Final Country, Bolivia

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I landed in bolivia with a bit over a month until my flight out of la paz home, but having been told that a month was a perfect amount of time in bolivia. However because ive gotten used to traveling between places really quickly ive managed to do the entire of bolivia (apart from an amazon tour which im doing tomorrow for four days) in 17days. Bolivia has been awesome so far apart from a bit of altitude sickness that i blame on doing death road. This is largely because on the day of death road you drive from la paz (3600m) to the starting point at 4600m, then over 3 hours of biking you descend to 1200m and then drive back to la paz at 3600m. All this in one day took its toll on me and i spent the next few days in bed with a splitting headache and no energy whatsoever. So when i was feeling a bit better i headed to Sucre, which at 2700m is considerably lower than la paz so would hopefully give my body a break. Luckily it did. Sucre despite being a really pretty town and the actual capital of bolivia, isnt the most exciting of places, unless your into dinosaurs then theres a national park with lots of footprints apparently. Me not being especially into dinosaurs and being presented with an empty hostel, decided to stay only one night, and after a very chilled out day so wandering round the city headed to Potosi the next morning. At this point i was praying that my altitude sickness wouldnt return as Potosi is the highest city in the world at 4070m. Somehow it did not, but at that altitude doing anything is nearly impossible, after several steps around the main plaza i needed to sit down for a good ten minutes to get some resemblence of my breath back. How these people live at this height i have no idea! The main appeal if potosi is to visit the silver cooperative mines that are now owned and run by the miners themselves. Me being slightly clausrophobic i was not entirely sure why i was even remotely considering this, as lonely planets desciption of the mines tour is horrific. However as usual lonely planet is completely wrong. The tour itself was still quite daunting as we drove up to the start of one of the mines at 4200m. The tour started by walking 500m into the mountain. The conditions for the workers is horrendous as the heat is disorientating and the sulfur and aspestos making breathing very difficult and laboured. This coupled with having to run a few times to get out of the way of trolleys made the whole experience totally unforgettable. The miners themelves were all happy to see us, as we had been taken to the miners market before entering the mines to buy gifts. The choices were; dynamite, fruit juice, coca leaves, 96% alcohol and other general items. Our guide convinced us not to buy dynamite as all the miners really want is juice and coca leaves to keep them going and dynamite is a present for one miner that will help but juice is preferred. So after visiting the Tio (devil statue that is worshipped by the miners as they feel that because they are working underground they are in the devils territory and so should pray to him rather than god, strange concept as there is a cross outside the mines and all the miners are devot christians.) which provided the first bit of crawling and squeezing through a narrow gap we headed down to the second level and then the third and the heat instantly doubled. At this level we meet more miners working as at the first level it is mainly just taking minerals out to the surface. This was also where we meet the youngest miner we saw that day at 17. Other people id spoken to had come across 12 year old boys but we didnt see any in the mine we were visiting. After a bit longer at this level we descended to the lowest level of this mine, level four. The ladder down looked horrible as it was in a tiny hole at the side of the tracks used for the trolleys. At this level there was just one man working as the space was tiny, he had been working 17years and had started work at 11 years old. This set a few of the girls in our group off who starting crying, our guide couldnt understand why, and explained that we were helping him with our visit (as some of the money from the company goes to the miners). After having a quick go at his work of taping holes for dynamite we headed out of the mine and back into the fresh air. The experience was amazing but i wouldnt say it was fun. The mines were loud with the cables for the air powered jack hammers and cramped and very hot. It literally was like working in hell.
