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Published: November 22nd 2005
El Salar de Uyuni
The worlds biggest salt flatArriving in the small village of Copacabana, nestled on the shores of Lake Titicaca, in landlocked and underdeveloped Bolivia, Kim and I both experienced a strong sense of culture shock. Too many tourists. Too many backpackers. Too many travellers, uniformly dressed, sporting local alpaca headgear and huge rucksacks, wandering around looking unsure and lost. Che Guevara, whom quite a few of these people seemed to be trying to resemble, would be spinning in his grave.
Tourists. Tourists everwhere. Tourists, just like us. In China, tourists and travellers are overwhelmed by the land and the people. Even when the numbers of tourists come close to the numbers of Chinese, the Chinese locals still win - unless of course they are up against Chinese tourists! In quiet, reserved Bolivia it is the tourists who stand out, who take-over, who overwhelm. I've never been in a country with such a low rate of education (under 40%) and such a high rate of infant mortality (similar to Iraq during the US/UK sanctions) where there is so little unsolicited hassle on the streets, so few hawkers - unless of course it is "New Hippy", hawking beads to the locals in the Uyuni marketplace, something that
might have impressed Che Guevara on the principle that they are suffering as the proletariat do, but I, perhaps unjustly, found it hard to stomach.
If you live in ¨"the West" you probably live in a hypocrisy. Actually, that probably applies wherever you live. But whether you are a fan of Graves and Jacobi or Asimov and Smith, the closest you are likely to come to experiencing this first-hand is standing face to face with a native Indian and complaining that the Pizza is taking too long to come. But then again, with no Spanish, and only a little "Span-fran-glais", we skated over the surface of Bolivian culture as our Landcruiser skated over the mineral-hard crust of the Altiplano.
But perhaps this is because the reservation of Bolivian Indians is notable. What Mr Guevara writes of Peru in 1952 could, at least to a casual observer, be applied to parts of Bolivia in 2005:
"These people who watch us walk through the streets of the town are a defeated race. Their stares are tame, almost fearful, and completely indifferent to the outside world. Some give the impression that they go on living only because it´s a habit
they cannot shake."
The quiet American, a long time inhabitant of neighbouring Peru, and justifiably nervous of our overloaded boat, told us he felt locals treat tourists much as a prostitute treats a client. Without knowing much about the thoughts of either group of service providers this seemed like a good analogy. I guess in New Zealand most people have some degree of choice as to whether to serve the needs of the tourist. In impoverished Bolivia this seems rarely the case.
V.S. Naipaul recounts the murder of a middle-class English woman with pseudo-revolutionary pretensions by a pseudo-cult in Trinidad. He describes the "revolutionary with the plane ticket home" and conjurs Conrad to extend the description. Sadly the book has gone the way of a book swap, but Conrad was essentially saying that it is a rare man that realises the framework of their personality, existence and being is created and supported by the security of the state they are in, and a rarer man that willingly steps outside this. Judging by the numbers of foreigners in Copacabana this describes most travellers most accurately, ourselves included. Still, on our first and only night there we watched Man Utd
vs Chelsea almost live whilst drinking Erdinger Weissbeer and eating excellent Pizza. Maybe tourists aren´t so bad after all.
Our overnight LAN Chile flight across the Pacific from Auckland was uneventful, if uncomfortable. Knowing we were flying into high-altitude La Paz (3700m) we headed to a Santiago hotel early to get some rest. Next morning we were back at the airport to be told there was no flight that day. I was just winding up for the tirade of abuse I usually reserve for the recalcitrant British Airways officials when a nice LAN Chile man came over and said "no problem". A short while later we were installed in the swanky Intercontinental Hotel in the very posh part of Santiago, tucking into a buffet breakfast that would make any American road warrior proud. This suburb was also the area that contains all the embassies, so we strolled over to the British Embassy to find out if we could renew Kim´s passport after it had been attacked by the rubber-stamp-wielding maniacs of nine different Africa countries. Sure enough what currently takes more than ten weeks in Australia can be completed in Chile in less than two, and they even let
Kim keep her existing Passport so we could travel to Bolivia. This removed a weight from our minds that had been nagging since midway through Africa.
