Our tour of the salt flats leads us in to Bolivia – and as soon as you step over the border, you know you are in a different country.
The ‘chulitos’ (traditional women) wear layers and layers of skirts, aprons, cardigans and shawls, giving the impression of being much larger than they are. They also wear bowler hats balanced on their heads and their long hair braided into two platts, which are tied together at the end with an array of baubles and ribbons.
The men look a little less traditional but also wear hats and many wear suits.
Our next stop is Potosi, the world’s highest city and a mining centre. The touristy thing to do is a tour of the silver mines which were once the bread and butter of Bolivia. Many years ago, African slaves were brought to Potosi to mine silver under appalling conditions. But they would collect about 700kg of silver out of every tonne of rubble.
Centuries later and the conditions are still appalling but the miners collect about 50g (yes – grams) of silver out of every tonne.
I have my reservations about going. I feel like I’m going to the zoo but all the tourists come back saying how amazing it is. So I follow the sheep and go along. And yes it is amazing but also sad. We don hard hats and head lamps, and squirrel our way through tunnels watching the miners at work. We bring them gifts which they gratefully accept because these men work for less than $1 per day. They only get paid if they find something and with the mine having been drained of most of its treasures, they hardly earn a penny.
One miner stops to talk to us. Come and see where I work, he says. So we squirrel further into the mine, up a shaft in stifling conditions and he points to a hose that is pumping fresh air into the area. It is being pumped in just for the tourists. I dread to think what the conditions are like minus the tourists. The miner tells us that the pressure in his drill is not high enough for him to work so he is begging the boss to turn up the pressure.
Through a translator we have a laugh and he lets us take pictures of him at work (Bolivians are generally camera shy). His face is thick with dirt, his eyes are bright red and he is 35 but looks 55. We shake hands and wish each other well.
On our way out of the mine, a miner casually walks past us and says to our guide that they are letting off dynamite nearby. I nearly shit myself – and judging by the sideways glances of our group, so does everyone else. We then hear two distant booms that I feel in my chest. Our guide cheerfully says, OK let’s go and we’re thankfully back out in the open. He then gives us a dynamite demonstration from afar.
Later that day we catch a taxi to another small city, Sucre. It costs five of us $5 each for a three hour taxi ride!
Sucre is a lovely colonial town with a great square for Bolivian people watching. We spend the morning wandering through a food market where I attempt conversations in Spanish with the chulitos manning the stalls. It is absolutely delightful. We try to buy something small from as many stalls as possible because everyone is interested in us.
We come across a stall that sells piles and piles of cheese. We’ve bought a tonne of vegetables to make pasta and think the cheese will make a great topping. Having no clue what each cheese is, I start pointing and making animal noises to determine which animal it’s from. “Baaaaa!” Yes, the chulito says... Yes! But then she points to Geezer’s beard. Ahhhh!! Goat!! Frantic nodding and much laughing from everyone.
We then enter the meat area where I spot a chopping block, an axe and a lot of blood. I have a bit of a turn, head outside for some air, just in time to see a tourist have his backpack nicked and a mob of police chasing the offender. We high-tail it out of there.
We eventually reach the main square of Sucre and rest on a park bench watching the people go by. A young street kid approaches us to see if we want our shoes shined. All three of us – Lou, Geezer and me – are wearing thongs. Ummm... no thanks, we say. But he persists and Lou asks him if he has any red nail polish because her toe nails could do with a touch up. He laughs and says no. We start chatting to him in basic Spanish and after a few minutes a curious young girl also approaches us. Your sister? I ask. Yes, my sister he says. We all introduce ourselves. They are Edmundo and Maria.
Edmundo tells us that he is nine and Maria is seven. They have two more brothers at home. It is the middle of a weekday and I my guess is that they are too poor to be at school, sent out by their parents to work. They are wearing ragged clothes and dirty hair but they are lovely and so interested in our lives – as we are in theirs. Where’s your mama? I ask. Edmundo points off in the distance and says that she is at work.
