Tupiza

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Tupiza is the country of cowboys and outlaws, freezing, windy, dusty, full of giant cactus plants, canyons and valleys. It is not far from here in the town of San Vincente where Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid finally met their maker (this was one of my favorite films when I was a kid).

The only option we had was to take a night bus from Sucre and this didn"t appeal, we have heard too many horror stories about night busses here, and arriving at 4am anywhere isn"t our kind of fun. So we caught a bus from Sucre to Potosi (3 1/2 hours) and spent the night there to break the journey. Potosi is at 4000 m so it was freezing and hard to breathe, we were lucky that our hostel provided heating which is rare in Boliva. It has some surviving examples of grand buildings from its glory days when it was the richest town in South America, providing all the silver from its cerro rico to the Spanish crown. It has tiny cobbled streets and I"m sure would be quite appealing if it was a little warmer and didn"t have quite so much traffic. As it was, one afternoon was enough for us and we were quite happy to be getting on a bus the next day.

Potosi to Tupiza was 5 1/2 hours by bus arriving at lunch time. We checked into our hostel and booked some horseriding for the next day, and a 4 day tour to leave Tupiza and head to Uyuni (next blog entry).

The horse riding was great, 3 hours plodding through the countryside. We saw a rock formation called the devils gate (a lot of things in Bolivia are attributed to the Devil), Valle de los Machos and the Inca Canyon. The scenery was lovely but the weather conditions are quite harsh, it isn"t as cold being at 2900 m but the wind is fierce, and we both ate a lot of dust.

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Photos

Inca Canyon
Giving the horses a break.

Trying to photo vultures
If you zoom in you might be able to see him just above the hill (its not a condor in case your wondering).