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Days 10 - 23: Iquique (Chi), San Pedro de Attacama (Chi), Uyuni (Bol), Potosi (Bol), Sucre (Bol), Cochabamba (Bol)
Executive Summary •
Status: Alive but on the run
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Current location: Cochabamba, Bolivia
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Notable incidents: Not so thermal thermal baths; budgetarily damaging trip through San Pedro de Attacama; fantastic trip through the Uyuni salt flats despite worst night’s sleep ever; narrow escape from Bolivian law enforcement officials in Uyuni (resulting in current fugitive status); and the bus ride from hell!
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Facial hair status: Back to 3mm and itchy after the previous beard effort was aborted at 5mm when itchiness got too much to bare!
Full Report Jules: So, when I left you last, I was in Iquique in Northern Chile anxiously awaiting the safe delivery of one Aussie/Yank girlfriend from Seattle via Lima, Tacna, the Peruvian/Chilean border and Arica. Well communications had been difficult as Sim couldn’t book all the buses in advance so didn’t really have any idea what time she would be arriving in Iquique except that it would be the afternoon/evening of the 22nd. Well from a few erratic emails at various sketchy locations on the way, we managed to narrow it down to an expected arrival
time of 6.30pm on a Pullman bus from Arica … but there was some confusion and to be honest I really didn’t know what time she would arrive.
So, like a good boyfriend I rocked up at the bus station at 5.45pm - in case she was early - and sat there patiently for four hours until the lady behind the Pullman Bus counter reliably informed me that there were no more Pullman buses coming in that night from Arica.
Hmmmm, now although I’m not generally one for concern or panic, the situation I was in was not one that I really had any idea how to resolve and feeling some responsibility for Sim’s welfare - this whole trip of course was my idea - my concern levels did start to elevate. So my only idea was that I should stay close to my computer and phone in case Sim was able to email or call me from whichever bandito’s stronghold she had been taken to - I hear the Peruvian/Chilean rebels are pretty hi-tech these days so thought they might allow their captives half an hour of internet per day.
Anyway, so I sat in my
room for about an hour planning who from the hostel I was going to take with me on my hunt for said girlfriend. My choices included
• Brian the laid back Californian with a mean double handed ping pong backhand - maybe useful for wielding a machete
• Other Brian the equally laid back San Diegoan (sp?) - who was skinny and might be good at climbing trees
• Natalie the Kiwi who was a Kiwi so probably pretty useful in the outdoors
• Phoebe the 18 year old who HASN’T EVEN GONE TO UNIVERSITY YET!!! - not sure what her role would be other than to make me feel old
So with my team formed and as I was just about to make a start on some search grids, there was a knock at my door and a forlorn but surprisingly chipper blond walked in. To cut a (very) long story short, it’s safe to say it had been an adventurous start to Sim’s backpacking career - I’ll let her fill in the details …
Sim: So I have started my 5 month journey and have successfully navigated the first 5 days in South America. There have been a few snags along the way...a couple that made me wonder why on earth I had embarked on this little voyage, but will power( I wasn´t going to cry) and my sense of adventure all overwhelmed those insecurities.
The trip started last Wednesday morning and the flights to Lima were a breeze. ( I would recommend Continental airlines to anyone, excellent service and very comfortable seats). When I arrived in Lima I knew exactly what I had to do per my good friend Leo´s instruction...find the official taxi rink and do not accept a ride from anyone who offers you one. So with confidence, as if I was walking through JFK and knew exactly what I was doing, I bypass all the gentlemen who say ¨taxi, taxi? and head outside to the official taxi rink. Unfortunately, there is no taxi rink only a sea of men dressed in black suits saying ¨taxi senorita? I look around there are no other options. So I negotiate a price with a man (who had an official looking badge) give him the address of my hotel and we are off! Things seem fine, we are trying to converse with his broken English and my very
limited Spanish, but all is well, until we turn off the main road. Oh god where are we going?! the driver sees the look of distress on my face and reassures me it´s safe. I am not convinced we then head down to a deserted beach road, where he is obviously speeding (conveniently his speedometer doesn´t work) and there isn´t a sole for miles. i know it, my first night in south America and I am going to be mugged and left with nothing on the side of the road and hav no way to communicate with anyone!. Thankfully my nerves and imagination got the best of me and I arrived at my hotel safely.
I was absolutely thrilled to be at the hotel, a small boutique place that I had booked the night before my trip. Let´s just say I was thankful for my silk sleeping bag liner and my blow up pillow!! Other than the bedding the only trouble was that I felt like I was sleeping (at least trying to ) in the middle of a very busy freeway.
THe next day I made it to the bus terminal, bought my ticket and was ready
to head south on my 20 hour bus ride. The bus was very luxurious and I was feeling confident that no other things would go wrong...