Throughout the entire conversation Edmundo asks to shine our shoes. So we ask if he has any pink nail polish for Geezer’s toes. He laughs. Nooooo, he says.
An ice-cream vendor walks past and the children’s eyes follow it the whole way past. Geezer stops the vendor and buys them an ice-cream. Their eyes light up. I notice Maria looking from her ice-cream to a shady spot nearby. She then darts off and sits and eats her ice-cream in the shade, wanting to make it last as long as possible but also not wanting to miss out on the conversation.
Maria eventually rejoins us and Edmundo asks us how old we are. Geezer and I say our ages and then pointing at Lou, Geezer says that Lou is a hundred years old. When they realise he is joking they are nearly crying with laughter. We chat with them some more and Edmundo asks us for some water. We give him our large bottle of water and tell him to keep it. He can’t believe his luck.
So after perhaps an hour of chatting to our lovely little friends we bid them farewell. They call out our names and wave to us until we are out of sight – all five of us smiling.
11 June 2010
17 May 2010
Salar de Uyuni and Bolivia!
Our tour into Bolivia starts off with a bang – literally. We’re not ten minutes out of San Pedro when a tyre blows on the trailer loaded with all our backpacks. We wait for a replacement tyre to be brought out and two muppets from the tour company arrive (minus the tyre) to concur with the driver that – yes the tyre has blown.
We arrive at the Bolivian border where I’m given grief about my passport by a mean looking meat head on border control. We then discover that the dodgy tour company hasn’t sent enough jeeps for everyone and, after much protesting, 15 of us are crammed into two jeeps.
Our first day is spent driving through a desolate landscape stopping at lagoons of different colours and a hillside that looks just like a Salvador Dali painting. We arrive at the world’s highest geyser where there is a lone Canadian man on a bike... cycling all the way through the high altitude desert by himself. I tell him he’s brave and he replies that he’s just crazy!
We then drive to a part of the salt flat where the horizon is white against the blue of the sky. Because the landscape is all white we can create some pretty cool pictures. One of Geezer up close looking like he has miniature people in his hand.
And one of me climbing out of a shoe.
Our last stop is at a train cemetery where we can climb over rusty old trains like kids. My favourite train has ‘ASI ES LA VIDA’ graffiti-ed on the side – ‘SUCH IS LIFE’.
We arrive at the Bolivian border where I’m given grief about my passport by a mean looking meat head on border control. We then discover that the dodgy tour company hasn’t sent enough jeeps for everyone and, after much protesting, 15 of us are crammed into two jeeps.
Our first day is spent driving through a desolate landscape stopping at lagoons of different colours and a hillside that looks just like a Salvador Dali painting. We arrive at the world’s highest geyser where there is a lone Canadian man on a bike... cycling all the way through the high altitude desert by himself. I tell him he’s brave and he replies that he’s just crazy!
We arrive at a hostel in the middle of the desert and discover that the temperature is about to drop to -10 degrees. We are at an altitude of more than 5000m, it’s hard to breath and it is freezing. We are given watery mashed potatoes, something that I think is a sausage and moody looking tomatoes. The owner refuses to light a fire until the temperature has dropped well below zero when he gives us some moss and one log to burn. The four of us spend the night absolutely freezing, unable to sleep because our hearts are racing from the high altitude. There are no hot showers and no electricity. Hell on earth!
Unimpressed, we leave the next morning to see pink flamingos, red, green and blue lagoons, and a smoking volcano. Our accommodation that night is a hotel made entirely of salt – the walls, beds, even the chairs and tables are made of salt. The temperature is significantly warmer and they serve a great dinner with wine!
We are up at 5am the next morning to watch the sunrise over the salt flats – the moment we have all been waiting for. Not realising that our other jeep has a flat tyre we leg it across the salt flats just as the sun is rising. We are completely surrounded by the white of the salt and a pink sky. The sun eventually peeks over the edge of the salt flat and we can make funny shadows on the salt. It is so surreal.
I wish we can stay longer. But we have to go. I close my eyes to soak it all in and we catch the last bit of sunrise from Fisher Island, a tiny island on the salt flat with 1200 year old cacti.
