Bolivia - La Paz, Uyuni & Lake Titicaca

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Yet again I'm getting massively behind on this blog .... I'm now down in the mountains in Argentina ... but well I'll try and remember Bolivia .. I arrived in Bolivia at the end of may.

I flew into La Paz, after a one night stopover in Santiago. The flight into La Paz crosses over the majestic Andes, then you land at the airport which is at 4000m on the altiplano. The actual city of La Paz is set in a canyon in the altiplano at about 3600m. Anyway it's all bloody high! The first view you get of La paz is pretty spectacular. From the airport a taxi takes you down into the city which is in a huge canyon .. which has buildings climbing up the edges. The sky is clear blue and in the distance you have the snowcapped peaks .. wow!

Julie flew in from London to meet me in La Paz. We stayed in La Paz for a 3 nights to try and aclimatize to the altitude. It's unbelievable the effect it has on you. Just walking uphill on the streets of La Paz will have you out of breath within a couple of minutes. I wasn't really expecting to like La Paz .. but we had a really good laugh there .. and a couple of large nights!

After 3 nights in la Paz we headed to Oruro .. we were heading down to Uyuni to go to visit the salt flats and thought we would break the journey by stopping in Oruro. Not much to report on Oruro .. bit of a shithole of a town with not much going on! However we did manage to find a nice restaurant there so we had a good dinner and then a nice lunch the foillowing day .. which happened to be my birthday. I've got to say probably one of the quietest/dullest birthdays ever .. but never mind!!! We then took the train from Oruro to Uyuni .. which only goes twice a week. We had gone out and bought a bottle of rum for the journey .. so sat on the train drinking cuba libres & costa libres. The train journey is for 7 hours across the altiplano. You pass a couple of lagunas and a lot of flamingoes and other birds on the lakes. However the main thing you notice is just how barren and bleak the altiplano is ... it's a very harsh place to live. When we arrived in Uyuni at 10.30pm we were gagging for a beer ... only to find that everywhere was shut by that time! Uyuni was another unremarkable town .. much smaller than Oruro .. with a real frontier feeling about it!

The following morning we started our 3 day salf flat tour. There were 6 people and driver and a cook. It turned out we were all English .. 2 lads from Lancashire, 2 girls from Formby (2 miles away from where my Mum & Dad live) and me & Julie. It also turned out that I knew the husband of one of the Formby girls .. from tennis turnaments when I was younger .. it is a very small world!!

The first day of the trip was the best .. we drove out onto the Salar de Uyuni (uyuni salt flat) .. which is massive ... I think something like 12,000sq km .. it goes as far as the eye can see. And in places it is upto 12m thick. The visual effect is amazing. We also visited a salt hotel .. made entirely out of salt .. which possibly had the most miserable staff in the whole world! Then we stopped at Isla de Pescado in the middle of the salt flat which is covered in huge cacti. We stopped there for lunch .. which was great .. luckily we had a great cook with us .. some of the groups in other 4WD's didn't look like they were so lucky!! Once we left the salt flat the landscape became pretty barren again. We drove to a small village which was our stop for the night. At night on the altipano the temperatures drop very low ... sometimes to around -20 degrees ... I think the coldest when we were there was around -15 ... FREEZING!!! The next two days of the trip were a lot of time driving through lunar like landscapes. We stopped off at several lagunas .. one green, one red and one blue. We saw volcanoes and desert. It was interesting landscapes .. but by the end of it you just wanted to get the hell out of the car!!

We arrived back into Uyuni early evening, in time to grab a quick pizza before getting the overnight bus back to La Paz. Julie came down with altitude sickness on the bus .. and was sick for the next couple of days. We had been upto 5000m that day. When we got back to La Paz we booked into a nice hotel for the night. We were planning a big night out to make up for my quiet birthday .. but with Jules tucked up in bed ill .. I just took it easy instead.

The following day we took a bus to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world at 3,810 m above sea level and is the biggest lake in South America. It is bordered by Bolivia and Peru. Copacabana is a small chilled town set on the edge of the lake. Again the stenery is stunning .. lots of snowcapped moutains in the distance on the other side of the lake. We booked into a nice hotel which overlooked the lake, and had a few chilled days there.

One of the days we took the fery across to Isla del Sol .. which in Inca legend is the birth place of the sun. We would have stayed in Isla del Sol for a couple of nights if we had had the time, but we were on a pretty tight schedule to get to Cusco, so we just went there for a days walking instead. Isla del Sol was beautiful .. it looked a bit like one of the greek islands .. although it was a wee but colder! From the island you look across the lake to the snowcapped peaks of the Andes. The island has no cars or roads .. just boats and walking trails. The place is so quiet .. all the noises you hear are the braying of donkeys, buzzing of bees, dogs barking and birdsong .. the energy of the place is really special.

The following day is was time to head onto Peru ......

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