Bolivian Country Roads
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2004
1
38
50
Trip End
??? ??, 2005
La Paz, Bolivia
Friday, February 4, 2005
I caught the direct bus to Uyuni with Dave & Matt & a whole lot of other tourists. Our journey took us on gravel roads for nearly 14 hours. In the dusty town of Uyuni, the three of us joined Angela (Switzerland), Rose (UK), and Mikkel (Denmark) for a four day tour of the southwest corner of Bolivia in a Jeep with a driver & cook.
We first spent a day on the huge salt flats. It was a blindingly white, flat sea of salt that you can drive on. Since they had some rain recently, there were large pools of water by which the clouds and mountains reflected on. We stopped at Isla del Pescado (fish island) which was a volcanic island covered in cacti
Dino Tracks
. Really beautiful. In the afternoon, I was the only one that dared to wade in the shallow salt lake and I paid for it by washing salt off my feet and ankles for the next two days!The next three days were spent driving through the spectacular scenery of SW Bolivia. We stopped at several colored lakes (the red, green, and black lakes) all of which contained many flamingos. We drove through mountain passes & saw lots of rock formations and snow capped volcanos. We visited a geyser basin very early one very cold morning (4 am) to see boiling mud pots and fumerolas. We followed this up with a soak in a natural hot pool. It was surreal sitting in this hot pool at nearly 5,000 meters above sea level with a frozen lake and 6,000 meter + mountains surrounding us. We spent the evenings playing cards, something I hadn't done in months.
I spent the night in Uyuni to relax. We went out that evening for a nice dinner & eventually rode a very scary ferris wheel in the city's park. The next day, Rose & I headed to Potosi, the highest city in the world and home to one of the largest silver deposits. We spent some time in the city, trying to avoid being hit by water balloons and guns. Carnaval has definitely begun in this country. I got hit by two balloons this particular afternoon. The next day we took a tour into one of the silver and zinc mines. We donned rubber boots, over clothes, hard hats, and a head torch attached to a very heavy battery that wrapped around the waist. I looked like something out of Ghostbusters. We stopped at the miner's market to buy gifts (coca leaves, gloves, soda pop, lighters, etc) and then headed to the mine. We met a 14 year old boy who makes $75 a month working 7 days a week at the mine
Flamingos
. In the changing room, I was surprised to see a Minnesota Wild hat! They also had an altar to Jesus and pictures of naked women on the walls. We then went into the mine where we saw workers pushing 500 kg carts of ore on rail tracks. We climbed 7 sets of rickety steps to one of the mine sites where an engineer laid some dynamite and we waited for the "boom." Our last stop was to the altar room for the tio (uncle) who is the devil. The workers give this devil statue offerings of cigarettes and liquor to protect them from accidents.Rose & I caught an evening bus to Sucre, the other capital of Bolivia (La Paz is the other one). This city of 175,000 is really rich-looking, but also has many beggars on the main streets which is sad. In Sucre, I took the "Dino-Truck" to a quarry owned by the Fancesa Cement Company. There, they found dinosaur tracks in the rocks as they were digging in the hills. At this spot, two continental plates crashed together, sending one of the plates nearly vertical, so it looks like the dinosaurs were walking on the side of the hill. They have identified the tracks of 4 dinos: Triceratops, Brontasaurus & 2 others. The tracks are in thin layers and over time, the layers have been falling due to erosion and tremors from the cement plant. I actually saw a whole chunk of earth fall & could hear the whole wall cracking as I neared the rock face. Each time one layer falls, they have always found new sets of tracks on the next layer, but they are considering protecting it with silicon to protect the tracks that now show. I also visited the Cathedral & a museum & said goodbye to Rose who was staying in Sucre to study Spanish for a few weeks.
I decided to pay an extra $2.50 to upgrade to a first class bus back to La Paz - a 13.5 hour ride. It was nice to have the comfy fully reclining seats and a blanket.