We then drive to a part of the salt flat where the horizon is white against the blue of the sky. Because the landscape is all white we can create some pretty cool pictures. One of Geezer up close looking like he has miniature people in his hand.
Our last stop is at a train cemetery where we can climb over rusty old trains like kids. My favourite train has ‘ASI ES LA VIDA’ graffiti-ed on the side – ‘SUCH IS LIFE’.
The zig-zagging comes to an end: part two
After a quick hostel change, we arrive at Hostal del Centro which is a stone’s throw from the main square of Salta and has some of life’s little luxuries – marmite and HP sauce! We bump into English Lou, the chick I met on our girly shopping trip in Bariloche. She is meeting up with a girl she also met in Bariloche and it turns out to be, Rachel, who we met in our hostel in Ushuaia – ahhh... the small world of backpackers! So the four of us form a delightful travelling pack. Rachel - the Irish doctor, Lou – the English performance arts teacher, Geezer and me!
Salta is a lovely town in the very north of Argentina. It is a hopping off point for tours to the Argentinean salt flats, stunning mineral-rich mountains of every colour imaginable and quaint villages. We opt for a tour that takes us to the salt flat and Pumamarca, a tiny cactus village that has great views of the mountain of seven colours.
We are picked up before dawn by Juanco, our guide with terrible breath, good English and a great sense of humour. Thinking we would be on a giant tour bus, we are surprised that there is only four of us in a little car – an Austrian couple and us.
We drive alongside the tracks of the Tren de Las Nubres (the train to the clouds) and make our way back to Salta where we discover that the border to Chile is closed. So it looks like we will be stuck in Salta until it re-opens. We don’t mind. There could be worse places to be stuck!
Salta has a museum displaying the Sleeping Children of Llullaillaco - three perfectly preserved children that were sacrificed to the mountain by the Incas 500 years ago. They were found in a crypt several years ago high up on a mountain and brought to Salta. There is only one of them on display – a six year old boy who looks like he is sleeping. He is so immaculately preserved that you can see the dirt under his finger nails. I feel a bit traumatised by it. He is so little and hardly has any clothes on.
The Chilean border finally opens and Lou, Rachel, Geezer and I leave Argentina with a bang, not really caring that we have to be up at 5:30am for a bus to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It seems to have become a habit to get stuck in to the red wine when we have an early bus to catch.
San Pedro de Atacama – our last stop in Chile and the end to all the zig-zagging between Argentina and Chile up from Patagonia. We have zig-zagged between the countries five times and our passports are filling up!
We are marched off the bus late afternoon to have our passports stamped into Chile not realising that we are already in San Pedro. We walk into the dusty, desert town, hungover as hell and my first impression is – where the hell are we?? But a short walk around town reveals a fabulous place with unbelievable food and a list of sights to see as long as my arm. We run around like maniacs booking tours for all the things we want to see – five tours all within a 30 hour time period!
The first is sandboarding down one of San Pedro’s massive sand dunes in the Valley of Death. Our guide is as useful as a shag on a rock so the four of us fudge our way into boards and climb up the ridiculously steep dune. I nudge over the edge and face plant the sand (apparently while making chimp-like noises).
Realising it’s not my forte, I watch Geezer fly down the dune at lightning speed. On his second run, he crashes and burns with a full 360 flip, his board flying off, catching him in the ribs and leaving him shaky and winded.
We drive to the Valley of the Moon to watch the sun set over the 20 volcanos that surround San Pedro with a pisco sour (THE Chilean drink) in hand.
We arrive back in town for a short rest before heading off on our next tour – stargazing in one of the world’s best night skies. It’s 10pm and we arrive in a Frenchman’s backyard full of giant telescopes. Ordinarily there are 1000 stars visible to the naked eye but here there are 6000!
The Frenchman’s wife gives us a talk about the differences between the northern and southern skies. She shows us the plane of the milky way. When you look at a picture of the universe, it looks like a giant ring of stars and here the milky way is so clear that you can actually see this plane.