The flight from Santiago to La Paz, via Iquique and Arica at the northern tip of Chile, was visually stunning. As the plane rose up over the coast the relatively low-lying peaks surrounding Santiago poked through the early morning mist, silhouetted in the bright sun. Behind Santiago itself lay the snow-covered Andes, and the towering summit of Aconagua (22,835ft), the highest mountain outside Asia. As we headed North the ground became more spartan, and forest gave way to sand. Landing in the remote Iquique we could have been on the edge of the Sahara, or back on the Skeleton coast. Huge cliffs, strewn with sand-dunes, towered above the deep blue pacific ocean.
As we headed inland from Arica to La Paz we flow over desert canyonland reminscent of Utah and Arizona, coloured rich by the extensive mineral deposits that have led to so much conflict between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. To our right we could see a string of picture book volcanos towering over 5000m, the tallest well over 6000m. We didn´t
so much descend into La Paz airport (4000m) as the ground rose up to meet us, an eerie feeling.
Arrival in La Paz in this manner was easily the most dramatic entrance to a city I have yet encountered. The centre of the city itself lies in a huge bowl some 300m below the airport, and across the plain you can see the profiles of sharp glacier-encrusted mountains rising above 6000m. Many of the buildings of La Paz are a clay colour, generally two stories with uniform windows, giving the effect of a huge disorderd metropolis for troglodytes as you peer over the edge.
Sadly there is a big price to pay for all this wonder. Altitude sickness. Kim felt it immediately she stepped of the plane, and for the next couple of hours felt nauseous and struggled breathing. I felt ok but walking up the hills was a tremendous effort. The locals seemed like superheros as we wandered the streets in a kind of slow-motion action-replay. In the late afternoon Kim started to recover and we found a pleasant place for dinner and went to bed early. That night I couldn´t sleep. It is a common effect
- as you nod off that your breathing slows and then suddenly you aren´t taking in enough oxygen. You awake struggling for breath with a sick feeling in your stomach. Less common but still experienced by many was the splitting headache that stayed with me all night along with the strong feeling of nausea. Having been to the same height in China and experienced no ill effects at all I was a bit bewildered, but then we had taken several days to rise up to 3000m overland, and stayed above that height for more than a week. By the morning we were feeling a lot better but it took a few days for breathing to feel natural, we still have difficulty walking uphill, and I've been having frequent headaches in the morning.
On a famous occasion in 1994, the Bolivian football team defeated the mighty Brazil 2-0 in La Paz. Back closer to sea level Brazil dispatched Bolivia 6-0 on the return leg, and went on to become World Champions, beating Italy 3-2 on penalties.
After a couple of days attempting to organise tours and transport in La Paz, sandwiched between our short trip to Lake Titicaca, we
found that altitude sickness gave way to platitude sickness. Organising tours in Bolivia was proving difficult not just for us but for many others, and the multitude of operators gave different advice, guidance and reassurances, none of which we trusted initially. It was difficult to know who to believe. The key problems, over and above the difficult task of choosing a reliable, reputable operator, were lack of transport and strikes. Various companies offer tourists alternatives to the potentially dangerous local buses but as it was now suddenly "shoulder season" they had decreased the number of days they ran. There wasn´t enough transport to go around. Then there was the regular Bolivian plague - the roadblock. Native Indians from around the country converge on an area to block roads and train-lines, if there are any, in a bid to assert their rights. We couldn´t really determine if this ever did them any good, but it seems to be accepted as something of a national sport, along with traffic jams in the steep narrow streets of central La Paz. Our return from Southern Bolivia was dogged with roadblocks which our bus driver had to find a way around, and we heard reports
of rioting in La Paz between police and their disgruntled amigos.
All this makes it worthwhile taking care when considering Bolivia as a holiday destination. Disruptions can be bad enough if you are a long-term traveller, but you know you have to go with the flow. Bolivia is a fantastic place with countless stunning and dramatic sight-seeing options, and Northern Chile and Peru are within spitting distance. However if you are coming for a short trip then make sure you research thoroughly and stay flexible - have a "Plan B" and a "Plan C". Also don´t under-estimate the effects of suddenly arriving at 4000m from sea-level ... it could take you a couple of weeks to fully adjust.
Art imitates life in Conrad´s Nostromo, set in a ficticious South American country that is prone to revolution after coup and coup after revolution. But for the lack of coastline this could be Bolivia's turbulent modern history, except that the realities of Bolivia seem to have exceeded the darkest imaginings of Conrad. Between 1840 and 1849 alone there were sixty five coup attempts.
Along with internal strife Bolivia has been involved in two wars with neighbouring countries, both resulting
in defeat and successive loss of land. The war of the Pacific in 1879 to 1883 was fought jointly with Peru against Chile over the nitrate rich Atacama Desert. Before the war the land belonged to Peru and Bolivia, but Anglo-Chilean companies mined it and Bolivia had no decent transport links to it. Following defeat to Chile, Bolivia lost its only coastal province and became a land-locked country with access to the coast reliant on the good will of Chile and Peru. Despite this, an American Congressman recently threatened to send an aircraft carrier to the coast of Bolivia if the country didn´t stop cocaine exports.
Durign the late 18th and early 19th century Bolivia slowly encroached upon questionable lowlands in Paraguay to try to establish a coastal border to the East. This resulted in the Chaco war, another defeat in which more land was lost. Following this defeat the military took control of Bolivia and for the next 50 years the government was constantly changing between various military dictatorships and Presidents of both left and right wing persuasions. The miners, landowners, peasants, coca (cocaine) producers and the United States all took their turns in causing internal strife to
force the demise of successive governments.
The military were overthrown by armed miners and peasants producing a leftist government which in 1952 nationalised the mines and redistributed the land back to the peasants. This government was overthrown due to a failing economy, due in part to hostility from Washington. The new president whose methods to stabilise the economy were also unpopulat was then overthrown by the army and the peasants, only for the newly installed leader to die in a plane crash.
During the 1970´s various military governments held power, ending with political parties being outlawed along with trade unions. The government also had close links with the cocaine trade. Eventually in 1982 the army retired to their barracks and a leftist coalition government was formed. Throughout the 1980´s inflation spiralled out of control, finally being brought to heel with the help of internationally renowned economist
Geoffrey Sachs. In this new millenium protests and roadblocks are a way of life with people, perhaps justifiably, protesting about social conditions, tax, unemployment and water rates. Plus ca change perhaps?
Everyone who visits Bolivia visits Lake Titicaca. You just have to really. It is the highest navigable lake in the world,
Inca Ruins, Isla del Sol
Sorry, I just couldn't get excited. whatever that means. It is also firmly on the overland trail south from Ecuador through Peru and Bolivia to Argentina and Chile, and being only a half day on a bus from La Paz it is an easy place to acclimatize. Copacabana itself is not a startling destination, although there are plenty of walks in the area. Most tourists take a boat to the delightful Isla Del Sol and spend the day walking the length of the island from North (Cha´llapampa village) to South (Yumani Village), many staying overnight. This is to be highly recommended if the weather is good as the views are stunning. There is also a collection of Inca memorabilia dotted around the Island, but I guess we missed much of it and that which we found was distinctly unimpressive - stick to Cusco and Machu Pichu for this stuff I´m told.
We ended our walk at a West facing guest house high on a ridge overlooking the lake. Prices vary dramatically so hunt around. We sat and drank beer for several hours in the setting sun, chatting to our fellow tourists - Yanks, Poms, Aussies and South Africans, and a jolly time was had by
Spiky Pandanus type plant
Just like Tassie and New Zealand. Didn't South America and Australasia used to be joined at the hip? all.
