Oruro, Bolivia

---

I arrived in Oruro this morning via an overnight train from Uyuni. Our tour of the southwest of Bolivia finished monday afternoon and the french couple and I decided to catch a train to Oruro that same night rather than stick around until Wednesday. Having seen the Salar, there wasn't too much else very attractive about Uyuni. The two other americans with whom we shared the tour were headed to Potosí.

The tour was really incredible and covered quite a bit wild lanscapes of southwestern Bolivia. It was hard being stuck in jeep all day, but we had plenty of opportunities to get out and explore some of the more remarkable features. The tour was led by Emilio and Daisy, a husband and wife team of driver and cook. The food was fantastic and both were able to to help us understand a little bit of what was going on with the wild geology of the area.

Out first night we spent in a small estancia that housed one family of goat herders. We were the only group there for the night so it was nice and quiet. There was alittle bit of running water and a small generator provided a few hours of electricty in the evening. The second night he stayed in a real pit, the only negative point of the whole tour. Unlike the previous night this place already had about 5 other groups there when we arrived and the bathrooms were disgusting and garbage was everywhere. It was very poorly cared for. The third night we stayed just outside of the salt flat in a small hospedaje made mostly out of salt, which was pretty neat. The walls were made of salt bricks, the tables and chairs were made of salt, the bed frames were made of salt, and the floors were covered with a layer of crumbly salt. Again, there were a number of groups with us but this place was a lot more friendly than the previous night.

The variety of lanscapes we covered is hard to recall. We travelled over mountains, though valleys and canyons, across deserts, around volcanos, past lakes colored red or green or yellow by whatever minerals were in the water. We saw flimingos, llamas, vicuñas (a small relative of the llama), viscachas (a small desert rodent about the size of a hare), and ostrich (which I did not know were native to bolivia). It was hot and dusty for the most part, but we did get a couple of quick, violent thunderstorms. It is, after all, the rainy season here. The Salar de Uyuni was very surreal. About 40000 years ago, it was a salt lake that dried up and left about 1200 square km of salt about 7-8 meters thick. We drove out onto Salar just before sunrise and had breakfast at the Isla de Pescadores, a small hill of fossilized coral now covered in cactus, the oldest of which has been there for about 900 years and is about 12 meters tall. We did the typical tourist thing of taking pictures that play with the complete lack of perspective, and visited the original Salt Hotel (made completely out of salt but now a museum). All there is to see on the Salar is mile upon mile of blinding, white salt and on the horizon some distant mountains.

Tomorrow I want to get to La Paz. I don't really want to stick around too long in Oruro. Its an ugly little city that survives mostly on mining and the people don't seem very welcoming. There are few restaurants and bars that cater to tourists and specialize mostly in pizza, but being on the tourist track for few days now I have had my fill of pizza. I am staying in the Resdencia San Miguel which is a little dark but looks clean. Right now I see no reason to linger too long here but this town is famous in Bolivia for its celebration of carneval, which starts the 22 or 23 of February and today there is a parade; the main plaza is called "10 of february", which happens to correspnd to the date of this posting. I haven´t figured out the signigficance of the date but the whle town seems to be involved. It would be nice to be here for carneval but I will be en route to Peru.

From La Paz I want to quickly make my way to Rurrenabaque for a few days. The bus is about 18 hours to Rurrenabaque so it may be better to fly. Its not too expensive; $50-60 US, and it would be good to save some time. I only have about two weeks until I have to be in Cuzco. After Rurrenabaque I hope to return to La Paz for a few days and then stop by Lake Titicaca on the way to Peru.

---