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Published: September 27th 2008
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Crossing the border.....on foot
After leaving Humahuaca we got a bus to La Quiaca and had our first overland border crossing! We didn´t really know what to expect but it was easy. We were stamped out of Argentina and into Bolivia in minutes! It took a bit of time to find the bus station on the other side (in Villazon) which was a bit stressful! We got a ticket out of there straight away, realising in the process that we had gained an hour in time difference. We had another anxious moment when boarding the bus as a lady collecting tickets refused to let us on. We thought we had the wrong bus but turned out we needed to pay a terminal "tax". A kind stranger who had been on the bus from Humahuaca, spoke Spanish and explained this to us. Then the problem was that we had to pay in Bolivianos but we only had dollars which she wouldn´t accept but the guy paid for us - it was like a seventh of a dollar each!
It was a typical Bolivian bus - a total banger and filled to the brim with people (aisles spaces are cheaper than seats,
Our jeep!
Salt plains tour so in the poorest country on the continent, they're quite popular). We soon learned that there were different levels of 'unpaved' roads in Bolivia. Our bodies had been shaken to the core by the time we arrived in Tupiza, but to make up for it we saw some incredible scenery out the window, with the bus teetering around some crazy bends that had huge drops off the side!
Tupiza
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid met their maker somewhere around here, so there was no better way for us to explore the area than on horseback. We only went on a 3 hour ride but it took us past some incredible red rock formations and canyons. It was thoroughly enjoyable - despite the fact that our guide was probably about 15 years old and spoke no English, and we had no helmets (safety is not really a high priority in Bolivia...more on that later). There was a bit of a tense moment as we returned to the town along the railway tracks when the guide suddenly started shouting, before we heard, then saw the train approaching. Luckily the horses knew what to do and galloped off the tracks,
as I held very tight - the horse had already tried to throw me off a few times!
Salar de Uyuni
The world's largest salt plains (10,000 square kilomeres/4,000 square miles)is one of the biggest tourist attractions in this part of Bolivia. We took a 4 day tour to see it, with the journey being as great an experience, as seeing the salt plains themselves.
The highlights were:
- incredible rocks formations, such as the Valley of the Moon
- trying to get the jeep across some ice rivers
- seeing lots of llama, alpaca, vicuna, chinchilla, flamingos
- seeing condors!
- being at 5,000m above sea level
- bathing in the Hot Springs
- staying at a salt hotel
- sharing the tour with a nice French couple, who were kind enough to translate the guide and cooks' Spanish for us,
- being the only people staying in a remote village
- the cook's food (delicious soups and stews)
The only really lowlight was getting SIX flat tyres within 3 days! And the cold at night!
The photos really tell the story......
An aside:
On the last day, whilst crossing the salt plains we saw a shrine/altar which the guide told us commemorated
the site of a head-on crash in which two tour groups had died. A bit further on we came across on overturned jeep, with chickens and all sorts strewn across the salt. Apparently a local had crashed it the day before.
When we got back from our tour we googled these accidents and found out that the first accident had occurred only about 6 weeks earlier and 13 people had died. All the petrol for the tours is carried in plastic containers on the roof of the jeeps so when these two collided (possibly due to drunk drivers, or drivers refusing to move out of the path of the other) the two jeeps exploded killing all inside.
The other accident we came across, was not a local, as our guide suggested, but another tour group. The driver and 3 tourists were killed. It had happened 2 days before we came across it. Some of the drivers are known to speed and as there are no seat belts in the backs of the jeeps (there are in the front where the guide/driver and cook ride but they never wear them), there's little wonder that there are fatalities when a
crash happens. It's quite amazing that these accidents happened where they did, as the ground is totally flat and there is absolutely nothing around for miles, so driver error is the most likely cause.
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