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Published: April 22nd 2010
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It was early on Wednesday morning, we were all up early ready to jump into our Jeep´s and leave for our four day through Bolivia´s mountains, desert and across the salt flats. In my 4x4 was Amy, Rebecca and James, we also had our driver and cook which as we found out later that day love a bit of 90´s music especially MJ!
On the 1st day of the tour we mainly saw cactus, mines and mountains. Some of the mines were for gold others for zinc, however the standard of living for these minors was terrible, not only that but they believed that the devil brings them the gold and minerals therefore they used to make human sacrifices to him.
We stopped for lunch with our other 4x4 by a bunch of grazing Lama´s, the views were amazing all day and this didn´t change from day 1 to day 4. That night we were in a small hostel/room at 4500m above sea level, everyone was feeling the altitude a bit, mainly with headaches, we still found the energy to play a quick game of footie though.
Day 2 started early (4.00am!), we 1st came to what was a town of
1000 miners and there family's. It is now deserted due to the minerals running out, but there were many stories of human sacrifice and other superstitious behaviour which now leaves this town haunted. From here the scenery started to change we then began to see lagoons with pink flamingo´s. Lunch was in a hut with a natural hot spring pool, so we all decided to jump in and get dizzy on the sulphur fumes, the afternoon was more flamingo´s and lagoons until we hit our hostel.
Day 3 I didn´t feel all that great, that was until i ate our cooks pancakes would started to perk me up. As we started leaving the lagoons behind us the terrain change to desert with lots of random rocks which had once been spat out by the surrounding Volcanoes. It was then onto gazers and a history lesson from our driver on how Bolivia came to give Argentina valuable land in exchange for one white horse and how Bolivia lost a war to Chile in the processes loosing there coast line. That evening we approached the ancient salt flats (60m deep and 10,000sq/km) where our hostel was made entirely of salt, including the
bed base. This evening was our last on tour so everyone was drinking and playing cards which at this altitude was great fun!
We got up early on day 4 to see the sun rise over the salt flats and visit one of the islands there. As we were leaving the flats we saw some crosses and our driver told us how in 2008 9 people died when two 4x4´s crashed head on leaving just one of the drivers as the sole survivor. This was hard to believe with all the space we were in, it turns out the drivers were tired and drunk!
The tour was all but over and it was incredible to think of the vastness and diversity of what we had seen in these 4 days, Bolivia is a beautiful country but it has no investment or infrastructure to take advantage of its natural wealth.
It was then time to head to Potosi, a mining town in central Bolivia. It was James´s birthday so Will (a friend we made on the tour) and I took James on a tour of the mines. It started with a visit to a small minors shop, reassuringly they not
only sold head lamps but also dynamite and 96% alcohol, so we just bought James some dynamite and he did a cap full of the alcohol! 45 miners die a year in the shafts we then got taken into, after a minute we were all wondering why we had paid for this privilege. We could hardly breath due to the altitude we were at and how deep into the mine we had walked, crawled and slid. All in all it was hot, claustrophobic, suffocating and these minors did it all for just 100 to 200 pounds a week.
So after dicing with death in the mines we felt it time to head to the capital "La Paz". Here we would once again stare danger in the face by doing the "Worlds most dangerous road". This road has more crosses on the side than a military cemetery, less than 10 days ago a 22 yr old Israeli girl did a bike tour like me, however she fell off the edge and fell 1000m. However saying that it was the best bike ride ever. We started at 4700m above sea level and finished at just 1500m, as you can imagine there wasn´t
much pedaling required, yet lots of adrenaline.
La Paz is a great city, we sampled the night life with Rebecca, Amy and Will all getting extremely well oiled and waking up the next day to discover a rather impressive bar tab considering a large beer only cost 1.40 pounds.
It´s now time for me to go to bed as i´m heading off with Will and James to the Amazon Jungle tomorrow to do a 3 day tour of the rivers, seeing pink dolphins, Parana´s, snakes and crocodiles. I hope I wont have tempted fate one too many times and write you another blog soon!
Tom
xx
Ps Happy Birthday Nan i couldn't get the internet to connect to call you but i hope you feel better soon, x
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mum
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Another great blog Tom, sounds fantastic! Take care in the Amazon. x