So 36 hours, one very cramped collectivo, a humiliating experience at the Chilean boarder, 2 breakdowns and one flat tire, I made it to Iquique!!
Jules was waiting and what a happy sight!! He had a little stubble, but i was so thankful and happy to see him. I quickly told him of all my adventures on the way down and we then went to celebrate our first night together on the trip!
We spent the next three days enjoying the sun, surf and sand before heading up to San Pedro de Attacama.
Jules: So after Sim’s stressful journey, and with the beautiful weather in Iquique, we decided a couple of days R&R on the beach was in order before we headed off to our next destination. Our hostel was literally a stone’s throw from the beach so our days were pretty straightforward - sleeping till late, heading to the beach, getting sunburned because at age 32 I STILL REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT MERELY SHOWING MY PASTY WHITE BODY
A BOTTLE OF SUNSCREEN IS NOT ENOUGH TO PROTECT ME FROM A FULL DAY IN THE SUN, and evenings spent back in the hostel with some beer and some food - of varying quality.
I can’t really say Iquique is quintessentially pretty, not like the Thai Islands or the beaches of Western Australia, but it is set pretty dramatically on a thin bit of land wedged between the Pacific Ocean and a long line of mountains and sand dunes that go up to about 600m high. These provide a pretty amazing and continually changing backdrop to a city that is growing rapidly as evidenced by the amount of construction going on - including right opposite our hostel!
Anyway, I had read in the trust Lonely Planet that Iquique is one of the best places in the world to do paragliding and while I wasn’t entirely sure what paragliding was (I get confused between parascending, hang gliding, parapenting and paragliding) I worked out that it was basically jumping off a hill/mountain with a wing-shaped parachute on, riding the thermals and then gradually descending down to a suitable landing point. I worked this out because while we were on the beach
on Saturday, paragliders would periodically appear from somewhere in the direction of the mountains and land (mostly) gracefully on the beach near us. Anyway, it looked like fun and when we discovered you could do a tandem jump/flight for $60 each we though it would be a great way to spend a couple of hours.
So, on Sunday we got up early (well, 10.30am) and got picked up and taken up one of the nearby mountains. We had a remarkably brief safety briefing from our respective pilots and before we knew it we were suited up, strapped in and riding the winds which come off the sea, hit the mountains and go up creating the consistent up-drafts that make Iquique such a paragliding mecca.
After about 15 minutes of staying around the mountains to gain some height, we set off across the city and heading towards the ocean leaving the mountains behind. We glided across the city gradually losing altitude as we went. We flew rather too close to a couple of apartment buildings (well I thought it was rather too close anyway!) before coming in to land pretty gracefully I thought, on the beach.
It was
an exhilarating experience and one I am very keen to repeat if we can find somewhere else on this trip to do it - it takes just 10-15 days to get a pilot’s license.
So that was Sunday (Day 11) and on Monday we decided we were ready to move on via an overnight bus, back south to a place called San Pedro de Atacama which is the starting point for excursions into the Atacama desert - the highest and driest desert in the world - which spans the Chile/Bolivia border.
The bus ride was fine. We left Iquique at 11.30pm and arrived in Calama at about 6am (with a 2.30am stop at a customs check point where we all had to get off the bus and have our baggage searched which was a bit of a pain), comfortably in time for our 7.15am connecting bus to San Pedro.
We arrived at San Pedro at about 9am and were picked up at the bus station by Roberto, our hostel owner, and taken to our hostel, which was a bit out of town (10 minute walk) but about half the price of the hostels in and around the
main square.
As I have probably mentioned everyone had told me before I started this trip that Chile was going to be one of the most expensive places we were planning to visit and they weren’t wrong. I mean, to put it in context, it’s not Manhattan expensive but it’s also a million miles from my experiences in South East Asia. A bottle of beer is about $2, the ingredients for a fairly basic pasta, sausage and red sauce dinner from the supermarket cost about $8 (I wasn’t even allowed to buy any parmesan cos that was ‘unnecessary’) and accommodation runs about $12-$15 per person per night. Now I know this may not sound like a lot, but it certainly adds up when you’re on a backpacking budget and in San Pedro, a tourist haven, this is magnified!
As I mentioned above, San Pedro is the gateway to the Atacama Desert. San Pedro itself stands at 2,440m above sea level while the Atacama Desert lies mainly between 3,500m and 4,500m with its highest peaks at 6,800m. It is the driest place in the world with average annual rainfall of 1mm (yep, just 1mm!).