She points a laser at various constellations – the Southern Cross, the Centaur, Scorpio, Sagittarius, the big dipper (upside down because we are on the other side of the globe), Saturn, Venus and Mars. We then get to look through the telescopes and see the rings of Saturn, a gas cloud, a cluster of stars that to the naked eye looks like one star and a line of stars of different colours (called the Jewel Box). I whirl around in the dark, mouth wide open, eyes up at the sky in awe of yet another of Mother Nature’s marvels.
We arrive back at 1am with our next tour departure at 4am to see the sunrise over a field of geysers and mud pools.
The girls head off on no sleep without us because Geezer needs to get his ribs checked. We arrive at the medical centre (or makeshift hospital) to be told that there is only a doctor in on Mondays between 8am and 12pm (it’s now Friday!). The alternative is a paramedic and I explain to her in poor Spanish about Geezer’s ribs. The medic prescribes Geezer some painkillers, tells him to wrap a towel around his middle (!?) and thankfully thinks he is probably OK. We leave with a healthy appreciation of our own health system - the sheets on the bed here are filthy and there is a woman giving birth a few rooms away.
We bolt to meet the girls and go on to our next tour of Laguna Cejar – a lagoon made of 30 per cent salt so that you can float in it – a bit like the Dead Sea. I jump in and immediately flip over, unable to keep my balance in the salty water.
Our final stop is sunset at a salt flat surrounded by desert and a ring of more than 20 volcanos.
We end our stay in San Pedro – and Chile – with another delicious meal in front of a bon fire and declare San Pedro a winner of a place. None of us want to leave.
So the zig-zagging comes to an end. Our next stop is the Salar de Uyuni – the Bolivian salt flats.
In four days we have said goodbye to two countries that have blown our minds. The jaw dropping beauty of Chilean volcanos, desert and skies, the gobsmacking landscapes, stunning treks and glaciers of Argentina and the people... from the polite, music-loving Argentineans to the friendly, fun Chileans... we leave Argentina and Chile on a high note. Every single day has been an adventure. And as we cross the border into Bolivia we wonder if our trip can possibly get any better!
Salta is a lovely town in the very north of Argentina. It is a hopping off point for tours to the Argentinean salt flats, stunning mineral-rich mountains of every colour imaginable and quaint villages. We opt for a tour that takes us to the salt flat and Pumamarca, a tiny cactus village that has great views of the mountain of seven colours.
We are picked up before dawn by Juanco, our guide with terrible breath, good English and a great sense of humour. Thinking we would be on a giant tour bus, we are surprised that there is only four of us in a little car – an Austrian couple and us.
Our first stop is Pumamarca then we climb our way up a mountain pass that hits a breath-taking altitude of 4170m above sea level. I run to take a photo of the view and have to grab on to the car to catch my breath. Puff, puff, puff!
Madly chewing on coca leaves to combat the altitude, we wind our way through the desert arriving at the salt flat which makes for great pics and a view that leaves us spinning. Next stop is San Antonio, a very poor village that serves a mean lunch of baby goat stew (eeek!) and a weird dessert. Strangely, it starts to snow even though there is blue sky.
Madly chewing on coca leaves to combat the altitude, we wind our way through the desert arriving at the salt flat which makes for great pics and a view that leaves us spinning. Next stop is San Antonio, a very poor village that serves a mean lunch of baby goat stew (eeek!) and a weird dessert. Strangely, it starts to snow even though there is blue sky.
We drive alongside the tracks of the Tren de Las Nubres (the train to the clouds) and make our way back to Salta where we discover that the border to Chile is closed. So it looks like we will be stuck in Salta until it re-opens. We don’t mind. There could be worse places to be stuck!
Salta has a museum displaying the Sleeping Children of Llullaillaco - three perfectly preserved children that were sacrificed to the mountain by the Incas 500 years ago. They were found in a crypt several years ago high up on a mountain and brought to Salta. There is only one of them on display – a six year old boy who looks like he is sleeping. He is so immaculately preserved that you can see the dirt under his finger nails. I feel a bit traumatised by it. He is so little and hardly has any clothes on.
