Sucre

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From Potosi we took a bus to Sucre, one of the largest cities in Bolivia. We failed to book into a hostel and when we turned up at night, the one we planned to stay at was full... Consequently we were forced to go to the one with cable television and a private shower which was over the road. Unfortunately, while it was a lovely room, it also had bed bugs and a cold shower... Ah well..

Despite this, we were in a great location, just a couple of blocks from the main plaza and a short walk from most places of interest. The main plaza featured a a beautiful church as well as some of the most important judiciary buildings in the country. One night after walking back to the hostel, we saw many soldiers outside the building lined up. After asking two kids what was going on we discovered that Evo Morales, el presidente himself was due to arrive and meet the Argentinian president Cristina Kirchner. We waited a while but thought it was probably only a rehearsal - the soldiers were in fatigues and a few were chatting and playing with their mobile phones.

The next day it was much more official though!!! We arrived in the plaza which was crawling with soldiers in full ceremonial garb! We waited for a while an nothing seemed to happen but there was a definite buzz. Soon it all became more relaxed and the soldiers seemed to have a break so we left.. However, when we came back, it was all go and within half and hour or so, we saw both presidents and the vice president of Bolivia arrive!!!

One of the other highlights of Sucre was definitely the Indigenous Art Museum which had an extensive display and exhaustive info on the importance and significance of textiles in the region. Each local area had a distinctive style, one using abstract shapes, the other images from everyday life and the other images representing the spiritual world.

Our most disastrous day was DinoTruck day... Near Sucre is a place with hundreds of dinosaur footprints and the guidebook said the DinoTruck was a fun if cheesy way to do it.... Not is the people you are doing it with are drunk, loud and about as obnoxious as its possible to be... And smelly.... On top of this, the site itself will not let you get anywhere near the footprints - you view them through telescopes that you pay extra for.... We were irate by the end. !!

After an eventful stop in Sucre, it was off to La Paz - the highest capital in the world... Everything in Bolivia seems to be the highest!!

View from the streets of Sucre



View from one of the higher points of the city



Pictures from the museum





Arrival of Evo Morales and Cristina Kirchner



She is in this one... Just...



Soldiers relaxing afterwards!!

Potosi

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After our Salt Flats tour we decided to catch a bus to Potosi - the highest city in the world at 4300m. Despite checking that our bus was a proper coach the day before, on arrival we found it was little more than a rickety minbus. Our temporary traveling companion who had been on the tour with us kicked up a fuss and managed to get some of our money back, but then we opted for another company anyway as it cost so little.

After a rocky start involving a bit of a trek to find a place to stay, we found that Potosi was a fascinating city with some incredibly beautiful bits. It once rivalled London and Paris in size and was one of the wealthiest in the world due to the silver mines nearby.

One of the most important discoveries while we were in Potosi was quinoa soup which has now become a staple part of our diet.. Its tasty and can be found pretty much everywhere YUMMMMY!! While at a cafe having a coca tea and bowl of soup we met a couple of guys from Manchester, one of whom lived in Chorlton and worked in our local supermarket while we were living there... No doubt he served me while we were both saving to go to the same place!!!

One of the highlights of our trip to Potosi was when we found out that we could get to the top of this huge building in the centre of the town for a small fee. We took a winding staircase and then a ladder to get onto the roofs of the city. We sat out for ages and looked at the stunning views and the plaza below us. To one side was the infamous mountain which was the source of the silver and which has apparently claimed the lives of 8 million miners during its history.

The city itself was beautiful in the centre, full of old colonial architecture and pretty plazas. It also had some killer hills which on arrival nearly left us dead in the road as we struggled up with them with our rucksacks on!! Its no fun doing that at such high altitude...!!

Here is a pic of one of the main plazas in the town...



This is the first glimpse we got of the views from the rooftop..



Not for those with vertigo!!



And the infamous mountain... it is still mined today!!