Back in La Paz we repeatedly bumped into our large group of new found friends and aquaintances all busily running around trying to solve their transport and tour dilemmas down to the Salar de Uyuni and the Chilean border in the far South of the country. We had a stroke of good luck and sorted our trip out early, but then spent the rest of the day trying to find two more people to do the epic Mountain Bike ride to Zonga. To cut a very long story short, in the end we found some nice chaps at Barro Biking (email barrobiking@gmail.com) who had decent bikes (a rarity) and were prepared to go with just two of us. However whilst sitting in the very succesfull and perhaps slightly complacent Gravity Mountain biking company we met a friendly Costa Rican chap, Hans, who also wanted to do the ride. "Gravity" weren´t prepared to go with just three of us, and we suspected they weren´t interested in going unless we had far more than four, so off to Barro we went.
The big billing in Bolivia is the 'Worlds Most Dangerous Road'. We wanted to spend two days on
this and only had a day spare before our tour to the South so we decided to take the lesser ridden but equally dramatic descent to Zongo. The starting point is Zongo Pass at 4780m, staring up at the 6008m peak of Huayna Potosi. Needless to say the scenery here is stunning. The finishing point is some 60km away at around 1200m, 3580m of descent or just more than 11700ft - 2.7 times Ben Nevis for all you Scots out there.
The ride itself only took us about three and a half hours but we had plenty of stops to look at the views, llamas and alpacas, to tighten our disc brakes as the pads wore through, and to fix punctures. The riding was not difficult, being exclusively on dirt road, but the sheer thrill made up for it. Unlike the more popular WMDR there was very little traffic, but even so both of the guides managed to nearly wipe themselves out on large trucks whilst going flat out round hairpin bends on the wrong side of the road. Each time I was just behind but keeping to the right hand side of the road which seemed to be
sensible. As we lost altitude the temperature increased and we shed clothes, by the bottom the air felt thick to breath and suddenly we found we could run, jump and generally cavort again. Marvellous. Additionally Hans turned out to be a great bloke, full of fun, and we swapped an invitation to Sheffield for an invitation to Costa Rica. Alright, we might take him to some nicer places if he comes. The whole day was fantastic, and if you are into Mountain Biking I would highly recommend it.
Next day we set off on the aptly named ´Gringo Trail´ to the wild altiplano in the South of the country, on the Chilean border. The departure point was Uyuni, a small town now dominated by tour companies, who whizz foreigners off on two, three and four day jeep rides around this most wild and spectacular of places. As is typical of less well educated countries the locals are undercutting each other to an extent that it is difficult to make a profit, and lots of tourist dollars stay in the owners pockets, whilst the owners get fed up with the poor service that is provided. To counter this some enterprising
Huayna Potosi (6088m-19974ft)
About an hours slow drive from La Paz Bolivian´s have set up a ranking agency - "Ranking-Bolivia srl" (rankingbolivia@hotmail.com. They have offices in Uyuni and Potosi, and they have all the statistics you need to determine which tour company to use, and you can sip a nice cup of real coffee whilst deciding - find them on 9, Avenue Potosi, Uyuni. When you are haggling away for the sake of a few US$ remember that it takes on average 35 cents per km just to maintain and run the Landcruiser, and the round trip for the three or four day tour is more than 700km. On our tour this meant Kim and I paid for the Landcruiser, leaving our three Aussie companions to cover staff salaries for a driver and cook, all food and accomodation for five of us, staff at the office in Uyuni plus the cut for the office in La Paz, plus any profits. We went with Inca Huasi, paying $120 each booked through
America Ecotours in La Paz. We paid more but the service and tour was up to scratch and I would recommend both companies. Other interesting statistics from Ranking Bolivia include the average spend of a foreign tourist in Bolivia is US$22 per
Miners Graveyard and Huayna Potosi
These poor people are buried at 4700m. day, and around 80% of people book their gringo tour in Uyuni, not La Paz.
America Ecotours also satisfied my needs to be on the Salar de Uyuni at sunset, so we actually took a five day tour, not a four day one. This was well worth doing as you can´t really appreciate this vast salt pan in a single day, particularly not with a hundred other tourist laden Landcruisers swarming around. By taking a day on our own we got away from the crowds, apart from the stranded Bolivian Army who had clearly watched to many episodes of the fast show and got their Landcruiser well and truly stuck in the wet ground on the edge of the pan. Being alone in the middle of the pan as the sun went down and the sky turned deep red and then deep blue was wonderful.