On our first full
day in San Pedro, we decided to go and check out the El Tatio Geysers. For some reason (something to do with atmospheric pressure changes), the geysers are most active at sunrise (or so we were told) and as sun rise was at about 6.30am, this meant a 4am departure from San Pedro . The altitude also mean that it was f-f-f-f-freezing when we arrived (-14C!!). The geysers were good. I’d seen geysers before in New Zealand and these weren’t much different, but for Sim this was her first time and she really enjoyed it. Having said that when the sun did come up, it a) made for some great photos and b) meant the temperature started to rise!
One of the things that really sold the trip (and the 4am start) to me had been the promise of thermal baths after the geyser visit so it was with great anticipation that we arrived at the steaming thermal baths. We stripped off in the still sub-zero temperatures and waded into the baths in the hope of being engulfed by a warm blanket of hot spring water. Well, to advertise the thermal baths as ‘thermal’, while not entirely inaccurate (the
water was at least warmer than the ambient air temperature), they weren’t as ‘thermal’ as we had hoped! We had noticed when we had approached them that all the people were huddled in one corner, which we did think was a little strange, but we soon discovered that this was because that corner was the source of the hot water. We waded over and gradually frightened everyone away but then came across our next problem. The hot water source was erratic to say the least and random spurts of really rather hot water would suddenly shoot out of holes in the rocks causing quite a few yelps and screams. As you can see from the photo, such a spurt happened to me just as the photo was taken - hence the slightly anguished look on my face!
Anyway, once the erratic boiling water jets became too much it was time to exit, which was even worse, cos the air temperature was still around freezing and we were wet - not a nice mixture!
Back in San Pedro, we had a snooze in the hostel before embarking on a sunset tour of the Lunar Valley. Now, having never been
to the moon, I cannot attest for any likeness the ‘Lunar Valley’ bears to the real moon but there were some pretty cool landscapes to be seen (and hence photos to be taken!). A lot of it actually reminded me of some of the landscapes in Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon down in Southern Utah. All in all a great tour and special thanks to Alexis from Philly whose translation of the Spanish tour guides commentary meant we got a hell of a lot more out of the tour than we otherwise would have!
The evening was spent having a series of way-too-intense-conversations-for-backpacking with a couple of Swedish girls we’d met on the Lunar Valley tour. Subjects ranged from famous Swedes, to the merits of the Swedish monarchy, to Obama, to the Right To Choose, to the role of religion in today’s society, to separation of church and state - as I said, way too intense for my brain and I found myself mostly watching Game 5 of the Lakers vs. Nuggets NBA Conference Final that was on the TV in the corner as Sim manfully carried the baton.
As I said above, we had expected San
Pedro to be expensive and it certainly didn’t disappoint. We also expected it to be an ‘oasis in the desert’ and I guess in relative terms it was. I mean if you’re surrounded by the driest desert in the world, it doesn’t really take much to be considered an ‘oasis’ but the vision of lagoons surrounded by palm trees certainly wasn’t quite what we encountered. It was a nice enough place though so we decided to stay an extra day to give ourselves a proper chance to organize the next part of our trip and 3-day tour to Uyuni in Bolivia.
After switching hostels, to somewhere cheaper and more central we hired bikes and cycled 8km to Devil’s Canyon, due east of San Pedro.
Sim: I would just like to add that when Jules says cheaper this is code for unclean. After inspection of the room, I insisted on sleeping in my sleeping bag liner. Jules: It was a flat ride on a reasonable dirt road but throughout the ride Sim looked a bit miserable. When we got the canyon, I casually enquired as to what was wrong and Sim confessed to a feeling of disappointment
at how tired she was after such a short and flat ride. I pointed out that we were at 2,500m where there is significantly less oxygen and confessed that I was also feeling knackered!
Sim: I wouldn’t say I was miserable. I was finding the bike ride a little more difficult than anticipated and of course being the competitive type there was my pride to consider…I was NOT going to whinge about how tired I was before Jules did. Jules: Anyway, having got there, the canyon was a lot of fun. We rode our bikes up through the canyon for a couple of kilometers cycling through a few cool tunnels and overhangs before dumping our bikes and climbing up the sides of the canyon for some excellent views. We also spent about an hour (I’m not kidding) trying to get first individual photos of us in mid air and then using the self timer function to get a photo of both of us. We eventually succeeded but let’s just say that our combined sense of timing does not bode well for any Salsa or Samba lessons we plan on taking later in the trip!
The ride
back down through the canyon was really fun, well it was for me! Sim became a little too intimate with the side of the canyon at one particular corner which left her with a bruised head and knee and a particularly impressive graze on her elbow but she manned up and battled through all the way back to San Pedro.
