Uyuni, Bolivia
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2007
1
3
Trip End
Oct 27, 2007
Uyuni,
Bolivia
Friday, October 19, 2007
Oruro is a small town, known as the gateway to the alti-plano. 90% of the population ar indigenous, which you wouldn´t have thought as it is probably the most untraditional place we´ve ben so far - mobile phones & mosha shops - galore... We seemed to be the only travellers (note not tourists, hehe..)in the town, or we thought so until we stood on the train platform to days later. We did arrive in time for the festival of song and saw the opening parade of floats with young people reprsenting the different regions of Bolivia which was good.
Did a quick recki of the things we´ve bought so far, we think the list is funny so we´ve decided to include it....
2 Alpaca jumpers, 2 wooly hats, 1 scarf, a kettle, an pachamama statue (mother earth), a guitar, bag of coca leaves, bottle opener, a straw hat & trainer whitner.....
Uyuni is more or less one street with countless hostels, tourist agencies & cafes where you can sit outside (first place were this is possible whoooo....)Feels a bit lik a beach town with no beach. Our reason for coming here was a base to visit the solar de Uyuni, which we booked, after stocking up on cereal bars, fruit & a box of wine (unsure they would cater for vegetarians...)The night before our tour we found a bar advertised as "a warm place" sounded very appealing, later finding out it was called the extreme fun bar - extreme in that the bar owner was completley pissed, tried to get us pissed by teaching us a bolivian dice game and then trying to make us drink llama sperm (supposedly an aphrodisiac, at which point we made a quick exit, oh after working out our own bill as he sat & spat on the floor.....
Tour - Solar del uyuni
We travelled by 4x4 with 4 other travellers (Cara and Chris from the USA & Robert & Cardie from Holland) along with the driver & cook.
Day 1 - We first visited a train graveyard (were not sure why) and then travelled onto the Solar. This is a giant salt desert that used to be a lake that evaporated. The land is just salt, there are mountains were it is quarried. It is beautiful looks a bit like its snowed & noone has walked on it. We travelled across the salt lake to the northern edge & saw our first Volcano where we stopped at the bottom for lunch. The Volcano had a huge crater which was smooth & was a range of pinks, yellows & reds.
In the afternoon we went to the centre of the Solar to "Fish Island" its in the shape of a fish, but is actually made of Coral as it used to be under the water. It was filled with giant cacti, some reaching upto 12 meters...
We spent the night at a hotel made of salt, even the beds and tables & chairs - Fasinating. There was no electricity & so we went to sleep with the candlelight making the salt crystals sparkle... (Very nice).
Day 2 - Flamingos. As we travelled further south on the anti plano we stopped at a number of lagoons, all of which had flamingos on, the stone tree was amazing, like being in a dali painting - surreal and finally reaching Lagoon Colerado (the red lagoon, red because of the arsenic?) this was beautiful, the majority of the lagoon is red, but parts are stiped with green, blue, and white - salt. It has a marbled effect. Our hostel for tonight was very basic but we did all find a shop that sold beer!!! Early to bed as we had an early start (3.30am up to be ready to lave at 4am).
Day 3 - Leave at 4am, don´t think so.It was freezing, it can reach -20 degrees celcious at night and it couldn´t have been far off!!!! Awoke to find the 4x4 had disappeared along with the driver? They both turned up 2 hours later as we were all huddled fully dressed in beds in the dorm!!! Explanation, Jeep wouldn´t start its to cold. We had been having some problems with the jeep, it wouldn´t go in gear - Clutch about to go, it kept stopping, the driver stopped on many occasions to bang the axel - we think? All of us were relieved when we hit civilisation on route, glad we´d not ben stranded somewhere!!!
We arrived at the giesers shortly after we set off, amazing. We saw at first a singular gieser that reached 30 meters in the air. As soon as you opened the door to get out you could hear the pressure, it sounded like the ground could explode at any minute.
A bit further on there were many giesers & pools of bubbling sulphur, this looked like a scene from another planet - Bizzare...
After visiting the green lake we made our way to the Chillean Border near San Pedro to drop Robert & Cardie off and then started the very long, Very bumpy,ride back to Uyuni, with many stops including one where we had to push the jeep up the mountain (wasn´t happenning) the driver managed to start the engine rolling back down the mountain.
We had planned on getting the 8pm bus back to La Paz, however we´d been driving since 6am had numb bums & arrived back in Uyuni with 5 mins to spare. We postponed our journey to the following day and ate the biggest pizza you´ve ever seen!!
The tour was fantastic & we never expected Bolivia to be so varied & beautiful. Our favourites were the cactus & the Giesers...Solar del Uyuni should definatley be one of the wonders of the world & ideally every high school geography student should be made to come to Bolivia...