The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt pan in the world. With ten billion tonnes of salt we calculated that if everyone in China ate Fish and Chips three times a day it would still take 1400 years for them to get through it ( I haven´t checked this calculation, it was
done in my head in the back of a bumpy landcruiser so a few noughts may be in the wrong place). The salt pan is as wide as the eye can see and deeper than a Brookside patio. 80% of the salt extracted goes onto Chinese Fish and Chips, the rest is fed to animals.
The other bonus of our little diversion was a night in the new Salt Hotel, perched strategically on a hilltop on the edge of the Salar. This place is the most expensive we have stayed since leaving the UK, but it was worth it just for the novelty, and despite all the walls, ceilings, floor and furniture being made of salt it was surprisingly comfortable ... once we had knocked up the staff as we were the only guests and they had gone to bed.
The rest of the tour took us through wild volcanos surrounding mineral rich lakes festooned with the ubiquitous llama and the less expected flamingo. The landscape was rich in colour, with the sides of old volcanos split and their contents spilled out in a rich pastel sauce over their slopes, not unlike an icecream sundae. The lakes were
Zongo Pass (4780m)
Looking down at the start of the 3500m descent we're about to tackle on bikes. alive with minerals and algae, forming whites, reds, greens and blues, a vibrant contrast to the stark drabness of much of the earth which struggles to support any serious vegetation, due to altitude and cold.
In many ways the tour was reminiscent of our tour around Mongolia, except that perhaps bizarrely the infrastructure here is better, perhaps because so many tourists follow exactly the same route. In Mongolia you soon lose people, whereas here it didn´t seem to be the case.
Having the correct expectations is important on a tour like this. Accomdation is spartan, food is as good as they can make it but limited and the environment is tough. The third event in the Bolivian Triathlon, after blockades and traffic jams, is breaking down. If you don´t break down on a day when you take any form of motorised transport it is a bonus. Be thankful. If it is a normal day, spend the idle time whilst they figure out how to fix it thinking about our poor Aussie friends whose boat on chilly Lake Titicaca had caught fire after the outboard exploded.
I have two other regrets about the trip - the first simly
that we weren´t able to spend more time there - as I hope you can see from the photos this is one of the most amazing landscapes you are likely to encounter. The second is that on our short and boring final day we hadn´t been told about the Mountain Biking at San Cristobal.
This really seems a tragedy. San Cristobal is a tiny, dirt poor, mining community about ninety minutes drive South of Uyuni. The whole village was recently moved lock stock and barrel from the mountains so that it is nearer the main road, for some reason I couldn´t fathom. The village hosts a stunning church, which has been entirely rebuilt but with the original 16th century frescos, silver alter and gold adornments kept complete and largely intact, an excellent job. The village has a great feel but take a look at the
Fundacion San Cristoba which offers 4WD tours and Mountain Biking single track in the area. If you are thinking of doing a four day Gringo Tour you might seriously consider making it a three day trip and finishing at San Cristobal rather than Uyuni, then doing a days biking instead. To me it seems these people
need support and they deserve to succeed - however at the moment nobody finds out about them because they aren´t in the guidebooks.
And finally, the World´s Most Dangerous Road, La Paz to Coroico, and perhaps the biggest hyped thing in La Paz. I´m very sad to say that I think it really is that dangerous. From a highest point of 4750m or so down to Coroico at around 1200m, the first half of the road is tarmac and as safe as can be in mountains of this height. Then the surface changes to rocks and dust in the dry season and rocks and mud in the wet. The road is cut from the side of vertical or near vertical cliffs with drops of 500m and more, in some places more than 1500m apparently, and for much of it´s 30km or so length is no more than a few metres wide. There is also the risk of rocks falling on you from the precipitous cliffs above, but that risk is so minor compared to the near certainty of sliding off if you don´t pay attention that it is laughable to even consider it a risk.