Sim: With the wind in my hair and the ease at which I was able to ride, I picked up the pace a little. Stupidly, I forgot that bikes lose traction in the deep loose sand. At this point I rounded a corner and made full body contact with the ground! I lay there, bike on top of me, contents of my bag strewn about, a very sore knee and a nasty headache looming. After waiting for about 5 minutes for my knight in shining armor to come rescue me (he never showed), I restrained myself from crying, I picked the bike up, stumbled around a little and then got back on the bike to finish the ride. Once I started riding, I realized that there was some blood dripping from my elbow. While the wound hurt, it looked even worse. Perfect a war wound, I have certainly transformed from the NY city girl to an authentic no frills backpacker!
Jules: That evening was another cold one so we were happy to find another bar with an open fire and warm up!
The next day, our fourth in San Pedro, was another early start to start our 3-day trip into Bolivia. We packed up and headed down to the tour office to meet our fellow travelers - and what a diverse bunch they were. 16 in total, from America, Ibiza (via Chester), Switzerland, France, Italy (via France and London), Belgium and Basque country (not to be confused with plane old France!).
Anyway, we boarded the bus and headed off. The first thing we noticed was that a tone of clouds had appeared overnight and it was also much colder than previous days - very disappointing. However, we successfully negotiated leaving Chile and after about an hour’s drive came upon the Bolivian border which, as you can see from the photo was somewhat rudimentary. We had no Bolivianos (no one had told us we would need them - although in hindsight it now seems pretty obvious
that we would) so we had to pay the immigration fee of 21 Bolivianos (about $3) in Chilean Pesos - and no doubt got a terrible rate but hey, I guess we were fair game!
When I say ‘we’ had to pay the immigration fee, that’s not strictly true. While my passport and money were welcomed with open arms, the greeting for Sim and her American passport was not quite so warm. We had expected this and Sim, organized as ever, had all the documentation she needed to get into Bolivia and got her authorization form which she was told she would need to present in Uyuni to get her passport stamp - for the small price of $135 (plus the $3 I had to pay).
Sim: While all of this is true, there was more than a little panic on my part. Even though the Bolivian Officials assured me that I would receive my passport back, I was totally unsettled and for the next 3 days annoyed the tour guide holding it. Jules: Anyway after that we met our Colque Tours 4x4 driver, Edgar, and split up into groups of five. Astutely, we had heard
that the drivers were predominantly Spanish speakers and hence had been surveying our fellow travelers throughout the journey for some normal looking people whose Spanish extended to more than just ‘hola’ and ‘dos cervezas por favor’. However in the absence of anyone normal looking we found Belinda and Toby (Ibiza via Chester)and when the announcement was made to get into smaller groups we clung to them like limpets while maintaining an air of casual bravado - “Oh,you want us to join your group? Sure we can probably manage that - let me check with Sim ….. Sim! - get the fuck over here right now - I’ve found us some Spanish speaking friends!”. Our fivesome was made up by Brice, a somewhat crazy Frenchman from Basque country who turned out to be an excellent addition to the group as his hunger for taking photos outshone even me so it was rarely me that everyone was waiting for. To be fair his hours of clicking certainly bore fruit with some excellent photos and I am also very excited to see the end result of his South America video - watch this space!
Sim: Jules makes us sound a little lame at this point, so I have to add that prior to getting into groups we had been having a fun lunch with Belinda and Toby.
Jules: The rest of Day 1 was spent driving through the starkly arid landscapes of the Altiplano and the Atacama Desert. The cloud cover remained and the wind also picked up making it a pretty challenging environment. The periodic photo stops were briefer than I imagine they ordinarily would have been as standing in sub-zero temperatures in the face of what felt like a sand blaster was not good for any of us or our cameras. However the cloud did part occasionally, most notably at Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon) which looked reassuringly green while Laguna Colorado (Red Lagoon) was a disappointing grey/brown colour and devoid of the flamingoes we had expected as they had flown North for the winter. Well, that’s not 100%!t(MISSING)rue, there were a few flamingoes left but they were the ones that had been too old or weak to migrate and so were on their last legs (literally) and made for a pretty depressing sight.
Another highlight of the Day 1 was a stop at
the highest geyser field in the world - Geisers de Sol de Manana at 4,950m - which were ok, and some more thermal baths. After our previous geyser/thermal spring combo experience at El Tatio our expectations were low, but these ones were much better. The water was very warm and the sun was shining and we spent a good half an hour soaking in them.
That night was spent in Villa Alotta which didn’t really have “Alotta” anything except freezing cold temperatures and a hostel with a corrugated iron roof that felt like it was held on by a couple of drawing pins and could fly off at any point as the wind was still blowing very hard. Interestingly, during the day we had had a vote to decide if we wanted to spend the night at the ‘basic’ accommodation or the ‘luxury’ accommodation - the downside being that if we chose the luxury accommodation we would miss the ‘stone tree’. We decided to satisfy ourselves with tour brochure photos of the stone tree and elected for the ‘luxury’ accommodation.
As you can tell from the description of the hostel above it was far from luxury and I
would liken it to sleeping in a giant oil barrel, in a freezer with someone banging on the outside with a sledge hammer all night. On top of this, Villa Alotta is at approximately 4,200m and while this was much lower than our high point of the day - the geysers at 4,950m, this was our first night spent at such altitude. The combined effect of these factors and particularly the altitude, was that I got no sleep at all while Sim got about three.
Day 2 blended very much into day one given our lack of sleep, but overnight, the clouds had cleared so while the wind was still howling and the sand blaster was still in full effect, at least it looked nicer out of the window of the 4x4! The landscape was still arid but we saw a lot more interesting rock formations and also got our first sighting of a llama - several llamas actually (thanks to Brice for the photo!). I had been excited to see my first llama and I wasn’t disappointed. They’re such funny looking animals and it really is pretty amazing that such a big animal can survive in such seemingly
arid and sparse conditions.
For lunch we actually ate some llama and while I wouldn’t expect to see it on the menu at Peter Luger’s or Capital Grille any time soon, it was nice enough.
That night we stayed at Colque Tours own hotel near the salt flats which was much nicer than night 1’s accommodation. We had been promised hot water and when we arrived we were told we had an hour and a half of hot water. Before the hostess had got to the ‘r’ in ‘water’, Sim was already in the bathroom. However her exuberance proved to be her downfall as when she came out of the shower, she was an interesting shade of blue and cursing at the lack of hot water. I chose to wait it out and by the time I got in the shower about an hour later, the water was certainly ‘warm’, if not ‘hot’!
The altitude continued to effect me more than I had expected - the Colque hostel was at about 3,500m - and by 9pm I was exhausted again and went to bed - but this time I managed to actually sleep.
Day 3 was
the day I had been waiting for. After a glimpse of the famous Salar De Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats) on Day 2, Day 3 was spent entirely on the flats and they really are amazing. Kinda like the Taj Mahal (‘just’ a big white temple) and the Grand Canyon (‘just’ a big hole in the ground), the 12,000km2 salt flats are ‘just’ a big, flat, white and salty landscape but really have to be seen to be believed. We had a lot of fun taking perspective photos and exploring the weird Isla de Pescado - an island in the middle of the salt flat covered in cactuses, some of which are 1,000 years old! - but just driving across the salt flats was the thing I’ll remember most about the trip so far.
Just after lunch, we stopped off at the salt hotel - a hotel which, as the name suggests, is made entirely of salt - before ending the day in Uyuni.
On arrival in Uyuni, we were greeted by frantic faces from our fellow travelers who had arrived a bit earlier in the day. We heard about four different versions of the same story but essentially
it was Sunday and on the following day, the main road out of Uyuni was being closed for three days for repair and so if we didn’t get out of Uyuni that evening, we were stuck there for three days - and for those of you that have been to Uyuni, you will understand that Uyuni is not a good place to get stuck for three days! There were various stories going around which Sim and I overheard including ‘All the buses are full’, ‘Mark got the last two seats on the 7pm’ and ‘The bus drivers are on strike’ but the seven of us that were in this predicament (the 5 of us from our 4x4) plus Spaghetti (Italian, real name Mattia) and Sandy (21 year old American) decided that to hear the real story we should go to the bus station
Fortunately, there were amongst us, people with a much better grasp of the Spanish language than Sim and I and so a group of nominated negotiators were dispatched to the bus station (or rather, bus ‘street’) to get us out of town that evening. I was not a nominated negotiator and instead watched the bags.
After about an hour, our band of merry men (and women) returned triumphantly clutching the last seven tickets on the 7.30pm bus out of town. The precise nature of what Spaghetti had to do to secure said tickets is still a matter of uncertainty and conjecture but the end result was that we had a way out.
With a huge sigh of relief we went in search of food while Sim and Sandy (the Americans) went to the Uyuni immigration office to exchange their authorization forms for stamps in their passports - and to hand over their US$135 blood money. Our food search was successful (delicious guacamole and pizza!) while Sim’s immigration experience was less successful.
Now, throughout our trip so far, we have periodically used US dollars where they have been required or have given us a better price. This has been fine but our experiences with the Chileans had revealed that they are very particular about the notes they will accept - specifically they have to be blemish free - no marks and absolutely no tears, no matter how small. We had found this hugely irritating and assumed that given the state of the average Boliviano
bank note, most of which look like they were printed when the Spaniards were still in charge, that this nonsense would cease in Bolivia.
We were wrong. After protracted initial negotiations, Sim returned to the Colque Tours office, where we were all waiting before going to get the bus, a little stressed out and asking for more US dollars. We managed to scrape together $135 that we thought would pass the Bolivian immigration agent’s stringent checks and Sim disappeared back to the immigration office.