The Chilean border finally opens and Lou, Rachel, Geezer and I leave Argentina with a bang, not really caring that we have to be up at 5:30am for a bus to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It seems to have become a habit to get stuck in to the red wine when we have an early bus to catch.
San Pedro de Atacama – our last stop in Chile and the end to all the zig-zagging between Argentina and Chile up from Patagonia. We have zig-zagged between the countries five times and our passports are filling up!
We are marched off the bus late afternoon to have our passports stamped into Chile not realising that we are already in San Pedro. We walk into the dusty, desert town, hungover as hell and my first impression is – where the hell are we?? But a short walk around town reveals a fabulous place with unbelievable food and a list of sights to see as long as my arm. We run around like maniacs booking tours for all the things we want to see – five tours all within a 30 hour time period!
The first is sandboarding down one of San Pedro’s massive sand dunes in the Valley of Death. Our guide is as useful as a shag on a rock so the four of us fudge our way into boards and climb up the ridiculously steep dune. I nudge over the edge and face plant the sand (apparently while making chimp-like noises).
Realising it’s not my forte, I watch Geezer fly down the dune at lightning speed. On his second run, he crashes and burns with a full 360 flip, his board flying off, catching him in the ribs and leaving him shaky and winded.
We drive to the Valley of the Moon to watch the sun set over the 20 volcanos that surround San Pedro with a pisco sour (THE Chilean drink) in hand.
We arrive back in town for a short rest before heading off on our next tour – stargazing in one of the world’s best night skies. It’s 10pm and we arrive in a Frenchman’s backyard full of giant telescopes. Ordinarily there are 1000 stars visible to the naked eye but here there are 6000!
The Frenchman’s wife gives us a talk about the differences between the northern and southern skies. She shows us the plane of the milky way. When you look at a picture of the universe, it looks like a giant ring of stars and here the milky way is so clear that you can actually see this plane.
She points a laser at various constellations – the Southern Cross, the Centaur, Scorpio, Sagittarius, the big dipper (upside down because we are on the other side of the globe), Saturn, Venus and Mars. We then get to look through the telescopes and see the rings of Saturn, a gas cloud, a cluster of stars that to the naked eye looks like one star and a line of stars of different colours (called the Jewel Box). I whirl around in the dark, mouth wide open, eyes up at the sky in awe of yet another of Mother Nature’s marvels.
We arrive back at 1am with our next tour departure at 4am to see the sunrise over a field of geysers and mud pools.
The girls head off on no sleep without us because Geezer needs to get his ribs checked. We arrive at the medical centre (or makeshift hospital) to be told that there is only a doctor in on Mondays between 8am and 12pm (it’s now Friday!). The alternative is a paramedic and I explain to her in poor Spanish about Geezer’s ribs. The medic prescribes Geezer some painkillers, tells him to wrap a towel around his middle (!?) and thankfully thinks he is probably OK. We leave with a healthy appreciation of our own health system - the sheets on the bed here are filthy and there is a woman giving birth a few rooms away.
We bolt to meet the girls and go on to our next tour of Laguna Cejar – a lagoon made of 30 per cent salt so that you can float in it – a bit like the Dead Sea. I jump in and immediately flip over, unable to keep my balance in the salty water.
Our final stop is sunset at a salt flat surrounded by desert and a ring of more than 20 volcanos.
We end our stay in San Pedro – and Chile – with another delicious meal in front of a bon fire and declare San Pedro a winner of a place. None of us want to leave.
So the zig-zagging comes to an end. Our next stop is the Salar de Uyuni – the Bolivian salt flats.
In four days we have said goodbye to two countries that have blown our minds. The jaw dropping beauty of Chilean volcanos, desert and skies, the gobsmacking landscapes, stunning treks and glaciers of Argentina and the people... from the polite, music-loving Argentineans to the friendly, fun Chileans... we leave Argentina and Chile on a high note. Every single day has been an adventure. And as we cross the border into Bolivia we wonder if our trip can possibly get any better!
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