You can't eat llamas surely?
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2005
1
7
12
Trip End
May 21, 2005
Uyuni,
Bolivia
Sunday, March 6, 2005
Its strange eating Llama because for the last few days we've seen thousands of them and they don't look like the sort of animals you'd eat. They are quite "pretty" with big eyes and colourful earrings that their farmers attach so they can recognise their herd (see pics). Once on the plate though they look and taste like old shoes
01. Atacama Desert
. This is our second day in Bolivia and we arrived overland from Chile, some 400 km in a jeep. Our driver had a casette with 4 Bolivian hits on it that he played on rotation for over 20 hours. It sounds like a guy talking loudly in Spanish with a 1982 casio keyboard backing beat. The tune (in so far you could call it a tune) was a 3 note ditty involving random keystrokes from either end of the keyboard. Combined with occasional shouts of "amigo" and "cantamos" you have the basis of what passes for Bolivian popular music. This wouldn't have been so bad but I couldn't tell the difference between the 4 songs and only knew when another one started when the shouting stopped for 10 seconds or so.
As you can imagine, opportunities to get out of the jeep were warmly welcomed and as has been consistent with our trip so far, the landscape and its sheer variety has been mindboggling. The pictures tell the story but we have seen desert where no rain has ever been recorded, lakes where mineral deposits turn the water into impossible white, green and red colours, flocks of bright pink Flamingos, rocks that have been blasted into crazy shapes by wind and rain and the world's biggest salt plane where land and sky merge across a 12000kmsq "mirror".
Amongst all of this we have also managed to:
- survive our first earthquake which measured a shattering 3 on the Richter scale (a bit like a lorry going past you) but an unusual sensation nonetheless
- teach Seema how to get moving on a bike without a small wall to help her onto the saddle
- "see" our first mirage in the desert(they really do look like water)
- walk on the moon (see the pictures!)
- endure an over night bus ride with only a spongey cheese roll and a dubbed Russell Crowe movie for comfort
- visit the world's highest geyser field at the crack of dawn (god it was cold)
- go from sea level to 4500m in a day (not recommended)
Tomorrow we are off to Potosi which in the world's highest city at 4100m and once a major silver mining town.
My stomach is starting to feel a bit odd now and keeps making squelching noises so I'd better head off.
Enjoy the pictures (there's a caption competition for the last one) and thanks for guestbook entries - we like to know you still care.
Ciao