Now, as hopefully all of you will know, having known me for some time, I am pretty mild mannered and rarely get angry about anything but for some reason this latest instance of anal retentiveness about our perfectly good US dollars really got to me so after a couple of minutes I stormed off down the street to give the Bolivian authorities a piece of my mind.
Now for those of you that have backpacked or even just travelled extensively, golden rule number 7 states “Never mess with immigration officials - they have extremely dull jobs, have huge power trips and will do anything they can to unnecessarily prolong the visa process (e.g.
US immigration officials at JFK)”. Now maybe it was the altitude or maybe it was the lack of sleep over the previous couple of nights, but I temporarily forgot this golden rule.
When I got to the office I walked in and saw the Bolivian immigration agent inspecting our US dollars and in a (slightly) raised voice inquired “Why is this requirement for pristine US dollar bills not stated anywhere in your immigration documentation?!”. By the way, for those of you that think I said this in Spanish, fear not, I just used the English-in-a-slower-and-louder-voice technique so popular with Brits abroad. It didn’t exactly have the desired effect and by the time I’d got to the word ‘documentation’, senor Boliviano Douchebago was on the phone to the police.
Hmmmm, not what I had expected, so with Sim giving me very evil looks and demanding I leave the office immediately, I retreated back to the Colque Tours office.
After about 20 more minutes, Sim returned and she wasn’t happy. After a barrage of verbal abuse which included “jerk”, ‘hot head” and “idiot”, she explained that senor Douchebago had initially refused to give her passport back until she brought
me back to the office but eventually did stamp her passport and said he would see us at the bus stop that night and he would have the police with him. Sim was understandably upset but as a group, we decided the threat was hollow, after all, I really hadn’t done anything wrong!
So anyway, as 7pm approached, we headed to the bus station, en masse, to catch our bus.
As I approached the bus station, I did notice a couple of guys hanging round in some sort of uniform but really thought nothing of it. We found our bus and were just loading our bags when we were suddenly surrounded by 3 or 4 policemen who pointed at us while shouting “American? American?” at us and demanding to see our passports. I managed to sneak round the back of the bus and crossed the street to hide behind a rubbish bin.
Now a couple of things were working in our favour. First, it was dark, and the bus street was not well lit and secondly it was cold and so Sim and I both had coats and wooly hats on. After about five minutes, Toby appeared
from behind the bus and scanned the street opposite. In an almost comedic stage whisper, I alerted him and he crossed the road to meet me. He explained that the police had gone for the moment and that I should board the bus. So under cover of darkness and with a couple of ninja rolls, I approached the front of the bus and snuck on, taking my place on the back row, which was great news from a police avoidance perspective even if it was going to be bad news for the actual journey … if I made it!
So with my hat on and coat done up to the top, I hid in the corner of the bus for what seemed like an age before the bus eventually pulled away and I officially became a fugitive!
The guys filled me in on what had happened - Senor Douchebago obviously assumed I was American and so he and the police were demanding to see the passports of everyone who looked Western looking for an American male. Sim said that Senor Douchebago even looked her in the face and didn’t recognize her - maybe it was the Australian accent
she put on? Anyway, the team pulled together beautifully for which will be forever grateful!
Sim: There are always two sides to a story. While I was having difficulty with the immigration officer (he would accept my first round of US dollars), I was about 30 seconds away from receiving my Bolivian visa when Jules stormed in. He ranted for a few seconds, I think he said about 10 words, but that was all it took! The official picked up his mobile phone and was calling the police. I knew exactly where this was headed, Jules in jail and my passport was going to be held until he was released. Furious that he had been such a “male” I shoed he and Mattia out of the office and said I would handle it. The official then wanted me to get my friends and refused to return my passport until I did so. After playing dumb American tourist with my phrase book in hand, I managed to get my passport back and hurriedly left the office. I was ready to shoot Jules!!
After meting up with Jules and only staying a few words, “Stupid. Hothead, and they want to arrest you!” I stormed back to the Colque office. I informed Jules and the rest of group that I had a horrible feeling that the police would be waiting for us as we tried to board the bus., and could he please put on his jacket and hat, so that he would be less recognizable.
As those of you who know me, I am a major worrier, it will be no surprise that I fretted about this for the next hour and a half before we boarded the bus. And sure enough at 6:45 pm in front of the bus there they were waiting for us! My stomach dropped and I was certain Jules was going to jail. As I sat on the bus for the next 45 minutes, I was sure one of the officers was going to pop his head up at the front of the bus and discover us. However, after I was wrong…we were finally free.
