An amazing 3 day tour of south west Bolivia

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After a few days in Tupiza, some horseriding and more pizza eating, we headed off on a 3 day 2 night jeep tour of south west Bolivia. Its a well trodden route, every backpacker does it, and i now know why! It was the best 3 days we have had on our travels yet and we have taken in some of the most unbelievable sites, animals and people!
As we are with Jack and Jess we already had our group of 4 good to go so there was no danger of being stuck in a jeep for 3 days with people you wouldnt normally choose to be with, so that was easy. Its a very cool set up. You basically pay your 1000 Bolivianos, and for that you get a driver, a cook, accomodation and 3 days of sightseeing. The ultimate aim of the trip is to finish on day 3 at the salt flats of Uyuni, the worlds highest navigable salt lake, which is essentially a lake that has dried up and is now covered in salt, it is the most surreal landscape i have ever seen. So over the 3 days we were set to cover 1280km, thats a shit load of driving!
So day one were due to leave at 6am, outside of our hostel. The night before we went and bought 6 loo rolls as is mandatory in Bolivia when you are ´off road´ and had a big feed thinking that we might not get that great food for the next 3 days (we couldnt have been more wrong...the food was amazing!) Now, you wouldnt think it would be hard for 4 educated adults to get up at the right time in the morning would you. No. Well we did. Between us we have 4 watches, and 4 phones so setting an alarm for the right time should have been really quite simple. Not us. We went to bed at 10am, moaning about the early start and so set two alarms, Nat and Jacks. We wake up at 5, shower and are ready and waiting at 6AM sharp for the jeep. No jeep. OK, be patient, it´ll come. No jeep. So i look at my watch and it says 5.05am. We had forgot to put the phone clocks back when we crossed over from Argentina and so there we are , moaning about the early start, when we had woken ourselves up a bloody hour early. Idiots!
Anyway, when the jeep did arrive, at the time it said it would and not the time we we waiting for it, we were welcomed by Waldo our driver (i called him Edwaldo for the whole 3 days until we realised it was just Waldo) and Melia, our cook (who i also called Emily for the three days until we actually had her write her name down..nice one)
Our jeep was OK, basically two in the back were squashed and 2 in the middle had ample room but we switched up over the 3 days. All of our bags were on the roof, along with petrol, and food, lots of food! As soon as we left Tupiza we knew we were going to be in for a good trip, the scenery was absolutely awesome just 5 minutes out of town and the higher and higher we climed, the weirder and weirder we felt with the air thinning! After a few hours driving through amazing canyons and gorges we stopped for brekkie at this little out house in the middle of nowhere. A very grumpy, short, dumpy Bolivian lady ran this little shack and is obviously there on the route to allow tours to stop for some food and hot drink. Well, she doenst like Gringos i can tell you that!! Jess asked where the loos were and she just threw her hand up in the air and pointed to the road and said ´natural´! With a scowl like she was about to lamp Jess one. We were then petting what we thought was her pet baby Llama and she came storming out of her shack and lobbed a rock at it, cracking it straight on the head, shouting obscenities at it, obviously not her pet then! But i think i can probably guess why she is so angry, basically we stopped, all took a wee (some took a number 2, no names mentioned...Jack) in her garden, bought half of her coca leaves and then buggered off again! Seems fair enough to me that she shouldn be slightly moody, i would be!
So the infamous coca leaves...Jack and I were keen to have a chew, both our driver and cook were chewing away to keep themselves ´awake´ so we bought a bag for 10 Bolivianos off scary lady and started ´maserating´. Basically, you take a bunch of them and shove them between your cheek and teeth and kind of well, suck them i guess, using your cheeks. After a while they mash up and my tounge and cheek were completely numb. We both did instantly perk up but it didnt last for long and to be honest, they tasted like s**t! Kind of like tea mixed with muddy grass. I had another chew later in the day but with the whole altitude thing, i started to feel a bit weird so spat them out. Its good to have tried it of course, and i can see why Bolivians do it as it is a kind of nice tingly sensation, but its by no means a ´high´ even though if you were blood tested after you could test positive for cocaine, which is a bit scary.
So on day 1 we drove for 13 hours, all the way to the south west corner of Bolivia and to the Chilean border. On the way we saw heaps and heaps of llamas, donkeys, goats, weird Bambi looking deer, lots of dead llamas and deer (our cook stopped when we saw the first dead one and started ripping the fur off its carcus, obviously planning to make a nice pair of socks or something!!) Our driver was excellent, we stopped at Volcanoes, lakes with the most amazing vivid colours, red, blue, white, in just one day we were satisfied and felt we had our moneys worth! But the first night was possibly the coldest i have ever been in my life, all of our lives. We stopped driving at 7pm right on the Chilean border next to a lake in a kind of barracks that had no heating, no lighting and a few rooms with bunk beds. As soon as we arrived our cook set to making us delicious soup and mash potato and we were all huddeled around a table, drinking coffee, with about 6 layers on, i think Nat actually wore every piece of clothing in her bag, including leggings under jeans!! To give you an idea of how cold it was, when we went to bed the lake was still, calm glistening water, when we woke up it was frozen solid. I estimate it was about minus 10 degrees and we were sleeping in a room with minimal insulation and no heating. We had llama blankets but even three of them couldnt keep me warm,. Bizzarely, Jack slept in his boxers all night and was actually hot, but i guess he is a Tasmanian outdoors man, made me feel like a right city boy wimp! But sod it, i was layered up to the eyeballs, with literally my lips exposed just so i could breathe.