Salar de Uyuni - Day Four, the actual salt plains!!!!

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The final day of the tour was by far the best. We woke up at a ridiculous time in the morning again so that we could see the sun rise. We were so exhausted by this point that when we got into the car in the dark I think everyone would have rather gone back to bed. But when the sun began to rise we all forgot our sleepiness...









We parked up in this brilliant white expanse that really took our breath away. It was like nothing else we had ever seen. So beautiful and peaceful. It was really really special.










After about 40 minutes taking in the incredible scenery and letting the sun come up, we drove to Fish Island, which our awesome guide and driver informed us was imaginatively named because it resembles...a fish! We had a walk around the island, which was covered in brilliant cactuses/cacti (we couldn't decide which word is correct, answers on a postcard!) and allowed for stunning views of the salt plains. Because here you don't get an island surrounded by water, but salt of course.








After breakfast, everyone started taking photos messing around with the strange perspectives that can be achieved because of the vast white surroundings. At first we thought it was a bit cliched because everyone gets these photos, but then we thought we would have a little go and discovered it was LOADS of fun!!!! We all spent hours devising new compositions!

Little Zephie...




Little Zephie again, sat on a mate cup....






Dave walking the knife edge....





Hahaha we love this one!





This was the brain child of our driver Santos and his brother....



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Here are our two groups (ours on the right) standing on the arms of the lovely Agustina!





And here we all are, normal size!





And if you hadn't seen enough salt, here is some more....


Salt tables and chairs...






Here's a salt llama, in the salt museum.........






And just big piles of SALT!!!!





By the end we were totally exhausted! We ended up in Uyuni, where we were able to shower properly for the first time in 4 days. Unfortunately, we ended up going to another of the region's famous Italian restaurants that night for the worst meal of our entire lives. We were both famished because for some reason there wasn't much vegan fare for breakfast and lunch that day, but we still couldn't stomach the revolting spaghetti with tomato sauce (they had literally just plopped a blended tomato and water on a plate full of half cooked pasta). Oh well, it was a poor end to an awesome trip!

Salar de Uyuni Day Three!

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On day three we had a bit of a lie in - we only had to get up at 6ish! It was a bit more of an easy day having seen so much the day before! We were all exhausted from long days, early mornings and altitude. Unfortunately Pete was sick in the night from the altitude!

The first place we visited was so beautiful. It was a red lake that gets its colour from the bacteria that live in it and rise to the surface during the day. There were thousands of flamingoes here as well! Here it was still really early so the lake hadn't changed colour yet....





Here it is a bit redder...!





After looking at the lake and aaaall the flamingoes for ages, we went to see some cool rock formations - much cooler than it sounds, honestly!!!


Here is a particularly famous one that is said to look like a tree!





And here's me and Dave posing....









Here is another beautiful lake....





At yet another lake, we stopped to have lunch! This was by far one of the best meals we had on the tour - so yummy! It was veg in a lovely sauce with rice mmmmmm!

Our cook Agustina is here too, look how tiny she is!!!!!!!!!!!! She was lovely :D





After lunch we paid a visit to a semi active volcanoe, which was surrounded by rock that had formed from lava thousands of years ago. The landscape was incredible, you could still see the shape of the lava like the crests of waves...







On the drive to our next destination we got a taste of what the next day would be like...salt salt and more salt...





That night we even got to stay in a salt HOTEL! It was built out of bricks of salt, our beds were made of salt, the tables and chairs were made of salt! You get the idea!


Here I am in our salty bedroom....





Salt dining room....





Salty friends.....





And here is the view of salt that we had from the salt hotel...These were the salt plains that we would be exploring the next day!

Salar de Uyuni (Salt Plains) Day Two!

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The next day we had to get up at stupid o'clock (about 4-5ish am) in order to get our bags packed onto the jeep and set off again. We went to a place they call the mini Macchu Picchu but to be honest we were so sleepy and it was still dark that we couldn't really make anything out!