Jules: Now in hindsight the whole episode was really rather amusing but at the time, it really wasn’t, mainly because, if they had caught me I am not concerned that I would have ended up rotting in
a Bolivian jail, as I really had done nothing wrong, but they certainly would have taken me down to the police station and kept me there a few hours which would certainly have meant that I would have missed the bus and hence been stuck in Uyuni for three more days!
Anyway, the jubilation of the escape from the Bolivian authorities was short lived as the exact nature of our surroundings became apparent. We were all used to the extremely spacious, clean, climate controlled buses in Chile but this Bolivian bus was clearly from a different fleet! We had seats right at the back which are notoriously the most bumpy. It was freezing, the windows kept sliding open, the condensation was literally pouting off the windows, the bus was so full there were people sitting in the aisles, there were very few stops (and even when the bus did stop the people in the aisle noted above precluded the possibility of any toilet breaks) - and the journey was 7 hours … well, it was supposed to be 7 hours before we got what we think were two punctures which delayed us an additional hour. Oh and one more
slight wrinkle, I needed the toilet from the moment I sat down!
So at 3am and with my powers of bladder containment almost exhausted, we arrived in Potosi. I got off the bus and ran to the nearest wall where I must have been close to breaking the world record for longest piss ever - I have no idea what the record is, but I must have been close!
Anyway, by the time I returned to the group, Toby and Spaghetti had secured two taxis to take us to the Koala Den hostel.
Now, I don’t want to get overly emotional about this next part of the trip but to say the Koala Den was like a Nirvana would not be an overstatement. It was 3am, we were freezing cold, miserable, still reeling from our Bolivian police escape, very tired, had heard nothing particularly good about any of the hostels in Potosi and didn’t even know if anyone at Koala Den would be awake at 3am. So, when we got there and discovered that a) someone was awake, b) they had enough rooms for all of us and c) the rooms had hot showers and were HEATED(!!)
I think there were definitely a few tears of joy shed!
Potosi is a small city (population 146,000) with a few claims to fame. Firstly, it is the highest city in the world at 4,060m. Secondly, it is home to the Cerro Rico mountain which between the late 1500s and the early 1800s produced roughly 60% of all the world’s silver - more recently with the silver deposits mostly depleted, zinc is the main mineral being mined. Thirdly, because of this, at its peak in the late 1700s it had a population of roughly 160,000 which, at the time, made it the most populated city in the world - bigger than London (approx 100,000) and Paris (approx 60,000). Finally because of this rich history and the abundance of Colonial buildings and architecture it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991. All of these facts make it a common stop off point on the Gringo Trail through Bolivia.
So after a good, warm sleep we woke up and after a delicious breakfast on the roof of the Theater that overlooked the main square, we headed back to the hostel for the tour of the Cerro Rico mines,
one of the common tourist attractions. We were picked up at the hostel and were taken down to get kitted up with rubber boots, waterproof trousers and jacket, hard hats and head lamps before stopping off at the miner’s market to pick up gifts for any miners we might see in the mines. As a group we bought eight sticks of dynamite, five bags of coca leaves (which are chewed rather like baseball players chew tobacco and help the miners with concentration and the altitude) and some soft drinks. We also tasted some of the miner’s favourite Friday tipple - 96% proof alcohol - it was gross!
Now, from the reviews I’d heard about the tour, I expected it to be hot, stinky and cramped … and I wasn’t disappointed. I also feared it would be a bit of a human zoo as the mine is still a working mine and hence we would probably see real miners doing real mining during our tour.
Official estimates are that over 8 million people have died in the mines from suffocation, tunnel collapse and poisoning since the first tunnels were dug and even now, two people a week die in
the mines or from mine related illness. The conditions underground were pretty horrific - stifling heat, very cramped tunnels, very sketchy looking tunnel supports and acrid fumes - oh and there was still the problem of altitude - the mine ranges from 4,000m to 4,600m above sea level!
We were underground for about 90 minutes and I was very glad to get out at the end. To the credit of our group, seven out of the eight of us who started the tour got all the way to the end, including Sim who set a formidable pace up front and for the first time I think in my life I wished I was 5’2” rather than 6’2” as some of the tunnels really were very small. During the tour we met four or five miners and I was pleased that they seemed grateful for our gifts and not overly annoyed by our presence. I would go as far as to say that a couple of them seemed pleased to see us - I think it can be a pretty solitary life in the mines - but that may be overstating the mark!
At the end of the tour
we blew up a couple of spare sticks of dynamite that we hadn’t given out in gifts and I think we were all surprised by the size of the explosions and found it hard to imagine what they must sound like in the mines themselves.
