Miss Maps Goes Solo

Unfortunately our last day in La Paz went a bit wrong. We had the morning to get ourselves organised before the 3 hour bus to Oruro followed by an 8 hour train to Uyuni. Between the ATM and the hotel Jus was pick pocketed for 300 US dollars, buggers. It was a clever scam, someone threw yogurt at her so she thought a bird had crapped on her. Simultaneously a guy bumped into her and looked up as if there was a bird there. By the time he´d gone she realised her wallet had gone too. Trying to put that incident behind us, we left La Paz.

By the time we arrived in Uyuni, we´d multiplied to a group of about 7 gringos all heading there for the same reason, so we trekked around the one horse town together at 3am, looking for somwehere to kip. After breakfast the next day in a joint entirely made of salt (the floor was loose salt, like snow, very cool) we got out of our hell hole of a hostel to find something with flushing toilets, this really is a small town. If it weren´t for the tours that run from here I reckon it would be a ghost town. We met up with Deirdre and Paul (a lovely Irish couple who did the Inca trail with Jus) and hit the tour agencies to find the best deal.

With that sorted and full of excitement for the next day, we headed to minuteman pizza, oh good god. Who would´ve thought that I would be eating a pizza with olives, sun dried tomatoes and gorgonzola washed down with a glas of sangria. Thank god for expat gringos who set these places up, my stomach hasn´t been so happy with me for a very long time.

So this salt flat thing, basically there´s a 9000km area which is a blanket of salt. In the dry season it´s white and cracked, now it´s covered in water, up to a metre deep in places. Because of this we could only drive a short way in. 9 of us in total (us 3, Deirdre and Paul, 2 Argentinians, the driver and the cook) piled into an ancient Toyota Landcruiser, the bottom of it hanging out. Just before driving on to the flats we all climbed on to the roof rack to get a better view.

It really is other worldly. With about a foot of water in every direction, everything appears twice, once the right way up and once reflected upside down. There´s no visible horizon. Purple and yellow monet clouds reflect and make strange mirror images like you´re looking through a kaleidoscope. When the low clouds are reflected they look like the pictures psychologists might hold up and ask what they make you think of. The hills look really weird. They don´t go into the ground, instead they go into a perfect reflection of themselves so that they look like pieces of rock suspended in mid-air, like platforms on a video game. If sonic the hedgehog jumped on them they would dip and then fall away when he jumped off.

We stopped at the salt hotel, yes it is entirely made of salt, to walk around and take pictures. With jeans rolled up and bare feet we winced and yelped as we walked through the water covering the prickly layer of salt. There were loads of tour groups unfortunately. One group of hideous testosterone filled Kiwi boys had their guide take a picture of them all lined up mooning, brilliant.

After being rushed back on to the truck (I hate guided tours but sometimes it´s the only way) we drove off the salt and headed south towards the Reserva Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, catchy.

I almost can´t bring myself to write about this because the pain is too fresh in my mind. Basically we spent almost the entirely 3 days squashed into the car, receiving no information from our so called guide who insisted on driving at 40km per hour. As he repeatedly got lost and drove like a learner it became obvious that he was totally inexperienced. We were hours behind all the other tour groups and as a result had much less time at each locaton and ate 3 hours after everyone else, it was the most frustrating experience. The accommodation was basic (no showers) and the food was basic but fine. Had it not been for the 8 bottles of wine, 3 tubes of Pringles and 32 mars bars we´d packed I´m not sure we would´ve made it through.

On the plus side, the landscape was amazing. Red dusty land with bits of spikey green scrub and the beautiful snow capped Andes in the background. We saw lagunas in blue, red and green (something to do with micro-organisms in there, our guide didn´t know) and hundreds of flamingos, which are officially my favourite birds.

We saw a variety called James flamingos (hee hee) which look mainly white until they fly when you can see their black and flourescent pink wings. They run really stupidly as they come in to land, little pink stick legs flying everywhere. We also saw loads of llamas, especially babies. They´re adorable animals who also run in a really stupid way. The owners for some reason tie red ribbons to their ears, adding to their cutenes.

One morning we set off at 5am in-15 degrees to see the geysers. I broke my previous altitude record here by hitting 5000m! The geysers are boiling pools of mud and sulphur. It stinks like a thousand rotten eggs. The pools burble and plop away at 150 degrees, it reminds me of the bog of eternal stench from the film Princess Bride. Of course being Bolivia there were no safety measures, you can get as close as you like and poor Paul got spat on by boiling mud, he didn´t get burned though. When the pressure from the underground heat gets too much shoots of sulphurus steam go up high into the air, pretty cool.

So the landscape went a long way to make up for the discomfort, which was added to by the fact that I find it really hard to go to the loo outdoors, the only option most of the time. I get stage fright squatting behind a wall with the Andes mountains glaring down at me. I can´t even tell you how much I´m enjoying having a toilet right now.

The company helped too, one night after much wine we played stupid games until the early hours and ended up lying in bed singing at the tops of our lungs. All of us were in the same room and we each sang our national anthem. I was the only English, I´ve never put so much feeling into God Save The Queen! Other numbers included It´s a Long Way to Tipperary, Oasis´ Wonderwall and Stand By Me.

It was a trip I was really looking forward to and I´m still glad I did it but I wish we´d had a guide who´d done it more than once before (as we discovered).

So now I´m back in Uyuni. Justine, Pip, Deirdre and Paul all headed south east to a town that didn´t appeal to me. I´ll be heading north to Sucre tomorrow and staying there for over a week before flying to another town called Santa Cruz then over to Brazil. If all goes to plan Jus and Pip should join me in a few days for our last stop together.

Sorry for the lack of photos within this page, haven´t got the software here, but there are lots of new ones of La Paz and the tour under the my photos link.

Right, I´m off to eat another gorgonzola pizza.

Tags: Bolivia

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Bolivia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.