Here is one of the lakes we visited, that was home to looooads of beautiful flamingoes!






Here is our convoy of jeeps. We all travelled around together in case someone broke down, as they do quite commonly apparently. Although this didn't stop one car getting stuck out in the middle of the desert all night...eeeshk! Nothing happened with us though, yay!




After this we went to some hot springs. The water was pumped into an artificial pool, which was set, again, in the middle of nowhere!!! Here is Dave with our Kiwi buddies, Phillipa, Jamie and Pete.




Here we are at a lake that was bright blue in colour because of all the minerals in it... It was so pretty and incredibly windy!!!!



The region we was previously highly volcanic, so we saw both dead and semi-active volcanoes. We also got to see the gaseis - or sulphuric gases coming out of the earth from holes hundreds of metres deep. It was very smelly, but really cool! At this point we were well over 5,000 metres above sea level! It is so strange being so high up as even the shortest walk leaves you out of breath....not so good when you're trying to hold your breath from the farty smells....

The Salt Plains!

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After our mammoth journey from El Bolson to La Quiaca in the very north of Argentina, we crossed the border to Bolivia and seemed to enter a completely different world! Border towns seem to be a bit weird anyway, sort of a no man's land. But crossing to Villazon was so different to what we had been used to in Argentina and we soon realised we had had it pretty easy so far!

We took a rickety, hot, dusty, bumpy bus straight from Villazon to a town called Tupiza, which I am sure you will all be thrilled to learn was apparently where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end. We didn't do a great deal here as there wasn't much to do! We also gave ourselves a few days to get over the long journeys and acclimatise to the altitude, which made us really groggy and lethargic. Dave managed to catch a cold on one of the buses as well, which made it worse! But we contented ourselves by walking around, checking out the scenery and eating at one of the many "Italian" restaurants. All of these restaurants had exactly the same menus, the same signage and everything, it was really quite bizarre! And there were about a million of them!

We wanted to take a tour of the Salt Plains, in the south-east of the country and we decided to take it straight from Tupiza instead of Uyuni, where most people go from. We were really glad we did. We luckily found three lovely Kiwis (the people not the fruit) who wanted to go on the same day as us, which made it nice and cheap! They were Jamie, Phillipa and Pete and we had a great time with them.

The trip was hard going - we spent four days in a 4x4, getting out every now and then to check out the AMAZING scenery! It was like nothing else we had ever seen and felt like we were in a surrealist painting most of the time! But we had very early mornings, incredibly high altitudes (we reached over 5,000 metres above sea level at one point) and long days, so were totally exhausted by the end. Totally worth it though!

Although the Salt Plains are the main attraction (it's something like 12,000 squared kilometres of 11-metre deep salt that at one point thousands of years ago was three huge lakes - so wierd I have never really thought of salt as anything more than what I put on my chips!!!!), we also got to see volcanoes, deserts, green, red and blue lakes (thanks to all the crazy minerals in the area) and LOADS OF FLAMINGOES!


Here is the Valley of the Moon near Tupiza....




On the first day we stopped for lunch in a field with about a MILLION LLAMAS!!!!!!!!!! They are such funny creatures - totally dumb but REEEEALLY CUTE!!!! We were priviliged to see this wee chap a few minutes after he had been born and watched him take his first steps! AAAAAAAWWW! Unfortunately this also meant there was a huge pile of afterbirth quite close to where we were eating lunch - gross. They had put llama meat on the menu as well, which I thought was highly inappropriate!!!!




That night we stayed in a military base that was literally in the middle of nowhere! We have never stayed anywhere so remote!!! But it was so beautiful and we enjoyed lots of vegan food prepared for us by our lovely cocinera Agustina.



It was absolutely freeeezing though at over 4,000 metres above sea level (EVERYTHING is high up in Bolivia...!), so we were fully clothed, in sleeping bags and under covers. BRRR!