At the end of it all I was asked by a number of people back at the hostel, if I’d recommend doing the tour and it’s hard to say. I’m glad I did it but I really didn’t enjoy it. The conditions are horrible, the smell is disgusting, it clearly isn’t a safe a environment and the desperation of the people working there is depressing (when asked why they worked in the mines, 92% of current miners said they did it because there was nothing else they could do - only 1% said they did it because they liked it). It took at least 3 days to get rid of the smell of the mines from my skin (despite several showers!) and despite all this, I am glad I did it. It was an experience and I guess experiences don’t need to always be good to make them worthwhile. It certainly made auditing seem
like a pretty easy way to earn money!
That evening, we had dinner to celebrate Mark’s 40th birthday (yep - someone older than me!!) which was great except for some very disappointing pasta made by Spaghetti (definitely not like his mama taught him!) and then most of the gang went out to sing karaoke but the altitude was still getting the better of me and I was in bed by 9.30pm.
The next day, Sim and I went for a walk around the city. It was much prettier than I expected. There is definitely evidence that it used to be a hugely wealthy place with some very grand architecture and 37 churches, and although it is somewhat faded, it was a nice place to walk around. However, we underestimated the altitude again and after a walking to the Thunderbirds-esque viewing tower just south of the city, which turned out to be closed, we headed back to town and realised that the walk to the viewing tower had been down hill and going back up hill was much less fun!
In the evening, we picked up our laundry and it was great to have a full wardrobe of
clean and warm clothes at our disposal (Sim had spent the day and the previous evening in a very flattering outfit of cardigan, dress, leggings and flip flops despite the chilly evening temperatures). We had another group meal, which again was great except this time the rice was the let down. Sim took the blame, but it was a classic example of cooking by committee with everyone having their own view on how rice should be cooked, resulting in a white pot of soggy mush! Fortunately the roasted vegetables and rotisserie chicken (bought ready cooked I must confess) saved the day. After dinner most of the group headed out for Karaoke - again! However, the altitude was still having a most annoying impact on me and I was once again in bed by 10pm. This is particularly disappointing as I missed what was apparently an excellent rendition of Let It Be by Sim and Belinda and an all time great rendition of Material Girl by Spaghetti complete with crowd interaction! (Coming your way via YouTube in the very near future I suspect!)
After two days in Potosi, it was time to bid the Koala Den an emotional goodbye and
with the scars from our last bus journey still fresh we opted for a couple of taxis for the 2 hour trip North to Sucre, which worked at only a bit more than the bus would have been.
Sucre is 1,250m lower than Potosi at 2,750m and boy did we notice it. As we descended, we saw trees for the first time for ages and the weather got noticeably warmer. We checked into a hostel in the center of town and set out to explore the city by foot. Sucre used to be the capital of Bolivia but is now only the judicial capital (with La Paz as the Governmental capital) and is another old city with lots of Colonial buildings. It’s another UNESCO World Heritage Site and another common stop on the Gringo Trail. It was also the site of Sim’s first purchase of ethnic paraphernalia, a shoulder bag, First of many? We’ll see!
In the evening we had dinner and for the first time for a long time I managed to stay up later than 10pm and made it all the way through to 1am - no reprisals of the Material Girl performance unfortunately.
So
that brings me to yesterday when we had a chilled day in Sucre enjoying the warmer weather, sorting through the hundreds of photos we took during our tour through the salt flats and in Potosi and writing this blog. In the evening we said an emotional goodbye to the people we have spent the last week or so with and got a bus 10 hours north to Cochabamba which is where we are right now. Next on the itinerary is 14 days ‘volunteering’ at the Warra Yassi wildlife sanctuary - wish us luck!
Hope everyone is well!
J&S This week’s likes • Open fires in San Pedro bars and restaurants
• Being chronically undercharged for dinner on our first night in San Pedro - we paid 6,000 pesos (about $10) for dinner which should have cost 25,000 pesos!
• The Koala Den - did we mention the rooms were heated!!?
• Auditing - it’s better than mining!
• The Uyuni salt flats
• Digital photography and 8GB memory cards - so much potential!
• Brice’s salt flats head bouncing video - coming soon!
• Michel Torino Bolivian red wine - 10 Bolivianos - that’s one pound!
•
Group dinners, even if the pasta and rice were soggy
• Photo shoots in the Devil’s Canyon
• Fresh juice from the street vendors
• $3 for an authentic Bolivian bag - I see import opportunities
• Sami´s fried chicken and chips in Cochabamba
This week’s dislikes • Bolivian immigration and Senor Douchebago - the less said the better
• Bus trip from Uyuni to Potosi
• Digital photography and 8GB memory cards - so many crap photos to wade through!
•
Squatting on toilets - I will have amazing quads by the end of the trip!
• Freezing showers
• Very dry skin
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Michelle
non-member comment
You are on an amazing adventure! Thank you for the updates!