can’t eat wheat and no matter how hard poor Chef tried to accomodate her plus two vegetarians, Tina would shriek “DOES THIS HAVE TRIGO (spanish word for `wheat´) IN IT??? NO TRIGO, NO TRIGO!!!” That was seriously all she said for those four days “no triiiigoooo”. We wanted to punch her. Anyway my disappointment at not being Volcano Joe was short lived when we kept driving and saw… a TORNADO!!! It was only small, but still! We were so close to it too. Alberto was just like “oh yeah, a tornado”, but we were all going wild! I felt like Helen Hunt in `Twister´!! We had a baño (toilet… see everyone, you’re getting a blog AND an education!) break in a small town where I befriended a little boy named Horsey. He challenged me by counting one to ten in English and I reciprocated by counting in Spanish and from then on, we became firm friends. As we were driving away he chased after our car, trying to give me a wet bar of soap! It’s the thought that counts, Horsey. We finally got to our last resting place, a `hotel´ made entirely out of salt where we got to have our first shower in 60 hours! We had an absolutely outstanding dinner that night, Chef really outdid herself. Vegetarian pasta PLUS soup! We applauded her and shouted “múy bien!!” as she blushingly cleared the table. We played cards with the Scandys for a while before rugging up in our sleeping bags and going outside to look at the stars. There were sooo many of them!! I think it’s because we were closer to them then usual they looked so amazing. It was freezing though so Hez and I went back inside, which I later regretted because the Scandys gave Nik an impromtu performance of a typical Norwegian dance. Apparently there was lots of kicking involved. I was very jelly.

Tupiza to Uyuni Tour – Day Four

We were woken up at 5am again, this time so we could go watch the sun rise over the salt flats. It was sooo glorious and we took the BEST photos. We had breakfast at the Isle del Pescado which was this weird island in the middle of the salt flats, absolutely COVERED in cacti. They were massive and we read that they only grow of a rate of 1cm per year! Some of them were over 10m tall! Prehistoric! We spent pretty much the entire morning taking awesome photos on the salt flats, which create an illusion that things are smaller the further back you go (see Hayley’s photos for further details). We finished off the tour in the town of Uyuni where we visited a train graveyard. Bit of an anti-climax to what was the most amazing four days EVER! We gave Alberto and Chef tips and said farewell and good ridance to TammyTina as we set off to a town called Sucre. TO BE CONTINUED….