Again we went
with Barro Biking and the change in attitude was noticeable. At Zongo they were a bunch of hoons having fun. Now they were deadly serious, making sure we knew the risks and the rules of the road. Jose, an excellent rider himself, took the lead and made sure nobody passed him and we didn´t go too fast. We appreciated this, as one of our party had a friend who had gone over the edge some years ago. He was one of the few that survived, landing on a ledge seven metres down but with most major bones in his body fractured. As we descended we stopped at the litany of crosses marking sites of the dead, many of whom were Mountain Bikers, perhaps the most bizarre and therefore tragic accident being that of the French woman who was safely stopped to let a truck pass when it beeped, frightening her so she lost her balance and toppled over the edge.
We had mean´t to stay overnight in Coroico, a pleasant place with oxygen and warmth in plentiful supply, something you miss in La Paz. However after our filling buffet and swim in the pool it was nearly dark, so
Just taking a leak
Llama, Zongo Valley we took the option to go back in the relatively safety of Barro´s minivan rather than risk a public bus the next day. Even so we chewed coca leaves and talked incessantly the whole way up, to take our minds off where we were. Apart from Jose I was the only person sitting on the right hand side of the van, closest to the edge. At one point we were an inch from the crumbling edge of the precipice and I was looking down a sheer drop to the valley below. I grabbed another handful of Coca - it doesn´t actually calm you I don´t think but the placebo effect was what we were looking for. I learned later that our driver had come from the Yungas, the villages down on the outskirts of the Amazon basin, and had driven the road regularly for the last fifteen years. He is a lot braver man than me.
How best to summarise the WMDR against the Zongo ride. In Zongo, every time we stopped we had big grins on our faces. On the WMDR every time we stopped our mouths were open and our jaws dropped at the seeming folly as
the next bus tried to squeeze past the next truck with, literally, only a few centimetres to spare on either side. You have to do the WMDR once just to see it, but if you like your biking for fun, go to Zongo.
On our final day in La Paz, whilst I uploaded photos, Kim went up to the famous and massive El Alto market where you can buy anything from Bananas to Landcruisers. Much of the good stuff has been stolen from tourists or is US/UN aid that has finally reached its inevitable black market destination. Still, our friends got a nice pair of walking boots for only a few quid.
I would like to make one point absolutely clear about Bolivia and its people, in case any Bolivians reading this get the wrong picture. We had a wonderful time in Bolivia and found it to be an excellent place. The Bolivians we dealt with for any length of time were friendly, helpful and accomodating and often went out of their way to provide a good service. We loved the chaos of La Paz, and in the end, despite the problems of the altitude, we were sad
Water, El Salar de Uyuni
Groundwater bubbles up through the salt. Although it looks thermal it isn't, just nice and cold. to leave.
If you are looking for a good place to stay, try the Hotel Majestic. A quiet double room is 120 bolivianos (roughly 8 to the US$ and 14 to the gbp), and for that you get constantly available hot water, satellite TV with as many channels as you will ever need, many in English, plus breakfast and extremely friendly and helpful staff.
As for cultural experiences, in the end we found the best one in La Paz, and it isn´t in any guidebooks. Sadly the culture is British, not Bolivian. Look for Oliver´s Travels Bar, which bills itself as a 100% Fake English Pub. Get to Avenue Murillo and just ask. Instead of risking our necks on the ´Death Road´ we could have been watching Chelsea-Newcastle plus Real Madrid-Barcelona live, drinking draft beer, browsing the best library of books in La Paz and eating beef curry, chicken caesar salad, steak and cake to die for. In fact, for our last few days we barely ate anywhere else ... it just didn´t seem worth it. Culture - that´s for tourists.
A final postscript. We´ve arrived back in Santiago at 600m above sea-level. Our room in the
rambling but pleasant old colonial Hotel Londres was four flights up, with steep stairs to negotiate. Oddly, for the last twenty minutes I´ve found myself running up and down the stairs with the agility of a scalded monkey and the enthusiasm of a bunny rabbit on drugs. Real air, it´s great.
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dannyboy
Daniel
AMAZING
Wow, you describe everything a reader might want to know! Your narrative and pictures are phenomenal. This is easily one of the top 5 blogs I've ever read. It certainly thickens my anticipation as I am going to Bolivia this winter... Being half-Bolivian, but never having been there, it should prove an amazing experience.