So an eartly start on day 2, we were told to be up for 6am, ready to leave at 7am. After delicisous hot pancakes and coffee we all jumped in the jeep and headed north. All of us could literally not feel our toes, we were huddled in the jeep acheing, shivering, trying to defrost but just getting colder and colder (except Jack) So you can imagine how euphoric we were when Waldo pulled the jeep up next to a natural hot thermal spring!!! I reckon i was clothes off and in there in less than 5 a minute. It was actually painful to get in as the cold of our bodies hit the hot water, but man it was amazing. Put it this way, when i got in that jeep shivering i never thought i would see my manhood again but after about 10 seconds of lovely hot water, everything had resumed position and i felt human again! The gilrs were too wimpy and cold to get their kit off and get in so they just dangled their feet but Jack and I were in there for 30 glorious minutes, along with every other backapcker on the route.
So as soon we had warmed up and hit normal body temp we were back on the road. That day we visisted geysers, more volcanoes and massive lakes with heaps of Flamingos! Flamingos rock, they are such cool birds. They look so good you couldnt almost eat one, their colours remind me of crab sticks, all bright and pale pink! After another long day driving we arrived at the edge of the salt lake where we were to spend the night before getting up at 5am to watch sunrise. We stayed at the quirkiets hotel i have ever seen - completely made of salt! The beds, walls, tables, chairs, the lot, all made of salt! So after dumping our stuff we all had a beer, or 5 and watched the sun start to rise, it was picture perfect, relaxing, we all felt good. Not for long......As we were having a beer, some Bolivian locals were kicking a ball around on the salt fields just in front of where we were sitting and called Jack and i down for a kick around. Sweet we thought, you have to play soccer in South America at some point. Now i am pretty shit at football, never claimed to be, ask anyone who i went to school with, but none the less i like a good kick around. But skill dint even come into the equation here.... Literally as soon as we stated running around, Jack and I were both in absolute agony, our chests just closed up! The air was so so so thin becasue of the altitude it was like every simple exertion or jog required about 10 times the amount of air it normally would at seal level. At first we were laughing but it got worse and worse. The Bolivian dudes we just laughing at us but Jack started seeing stars and my legs were like jelly. I reckon we played for no more than 10 minutes before we had to walk off. We were struggling to breathe that much that we had to go and lie down, pretty much for the rest of the night, and its only today, 3 days later than i can actually cough without my chest killing! The altitude is so extreme, even walking up stairs is an effort! So yes, Jack and i can say we have plaed soccer at 3950 meters altitude above sea level, but next time get me a frickin oxygen mask and a mobile drip so i dont feel like i´m about to drop dead right after!
So day three was the big day, the salt flats! Every backapcker to Bolivia visits them and i have read and seen so mnay picutres but my expectations we still over met when we got there. I cant really explain it, words dont really do it justice, but imagine just blindingly white for as far as the eye can see, nothing else. Its basically, well ´salt flats´, nothing else. It so surreal and we took some of the most amazing pictures. Sunrise was phenomenal, we were the only jeep, at 5am, driving across a salt desert with the sun rising behind us. If Enya had been playing it would have been perfect! (Joke....promise, not in Enya at all, but you get my point...)
We visiied this wicked island in the middle of the flats that is covered in Cacti and boasts the worlds tallets cactus at 12 meters. Lots of pics again, will put them up soon.
So after a good few hours having fun on the salt flat, digging for salt crystals and taking pics it was time for the tour to end. We stopped off at a small village en route to the town of Uyuni, where i bought an incredible llama wool hoody with llamas all over it, lots of llama wool socks (JRC and Sut, you both have pairs!) and llama wool hats. Natalie nearly lost her breath when she saw all the woolen goodies, but given i will be the one carrying all this for the next 6 weeks, she is on a strict limit. Seriously, its like a woman possesed when you put Nat in front of woolen clothes and artisans!!
I think the photos will do the trip more justice than my rambling, there is so much i could write about but you are probably falling asleep right now!
Basically, Bolivia is amazing. Its cheap (AUS 1 for a beer, thats 40p Brits) really good pizzas (random i know!) lots of very friendly people ( we havent been spat on yet but apparently it will happen at some point) and finally, after Brazil, cheap accomodation!
We just arrived in La Paz in north Bolivia, the worlds highest city, after taking an overnight bus and train last night, and yes, i slept! woo hoo! The air is still very thin so we´re taking it easy, its so suprising how badly it affects you, quite scary! We´re here for a few days before the 4 of us are heading off into the Amazon basin in northern Bolivia for some real adventure for a few days, finally! This is what i have been waiting for!! Jack and I plan to do some adventury stuff this week, whilst Nat and Jess are intent on buying Bolivia out of its Silver supplies. Although having walked through a market this afternoon and seeing real, dried, llama fetouses for sale (i´m not kidding, its gross) i think the girls will have to be quite choice about where they shop!!

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