La Paz to Uyuni (Southern Bolivia) - Saltar de Uyuni & the Lake district

The trip down through Bolivia kicked off with a night bus from La Paz that bumped & shook for 12 dark freezing hours to Uyuni, the tourist jump off point to the salt deserts. I was travelling with this guy I’d met on the Gap tour from Lima to La Paz. I was travelling with Rob from the Gap tour. We arrived at 7am & had to kill a few hours until the tour shop opened so dumped our bags & set off for gap some food in the only place open, a seedy cafe, so we, along with a few other back packers squeezed in to warm up.

Post food, 6 of squeezed into a Toyota land cruiser; a Japanese couple, an Israeli student, a Flemish cyclist & the 2 of us. We were driven by an old, sun beaten man named Hernester & accompanied by a young local lady who cooked for us. I learnt some Spanish from the Flemish guy, Rubin who had started his trip in Quito & had taken an organised trip to catch up on his schedule. Cycling the length of South America – a little hard core – a little nuts me thinks!! The driver & his cook kept themselves to themselves but were friendly enough.

Our first port of call was a train graveyard located 3kms south to Uyuni. The coal powered locs were replaced with Diesel ones years before, but the dry atmosphere has preserved them over time, the other side of Uyuni we stopped briefly at a Salt factory, to be bled of 2 boliviano to be shown how they shovel up, dry, refine & then bag salt up (it’s not very complicated & involves all of the said steps above in order, none the less, standing on the salt stacks does create a good picture the same!!!

We then headed out into the Saltar de Uyuni, a vast, open & flat salt plain that was originally at sea level but with some serious tectonic action the sea bed now finds itself some +3000 metres high & battered by astrong sun UV that has dried out a7m thick crust of Salt that´s strong enough to be driven on. The palin is punctuated by islands of coral, such as Isla de Pescardo, now covered in Cacti as pictured.

No camping is allowed on the Saltar & historic salt hotels are being relocated to the edges of teh plains to preserve the natural beauty; so after a good days worth of driving we headed to one of the Salt hotels located on the plain edge & played cards until both dark, cold & eventual power cut conspired to drive us to bed. To call the basic dormatory shape building a hotel is pushing the boundries of teh word´s definition as the walls are simply blocks of cut salt & there´s little inside that gives much comfort. BUT if your definition can be distilled down to 4 walls & a roof then you could just about call the place a hostel.

6am then next morning we sitting outside the hotel watching the dawn rise over the Saltar, a -5C experience that was not just a a great sight to see but also an acclimatisation exercise for both the temperatures & equally early starts to come.

The landscape constantly changed from Sandstones, to shingle screed, lava flows (to surf on) & steamimg lagoons of red, green & white algae. Therer are few visible animals are by day other than llama & the ubiquitos South American street dogs but birds were more evident & despite the mass migration a few Flamingos had decided to brave the winter temperatures & pose kindly for photos.

We continued deeper into the national park towards Chile & Northern Argentina & the landscape become more & more baron. Rather than find an living trees we visited “the rock tree” & decided the Tree of Rock was a far more appropriate name so struck so rock band looks..... you can tell we were starting to be dillusional.

The last morning was a 5am start. We cut across bumpy tracks in the dark reaching the steaming Volcanic geysers at dawn. It was simply freezing. The hot steam did little to warm our rapidly cooling digits so we stayed long enough for a few photos before descending to a lower hot spring with swimming baths :) !!!

I met an Irish guy, David on another 4x4 & together we crossed the Bolivian-Chilean border whilst everyone else turned around & headed back to Uyuni. It has to be the most desolate border crossing I've been through, one shack & a Welcome to Chile sign covered in snow. We´d pre-arranged a short transfer later to San Pedro del Atacama, in Chile & were glad to hop on a warm bus to escape being in the middle of nowhere. From San Pedro I jumped on a short bus ride to Calama airport where I journeyed further South to Santiago to pick up my penultimate organized tour to Benos Aires.

The world’s most dangerous road

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4740297003165871882

If the truth be told I don’t think there’s a huge amount to do in La Paz, but that is just my opinion as I was, for the first time since travelling chronically ill, so just wanted to leave the city behind & move on. I did however sign up & ride down the so called world’s most dangerous road. A term of reference that is now somewhat historical given that the Bolivian government opened a new road up from the jungle last year. The significance of this new road is that it allows all the haulage & heavy traffic to bypass the sheer drop & allow you to ride down hill with confidence that there is LITTLE on coming traffic to avoid!! None the less, the plunging 400m, unprotected road side drops are not to be sniffed at & the instructors/guides at Gravity tours took great pride in informing us of all the cyclist deaths they have either had, heard of or actually witnessed; I guess to both keep the mystic of the road but also to curb gun-oh & testosterone filled bikers’ speed a little.



The road drops form 5000m, down 70kms of sealed, then unsealed road, down to the Bolivian jungle at a steamier 1200m; where a fresh towel, hot water & animal rescue sanctuary welcome you to spend some time & cash before being bused back to La Paz for 9pm.
It was a great day of riding & despite the cloudy mid section, where the plummeting drops exist, and the run down was great fun & a good motivational recovery from a previous, sleepless night, spent mostly in the hotel bathroom!!

Puno to La Paz

Returning from home stay, we hired a private bus to see some of the sight s en route to La Paz. The public transport links to & across the Peruvian – Bolivian border take all day, so shelled out some cash & broke up the day long travel with a few stops at local tourist attractions.

Before we crossed the border we stopped at the small village of Chucuito to see the Templo de la Fertilidad with its interesting collection of phalluses. I thought of how the place would have made Seth & Norty’s trip so posed for a suitable photo!!!

