Advertisement
Published: December 1st 2007
Edit Blog Post
We are now in La Paz, came this morning on a overnight bus, on most horrible road, it was a gravel road, full of these tiny holes, bus was shaking like ratatatata and it felt like any minute all the screws will be loose and the bus will lie on the road in million pieces. Good thing was, we were exhausted and slept like babies in the end.
Since we left Chile, we took a very comfortable night bus to San Pedro de Atacama. It is a tiny oasis village in the middle of desert, built only for the comfort of senores touristas. Everything costs 3 times as much as in standard Chile, which is about 10 times as much as in Bolivia. So as soon as possible, we headed out to Bolivia side. We took a jeep tour for 3 days crossing over the Andes and finishing finally in Uyuni in Bolivia. The views were absolutely amazing, went to Laguna Blanca (white lake), Lago Verde (lake, brilliant colour of green because of copper), stayed overnight by Lago Colorado (red lake). Especially the red lake had hundreads of flamingoes and lamas, really beautiful. We saw also some geysiers with steaming
200 degree celsius mud boiling in them. In the evening Michal had really bad altitude sickness again, we had come in two days from sea-level to over 4200meters, and passed even over 5000meters on our way. He felt really bad and wanted to be sick, but eventually he managed to keep tablets inside him and started feeling better. That's when my stomach started complaining, and in the end I was running in and out of toilet puking up and having diaorrehea. thank goodness i had some ciproxin with me that helped me get better pretty quick.
Next morning, we were just a big shaky and ready for the road again. In our car were two nice Brazilian guys, that were taking probably 20 gigabytes of photos and videos. There was another car too with an Italian couple and german couple, was nice to practise our german again. Day two was pretty uneventuful, we saw some rock that looks like tree, some beautiful altiplano and desert scenery. In the evening we stopped at our driver's, Doro's, village. He drives the tour jeep everyday 7 days a week, and only sees his family when he stops with a car in his
village on his way every 3-4 days for few minutes. We let him enjoy his time, and played with little boys with no shoes on the central place of the village. They were fun boys, older is called Lindgren and the younger Chiquitita, but we are not sure, because, they call all the small kids Chiquitita, but the boys insisted that was his name. They all have messy hair, burning red cheeks and big snot (räkä) on the cheek 😊 I will try to print the photos of them and send it over to them somehow, they really liked playing with the camera. THis village is really poor, you could see it from the kids too, they were asking food from us. And at the same time there is a train passing each day, that carries a load of silver from one of the biggest silver deposit mines just nearby. Makes you think, that if that train each day dropped a little piece of silver behind in the village...
That night we slept in our "luxury" Cactus Hotel by the Salar Uyuni, which is the biggest salt lake in the world. It takes hours to drive through it. In
our hotel we had hot water for 45 minutes per room, thats about 11minutes each to shower, and we had electricity for 3 hours. Enough to charge batteries at least. We had nice bolivian beer with our dinner, and afterwards were pretty exhausted. We decided with the others to get up at 4am to see the sunrise at the Salar. At that moment unfortunately a group of absolutely crazy israelis turned up. Fuelled up with some bottles of whisky they were shouting on top of each other in their dinner table so that no one else could have a conversation. Then they went back to their room, which was next to ours, and started smoking pot and screaming on top of each other. then they came to the hallway and kept on screaming there, at that point i found my earplugs. Their poor driver was an old respectable man like the others too, and apparently he was really not happy that the Israelis were for example wanting to take naked photos on the Salar. Loco loco..
Next morning there was no light, or sun at 4.30am, and we packed in candle light. We were waking up too late, but
at least we got some nice photos when we got to the lake. It looks like finland actually on some big lake or sea covered with snow. We then went to Isla Pescados, that is made of coral rock, and has huge cactuses now, one of them for example over 1200 years old. The salt lake was a sea before, thats why the island is made of coral. Afterwards we were laughing at some other tourists taking funny photos in the salar, because of the salt as far as you can see, you loose perspective, and can take quite cool photos. But I liked better taking photos of the people doing them, guys in ballerina positions, others lieing flat on the salt with their bums up.
Then we drove around to hotel made of salt, where you can take only photos inside if you buy chocolate. (we didnt buy any) and to village where you can buy souveniers made of salt.
Finally already at 12.30 we were back in Uyuni town to spend some time before taking the bus at 8pm. I thought i lost my phone, so Paula cancelled my contract, and I got the whole tour agency
looking for it from all around Andes, but in the end it was in my bag 😊
Now we are in La Paz, its freezing cold, the city is really beautiful, set in a crater in a valley, it has hills all around, and you can never know what is behind the next corner. This morning I went to the mercado to buy some steak sandwiches for 0.20€ each, delicious. Its nice to be in a big city with lot of things. And here its really like south america, chaotic but great.
Tomorrow we go to ride bike on the world's most dangerous road.
quick note about the political situation here. There was some people shot this week in Sucre, its pretty far from here. The rich spanish descendant people live there, and they are not happy that Morales, the president, is putting taxes on gas for example and taking money from the budget to pay for pension for old people. Their children, the white students are marching on the streets demonstrating that capital should move to east from here in La Paz to where the white population live, and they now want independence too, since all gas, and
other riches are in their area, they would like to keep it to themselves. Rest of the population is really poor. Now Morales government started paying pension for old people of 30 dollars per month, and kids can go to school for free, the people tell that for first time they have hope, and they can feel happy.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0385s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb