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Published: November 6th 2005
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Chaos leaving La Paz
Fuel protesters blockade the road out of La Paz So we left the big smoke of La Paz - after fighting our way through a local fuel protest at the edge of the city and went to Potosi. Potosi is famous for being the highest city in the world at 4070 m above sea level so needless to say we got the altitude sickness yet again. It´s hard to imagine it when you are there, but it was also once the richest city in the world - they mine silver there and once made the coins for the whole of Spain and South America.
We passed on the opportunity to see the local mine where children still work, and you have to take gifts of dynamite which they then blow up for you!
Instead we took a 2 hour taxi ride to Sucre which is the people´s capital of Bolivia (it was the capital before the government moved to La Paz). This was almost like going to a different country - it is like a beautiful mediterranean style city with white buildings, sunshine and lovely architecture. After a leisurely lunch at the Joyride cafe - great food, highly recommended, there was just time for a mooch around the
market and a church before heading back to Potosi.
One of my favourite things about Bolivia is that they play 80´s music everywhere (well at the tourist places) and we had a top night singing along to 80´s songs in a dodgy karaoke bar with a lit up dance floor that looked like the set of saturday night fever! We nearly got thrown out as someone brought along a bottle of rum from the previous bar, but once we bought a few drinks and took over the dancefloor all was forgiven. The locals even started giving out their business cards, asking us to come back in March for the Fiesta!
From Potosi we headed to Uyuni - a small town in the middle of nowhere where we visited a train graveyard(!?) one of the main tourist attractions apparently, and stayed the night before going to the Salt Lake and Altiplano. This was the last bit of civilisation for 3 days.
Ella´s bit....
So Uyuni was the night that Aussie Alex and I were craving spaghetti Bolognese....we were in luck. The hotel was run by a lovely couple - he was American and she was Bolivian. He knew
about food and lots of it and she offered her genuine hospitality and lots of passionate stories about her country.
After the yummy food and wine we came clean about our thoughts on each other at the Kumuka Induction. This is where Helen and Shona said that they didn´t want to speak to us as we looked like right "girlie girls!!" ha ha (this is before they even knew Alex had her hair straighteners!)....They said that Alex kept asking about facilities on the Inca trail which she did, as I even said to her Lisa´s answer will not change no matter how many times you ask!...The funny thing is that when Alex and I sat down at the meeting we realised straight away that we looked a bit out of place. We had our best going out clothes on as we were hitting Lima that night to celebrate my birthday!...Just goes to show first impressions aren´t always right.....though we do like to lunch in nice places! ha ha
Helen and I went out to sample the local night life in Uyuni. For a town that has tumbleweed blowing through the dirt streets it sure has a lot going
on at night. We found a bar that had proper Vodka - smirnoff not the 10p a shot stuff that rots your stomach....We met a couple of blokes that had some really funny stories to tell. Andrew was from Leeds and had run out of cash. He was trying desperately hard to get out of the town and back to Buenos Aires to meet his new girlfriend of 2 weeks. Unless he got out quick he was in very real danger of spending his 30th birthday there...not a very appealing prospect. The other guy was from Israel and he was laughing at the fact that all Israelis travel together?....
Andrew had spent the last 2 months working in an animal sanctuary as a volunteer and had been befriended by a monkey. He told us proudly how the animal used to follow him everywhere - lunch, to the showers for walks etc....Then out of the blue he attacked him. Bit his leg and arm and Andrew needed stitches, it must have been really scary. Andrew then went on to say how the animal was obviously really intimidated by him and was only following him as he believed Andrew to be
the dominant one of the pack...all very funny....we had a good laugh and wished Andrew loads on luck on getting out of Uyuni before he turned 30.
Back at the Hotel the owner was telling us how the Gorvernment sold off their primary industries a few years ago which makes it near on impossible to raise money for Bolivia. After the dispute with Chile where they stole the Bolivian coast line it made it even harder for Bolivia to import and export goods cheaply. To make matters worse the Mining & transport industries were later sold to Chile the telecommunications to Telefonica etc, etc leaving them with little hope of building a stable or better economy. Unsurprisingly the people of Bolivia are very disollusioned with their current president (a lawyer) and are holding an election in December to elect a new president. Just five months after he was put in office!
The salt lake is a massive expanse of dried salt stretching as far as the eye can see, and it is easy to lose all sense of direction and perspective. It did however give us a couple of hours entertainment creating some freaky photos -
see below.
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