Peru & Bolivia, politically don’t get on, the border crossing was therefore formal & without smiles. We passed through without hitch though & passed on into Bolivia to our first to stop: Tiwaniku, a pre Incan civilisation that lived on the southern shores of Lake Titicaca. Little is know about them & disappeared, without explanation before the Inca appeared so most knowledge is hypothesis & guess work.

Like the Inca, the people that built Tiwaniku were worshipers of the sun. They erected several huge megaliths as shown below. Each was carved with hieroglyphics representing pairs, such as land & water or male & female. The final picture is of the sun stone, whose carvings depict symbols of each month, 365 days & 24 hours. Given that the carvings date from 600BC, it’s a little daunting to think of us as an advanced today, when we only (re-)invented the modern calendar a few hundred years ago!

We carried on into Bolivia & reached La Paz just before sunset. We stopped briefly to pose for a photo, & as the temperature was falling so quickly neither Sean, Tim nor myself were all to keen to hang around outside & instead opted to join everyone for a final night few beers at the traditional La Paz night out “The La Paz Hard Rock Café”… of course !!!! (NOT)

Puno & Lake Titicaca

The Jungle gang returned to Cusco relieved to be back in cooler climes. Everyone that had stayed in Cusco was glad of their decision to relax, as those returning, were tired & exhausted from avoiding both the Amazon’s heat & insects for 2 long humid nights.

Together again the 16 of us caught a national bus down to Puno, our last Peruvian stop before crossing into Bolivia. We were lucky to arrive at the back end of a regional transport strike, as many of the roads had been blocked in protest until the morning we departed. We passed through the high southern Peru pass to our destination without hassle & arrived in the dirty, non descript town of Puno.

From Puno we spent the next 2 days island hopping around Lake Titicaca, (South America’s highest & the world’s highest navigable lake). Out 1^st port of call from Puno was to the Uros people, on the Isla Floatantes; floating islands of reeds, that have supported the escaping communities of local people from the aggressive Collas & Inca peoples for centuries. Now, sadly commercial, the communities continue to live on the floating reed beds mainly for tourism & the income that it brings them. The experience was probably the most fabricated part of our trip so far but none the less it was still fascinating to see how the islands were constructed, & I found myself marvelling at their ancestors’ ingenuity to avoid persecution.

We left our morning hosts & headed by boat further out into Lake Titicaca. The sun beat down & we all sheltered inside from the heat & strong sun (a stark contrast to the cold night time temperatures). A few of the returning jungle team were again struggling with altitude sickness, having dropped back to near sea level then back up to 3500m again. So we chewed on Coca leaves & drank copeous amounts of Coca tea too.

Our next port of call was Isla Taquille, where we stayed the night in friendly local home stays, in groups of 2 or 3. Paired up with Rob & Guto the 3 of us enjoyed the kind hospitality & cooking of Gerimono & his wife. At 4pm we were invite to play a game of footy, (which at altitude had us all gasping for air & slowing our pace down considerably). Then at 8pm, after a dinner of local broth & cereals we all joined together again & were shown how to fiesta local style, all dressed in traditional outfits. Underneath we’d all dressed for near Arctic outside temperatures, but were soon stripping off under layers to stop ourselves from passing out with heat exhaustion as we danced around the community hall.

Cusco - Biking the surroundng area

A group of adventure junkies set off at 7am one morning for the Amazon jungle. I’d have gone too if the agenda wasn’t crammed with activities instead I opted to stay in Cusco to recharge the batteries, catch up with correspondence & mountain bike the surrounding area.

Cusco was quite in terms of the number of travellers passing through. In summer up to 20 overland trucks can pass thought the town as they make their way around the continent to hit Rio for carnival time. The lack of travellers allowed the town to celebrate it’s own festivals in relative peace as it prepared itself for the Inca festival Inti Raymi ( festival of the Sun) or the winter solstices at the Inca ruins Saqsaywaman (pronounces Sexy Woman)high above the city in the surrounding hills. There were colourful street parties & dancing everyday & night that we were there.

5 of us hired bikes from a local tour agent & set out early on the Saturday morning to ride the local area. Disappointingly our guide was 2 parts of useless. Not only was he not properly dressed for cycling but he also had the flu. We set off none the less & enjoyed the countryside without him, stopping to soak up the surroundings whilst he caught up. We first dropped down town to the local bus station & hoiked the biked up on to the roof. A 30 minute journey up in to the Sacred Valley had us half way back to Ollantaytambo (our Inca trail start point). We spent the day cycling through back country lanes & villages enjoying the scenery, being out of town & waving hello as we passed among the local communities.

We cycled to the village of Tarabamba to visit the Inca Moray, an experimental laboratory, where due the bowl shaped topography the Inca were able to re-enact staggered microclimates in one area, thus enabling them to see if they could grow new varieties of crop in different parts of their empire. There was no tourist information at the sight & our guide’s English wasn’t good enough to explain the archaeological sight either; I’d happened to have seen half a documentary on TV & only remembered what we’d cycled out to see, once we arrived!! We’d otherwise we’d have just been looking at circular terracing say – “oh isn’t that nice.”

We cycled all day, dropping down hill for an hour’s exciting rollercoaster ride into Urubamba. The extra few bucks we’d paid for full suspension mountain bikes was well worth the treat & all of our arses thanked us for the lack of punishment as we bounced over rocks & boulders en route to the return bus station. We arrived just in time to hop on the local bus back, on to which climbed an exotic array of locals carrying all sorts of wired & wonderful smelling packages. It felt good to be among the locals, rather than simply passing through the communities on tour buses.