Sarah: Tupiza, Bolivia: Bandit country, llama land
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2007
1
47
80
Trip End
Dec 28, 2008
Tupiza,
Bolivia
Saturday, May 3, 2008
We have continued moving north through Bolivia. It´s very cold but really interesting, as I´ve mentioned. From the border town of Villazon, we took a three hour train ride north to Tupiza, famous for being the last refuge of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid before they met their violent death in a neighbouring town.
One of my first impressions of Tupiza was, once again, the stray dogs. As Villazon, there seemed to be almost as many dogs as people. And boy are there some UG-LY dogs. And I´m a dog person! I mean, with all these stray (unfixed) dogs running around all year, there are some pretty weird genetic combinations. Can you imagine a daschund (sp?) crossed with an alsation? Or a King Charles spaniel crossed with a husky?? Mmmm. Actually, there is one cross that is rather beautiful - looks like an alsation with a husky. Huge dogs with coats that look like big fuzzy blankets.
In Tupiza, our main purpose was to follow the trail of Butch and Sundance´s last days, Ray being a big Western fan and all, and I too am partial to the odd legend. The first day took us on a three hour jeep ride on what had to be the worst road in South America to the site of the "banditos´" last robbery. Yes, three hours to drive 50km, you get my meaning? We passed a bizarre rock structure - huge, tall, straight-up pillar thing with a knob on top - called "la paronga." When we asked our driver what this meant, he held up his hands, about half a meter apart and said, in spanish, "member of animal."
We finally made it to Huacahuanusca, (wa-ca-wa-nus-ca) which in Quechua means "Dead Cow Hill" and was the place where Butch and Sundance held up some men carrying the payroll for a mining company. They thought it was going to be half a million (today´s money) but turned out to only be about a hundred grand. We got out of the jeep at the high point, 4000m and walked, just the two of us, along the horse trail that descends to the bottom of the ravine. Our guide met us there and showed us the exact spot of the robbery, where "los banditos" held up the sleeping men, took the money, stole their mules, and headed back toward Tupiza. They had been living in Tupiza for three months, casing a bank but when the army turned up, they had to find another target.
After this, we walked back along the river bed, past some llama-farmer caves and had lunch, which consisted of some hot chicken sandwhiches and some tomales - mashed corn dumplings with meat, in this case llama, in the middle. Llamas are the basis of the economy here - they provide most of the meat that people eat, and their wool and hides are used to make clothes and blankets. They must be hardy creatures - nothing grows out on the altiplano except this shrub that looks kind of like a wild lavender, and the occasional spiky brown grass.
The trip home took us along the dry river bed - about 200m wide, but totally flooded during the rainy season - and once more past some incredible scenery. We also came upon a couple of goat herds ( I started singing "The Lonely Goat Herd" from The Sound of Music, with yodelling and all, sorry) who were being walked miles and miles (we´d passed them this morning) by their owners. Very cute.
Back in Tupiza, we gone went and got us some genuine leather cowboy hats (for NZ$5 each) so we would look the part for the following day.
The second day of the tour took us to San Vicente, a tiny mining village 120km from Tupiza. We drove right up into the mountains, where we could see the Andes that constitute the borders with Chile and Argentina. We also saw more incredible canyons and ravines, as I described in the Salta entry, where the ground is so soft that the verticle rain carves out steep, jagged formations from the mountainside, and when the afternoon sun shines on them, it is truly spectacular. I find it difficult to try and describe these things, and do them justice, and it is very frustrating that I haven´t been able to include photos so you can SEE them for yourself, but there is apparently "brodband" at this place, so I will try after I finish this.
We saw dozens of llama herds. As I said, they´re gangly looking things but cute nonetheless, and man can they jump! Their shaggy, dumpy appearance belies their agility. Often there would be half the herd just standing or sitting in the middle of the road and we´d have to honk the horn to get them out of the road - a llama-jam! And so many colours: white, grey, 4 shades of brown, piebald, skewbald (sp?), black...
San Vicente itself was bleak, brown and dirty. We visited the cemetery where Butch and Sundance were supposedly initially enterred - there is so much legend surrounding them and so many different versions of their life and death that nothing is really known for certain. Following this we went to the house where they spent their last night and where they were discovered by the pursuit posse. How cool to actually be able to use the word "posse!" The most widely accepted version is that, wounded in the shoot-out, and surrounded with no possible escape, Butch shot Sundance and then turned the gun on himself.
However, people claim to have sighted them after this date, and when an American investigation disenterred the bodies, they supposedly found a German woman!
We had one final day to kill in Tupiza before catching the train to Uyuni, site of the world´s largest salt lake. I did some email and wandered around town buying souvenirs and gifts - everything is so cheap here, and when you try to say "keep the change" they insist of giving it back to you. We stayed in a 4 star hotel for NZ$30. I can´t stop buying stuff, even though we are both now carrying 5 bags and I really don´t have any room. But it´s like dessert, as the saying goes:"you don´t LEAVE room for it, you MAKE room for it."
One of the enduring memories for us will be of the Bolivian women in their traditional dress. Yes, it is just like the postcards and the Lonely Planet calendars. Girls and young (unmarried I think) women wear Western clothes, but older women - actually I think it might be once you´re married, as I saw some young mothers too - wear the traditional outfit. This consists of, from the bottom up: sandals, brown woollen tights, a very full, gathered, knee-length skirt of velvety or chiffony material, a woollen cardigan covered by a woollen jersey covered by a poncho, a black or brown bowler hat perched on gorgeous, bum-length black hair done in two braids with long woollen baubles on the end. Phew! Now go paint that! Oh, and I forgot to mention the wrinkles. I´ll say this: Bolivian women (and men) are the world´s best advertisement for sunscreen. Years of squinting, unprotected into the glaring sun at 4000m makes a 50-year old woman look about 90. And, so adorable, some of them are just tiny! For curiosity´s sake, I sidled up to this little ´ol lady and I swear, she came to just above my navel.
Well, that concludes our time in Tupiza. Have just scrolled up and realised this is enormous. Apologies to those of you on busy schedules (cough... Katrina).
I still have Uyuni and the salt lake to write about but fingers are dead - from typing and the cold - so will upload some photos and write another one later (have to kill time til our midnight train to Oruro).
