Even in hell roads are modern: Bolivia

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Higher and higher we go

So we promtly exited Argentina and entered the land of bad roads and altitude sickness: Bolivia. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, if fact Bolivia has become one of my favourite countries. But seriously, the roads need some major work done to them, especially when your driving along them for 8 hours. And when rising from 1187 meters in Salta to the highest city in the world, Potosi at 4,824 meters then it is not a wonder that you suffer. Unfortuantly due to this, I do not remember much of the border crossing due to feeling very faint and having to lie on the bus.

Our first stopover in Bolivia was to be a bush camp on the way to our first destination Uyuni, a little town close to the largest Salt flats in the world. The stopover was possible the most beautiful we had, just because of the scenery, but also because we had the most amazing sunset on the one side, and a huge thunderstorm occuring on the other. Luckily it took the entire night for the storm to reach us and thanks to a promt wake up call by Marc, we had just packed up and closed the door of Swampy when it started to rain. Beautiful.

Uyuni

So we arrived in the beautiful little town called Uyuni and pulled up to our first of many hotel stops. There are no words to begin to describe how happy we were to be in hotels after all our camping problems! Main reason for staying in hotels in Bolivia though is because it is just too cold. So our first hotel, Hotel Tonito is very small and cute and has connected to the back of it this amazing little pizza restaurant. We arrived quite late and thus after everyone had rushed into town to drop off their laundry, we had some great pizza and went to bed, ready for the long day we had coming at the Salt flats.

Salt Flats

So the next morning, six 4x4s (proper ones this time) pull up outside the hotel ready to take us to the Salt flats. After an hours drive opur first port of call is a train graveyard. We weren´t really sure what to expect but we pretty much turned up at an Adults playground with lots of disused train wreckages that you could clamber over. Lots of fun and lots of trains too.

We then continued on until we arrived at a little village just on the outskirts of the salf flats, where lots of goods were being sold and we were taken to a salt factory to see how they transform the salt into a product to be sold. Well, this facotry turned out to be more of a room and although the bags they were putting the salt into could hold 1kg, not a single bag was measured. Hmmmm. We then drove on further to what looked like a massive desert. Just white land and water everywhere. Its only when you look at it closely enough you realised it was salt!

So we stopped for a quick photo break (we would be having a lot of these on this day) and then we all got the chance to sit onto of our 4x4 and travel for about 30 mins across the lakes to a salt hotel. The journey was absolutely amazing but very cold and by the end everything was covered in salt including our sunglasses and lips!So the hotel was literally a hotel made entirely out of salt. It had lots of cool statues inside as well as chairs table and even the beds in the rooms were made out of salt. Though it is not somewhere I would personally like to stay beacuse the toilets for all the rooms were the same as the public ones and they were possibly the most disgusting toilets I have ever been into in my entire life!

So anyway we ate a nice lunch outside the hotel on the flats (Bolivia is much like Malawi in the sense of everywhere there is Chicken and chips). We were then supposed to head out to a place called Fish Island but unfortunatly due to the amopunt of water we were not able to get there. So the drivers took us out to the middle of no where, where we were to spend about 3 hours taking all sorts of pictures of trickery, due to the vast distances of nothings. We literally dud everything we could think of including using numerous props but unfortunalty I cannot put all the pictures up here!

After all this time, we were then taken to this area towards the edge of the salt flats which had caves with mummies in. Literally right in front of you. We were told that the mummy in the middle was the queen and all the mummies around her were her children and family that had been sacrificed when she died. Freaky stuff. Plus there was a puma carcas hanging above the door. We then sat outside of the caves for about 2 hours because part of the excursion was to include sunset. But because the part going to fish islabnd had been cancelled we were early. So we just chilled out in the sun until it was time to go back to the flats to watch the sunset.