That night I headed down to Tupiza to pick up a salt flats tour of the salar and surrounding landscape. What i hadnt realised was that my bus was a local bus and not a coach. This meant 7 hours stuffed between local women with the kitchen sink traveling with them and screaming kids everywhere. Not a pleasant combination! But i got there in the end and checked into the hostel for some kip at about 2am. The next morning i was thrilled to discover the town had no atm and the bank was shut. This meant i had 400 bolivianoes (40quid) for two nights accomodation and to book a salt flats tour. Luckily 400 bolivianoes could provide for accomodation for at least 10 days in this hostel so that wasnt an issue but the salt flats tour was 1000bolivianoes. Thank god they took visa. I managed to meet a good bunch of english girls and guys in the hostel and we booked a 4 day salt flats tour for the next day. An early start and an early breakfast was followed by lots of waiting around for everyone to get ready. During this time the lovely hostel owner and the ladies in the kitchen thought i hadnt had breakfast, despìte me not only having had breakfast but also been offered it twice more and they couldnt understand why i turned down breakfast. This resulted, much to the amusement of all the others in the dining area, with the english speaking owner coming and telling me that i had to eat something before the tour. They didnt accept that i had already eaten breakfast an hour ago and was so not hungry, and they discussed. It took me and the other guys a good few minutes to convince them that i had eaten! Very sweet of them to be worrying about me but come on!! So that over and done with we set off in our jeeps on the south west circuit finishing in uyuni four days later. The first day started with wild wild west scenery and going past the village where butch cassidy and the sundance kid were killed. A llama field later and several other stunnning viewpoints and we reached our first night stop. Luckily we had been warned about the cold and had hired sleeping bags as well as buying gloves etc. The first night was freezing, but the tiny village and guesthouse were nice enough and we had been clever enough to buy a bottle of rum to warm ourselves up. We set off at sunrise the next day to start the tour of several beautiful lagoons and landscapes. The sunrise was stunning as at that height there were no clouds and a gorgeous landscape for it to shine over. The lagoons were of varying colours from bright green on the third day to deep blue and stunning red on the third day. The second night was the coldest by far as temperatures reached -20degrees!!!! we woke with ice on the inside of the window. I had also managed to get a bit of food poisoning and was therefore dreading the next 6 hours in a jeep. But i dosed myself up and was good to go. The first stop was Lagoon Colorado which is right next to the chillian border and a haven for flamingoes. Unfortunately it was still freezing so despite the gorgeous setting we were itching to get back to the heated jeep. We carried on to several more lagoons including the already mentioned bright green one, and then came to the highest point of the trip, the geysers at 5000m. These were really cool but stank of sulfur and other lovely scent, we could have spent hours watching the water bubbling away but had a schedule to keep so carried on to the salt hotel on the edge of the salar for our final night.. The sunset was stunning but the sunrise topped it. the salt hotel was quite surreal as everything is made from salt. Also thank god, it was warmer here so a pleasant night. The last saving grace of the salt hotel was that it had hot showers and i hadnt taken off my thermal fleece or big hoodie for the past three days so wasnt smelling particularly lovely, but in my defence it was bloody freezing. The next morning feeling clean and a tad warmer we headed into the salar. the scenery was completely otherworldly, as the start of the salar is covered in a thin layer of water and therefore perfectly reflecting the surrounding mountains. Sunrise was utterly stunning. After about an hour of driving we arrived at the island in the middle of the salar covered in giant cacti. This was our breakfast stop and after some exploring we got back in the jeep to proceed to the middle of the salar for the classic perpestive photos. These were considerably harder than we had imagined but we still got some good ones. My personal favourite being our entire group coming out of my panama hat. I also had to match some of the guys id met in arequipa by getting a naked photo,much to the disgust of the 5 girls in our group but who cares, had to be done. This was our last stop on the tour and we carried on to Uyuni where we officially ended. Our driver and cook were awesome, and Gonzalo (driver) progressively got faster each day, until on the last two days if any jeep overtook him he would grin and floor the accelerator to retake the lead.
From Uyuni i got the first bus back to la paz, this was easily the worst bus journey of my life, as 12hours in a bus with no heating and packed to the roof with locals and all their items they have to travel with, coupled with an unpaved very bumpy road for the first 4hours made it hellish! So im now back in La Paz with 16days left until my flight back to england. Again ive meet a really bunch of people and we´re heading up to Rurrembarque tomorrow to start a 3 day amazon tour of the pampas. When i get back in about 5 days ill head up to lake titicaca and isla del sol to chill out before starting my shopping in the witches market in la paz and flying home. Today was La Gran Poder in la paz, a huge festival of dancing, drums, street food and beer that took over the entire main road through la paz and several others. Definately a cool experience and la paz is an awesome city.

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