And it was possibly the slowest sunset I have ever seen. On the flats during the day it had been pretty hot but as soon as the sun started to go down it because freezing. So we all stayed in the cars until the sun seemed to be going down (apart from a few crazy boys who decided to play football). When we did go outside it still took a good 30 mins for the sun to go down. So we were doing all sorts to keep ourselves warm, including worshpping the sun dances, huddle groups and even an aerobics class put on by our very own Patrick. The sun eventually went down though and I ended up taking about 50 pictures because it was so beautiful. With the salt flats all around us, it was such a panaromic sunset. Once it was fully down though we all promptly jumped into the cars and drove back into town and to the hotel.

Potosi

The next morning we headed to the highest city in the world, Potosi. Unfortuantly my experience of Potosi was very limited due to the fact my illness was getting worse. So once we arrived, we checked into our hotel and Hannah and I jumped into bed and watched tv for the whole day and night. The next day we both got up for breakfast and to use the internet but we shortly went back to be and stayed there again until the evening, as we had a group meal out booked at a nice little place with local music and writing all ovetr the walls. Some one had written on the wall the title of this blog, hence where I got it from. Though again for me it was not a late one and I was back to bed. So that was pretty much my experience of what seems to be a beautiful little town. Such a shame but not a lot that could be done. Fortunate though that we had tvs in our rooms though this hotel was possibly the coldest hotel ever. It is beyond me how a hotel in the highest cuty in the world could now have central heating though they do make up for it by giving you about 7 blankets on your bed!

La Paz

We then left Potosi and travelled for 8 hours on slightly better roads to the Captial of Bolivia, La Paz. Being a saturday night we also had a big night planned, so once checked in we headed down to a resautrant called Ramjam where we had curries and enjoyed some dancing and an oxygen bar. Again not another late one as we had the city tour the next day.

Naturally with my first tour booked since the salt flats, I wake up the next morning in absolute agony with a sore throat and ear ache. So after searching around for a pharmacist (and soon realising it was a sunday) I found Joss and burst into tears, so a doctor was called oiut to tell me I had Bronchitus and a ear inflammation and infection that had spread to my throat. So after an injection in my bum and a list of about 7 items to get from the pharmacy, I was resigned to bed whilst everyone else went on the tour. At least it was all cheap though, antibitotics here cost about 1 pounds. Ridiculous.

Luckily, once the painkillers sunk in and I'd had a few extra hours sleep, I felt much better. So I wondered around town for a bit, got some comfort food at Burger King, though due to my lack of Spanish ended up ordering two meals rather than one meal with side order of chicken nuggets! I then headed back to bed again and waited for everyone to arrive back from tour to head off with them to experience a totally new and unique act: Female midget wrestling.

Now this is not me being politically incorrect. This is exactly how it was described to us. So naturally many of us were intrigued, whilst the other half were freaked out. So we turn up at this little sports hall expecting the weirdest night of our lives. And it was. But for a completely different reason. Firstly, the description was completely wrong. There were women. And there was a single "midget" (to use their words, but for the rest of this piece I shall not use the term). But most of the wrestling was about the men. And it was pretty much the Bolivian version of WWF, complete with the costumes and the really really bad acting. Though, unlike WWF, this spilled out into the audience (in the acting sense) but it was still the funniest night ever. Including a really corrupt Ref, who kept supporting the wrong side and thus the correct person never won. Hmmm. But all in all a completely funny and utterly fascinating night!

As for La Paz itself, I have enjoyed staying here despite being ill. As one of the poorest countries in South America, I´m not really sure what I expected but all in all it does not feel ´poor´in the sense of places I have seen in Africa. Culturally, it is very different from Brazil and Argentina, though I assume it will be similar to Peru. It is incredibly cheap here, stupidly so in many cases, but the little markets and shopping stalls are full of stuff that you could easily spead your entire backpacker budget on with lots of Alpaca and Lama wool products being sold. And in this cold climate they are very much needed! All in all though, Bolivia has been a great country to visit and I would highly recommed it to anyone planning to go there!

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Photos

Our group
At a stopover having just entered Bolivia

Me in a tyre
One of many trick photographs that we took

SWAMPY
A few of us spelling out Swampy; I was part of the "A"

Some Mummies
Some mummies found in a cave near the salt flats