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Meeting James in Santiago
(of course we had to start with a nice cup of TEA)*** Ok, so we had vowed to finish our travel blog by the end of the year (that was 2008), so we are somewhat delayed but hey we are determined to finish it before 2012 - so we better get a move on. ***
Back in Santiago at our hostel called Bella Vista we excitedly awaited the arrival of our visitor… if you haven’t guessed already it was our friend from university James (you might know him as Jimbo or Bell). We met James with lots of screams and hugs (Sam would like to point out that he was not screaming like a girl; that was just Claire!) and then we pounced on all the “British” goodies he had brought out for us…newspapers, magazines and to real Cadbury's chocolate!! We thought we should ease Jim into the travelling experience slowly and so we took him to the most western restaurant we had visited so far and ate some yummy pasta (those who know Jim will know how important it was to feed him asap!). The following day we went out to explore the city of Santiago, it was a chance for Claire to see the city in a new light
as when we first arrived there back in April she was not so keen on the place! We headed out through the lovely Parque Forestal and had a look at the fabulous artwork and sculpture in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. We then headed on to the Plaza de Armas and watched the locals playing chess in the square and we stopped for a quick cup of tea and the local traditional three-course lunch! Then we had just enough time left to book a 24-hour bus journey for the following day to take us up to Calama in northern Chile, the gateway to the salt flats and Bolivia.
After a few preparations for our trip, collecting heaps of food for the journey, Sam and Claire repacking their bags as they were only going to take their small day packs with them to Bolivia as theft is unfortunately rife there, so it was safer and easier to leave the big rucksacks behind in Santiago - it was soon time to be on the bus. After a long 24-hour journey we arrived in Calama with Claire having read all of her magazines and Sam still with his head in all the
Relaxing in a thermal pool
Third from the left is a famous Chilean soapstar papers and Jim laughing at the excitement that was caused by his presents! We then caught a local bus to San Pedro de Atacama and after some confusion with the seating arrangements had to stand for the two and a half hour journey but it was all worth it. We eventually arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, a quaint little town, and after getting a bit lost at first we made our way into town and managed to get a funky triple room in a small hostel, which also served ala carte food as we discovered that night for dinner!
San Pedro de Atacama is at an altitude of 2440m and is the gateway to exploring the beautiful salt planes of Bolivia, the Salar de Uyuni. The best way to explore these salt planes is over three days using 4x4s with a driver, so that is what we booked on to. After sorting out the trip and moving hostels due to a rather frustrating misunderstanding with a double booking (long story!) we had one afternoon and night left before starting our journey into Bolivia so Claire was persuaded by the boys to go to some thermal pools 30km north
of town in Puritama. After an interesting taxi ride to the pools we headed into the water, running as quickly as we could, as it was so cold outside. The place was deserted, except for the guy taking money and we had six pools to try but the first four were too cold to go into so we hopped into the fifth one and then decided to go for the top one as it was the warmest (we thought these were supposed to be hot thermal pools!). Soon we were joined by three Chilean guys whose first words were “Do you mind if we go naked?”… Claire would like to point out that two of these men were rather old, but she was outnumbered and so was then swimming in the pool with three naked Chileans plus Sam and James (clothed before you ask!). It turned out the Chileans were actors and were in San Pedro de Atacama making a film about when the Spanish first came to Chile. Apparently one of the guys was a very famous Chilean soap star (the equivalent to someone from Eastenders or Corrie to us), which we later found out to be true when
we showed some photos of them to some locals we met later that night and they all started gasping at the photo and then to their shock the actors walked into the restaurant where we were having dinner and came over and said hello to us… all very comical! What was more funny (well at the time) was that we started to take stupid photos altogether in the pool and then Sam remembered that our new camera worked underwater and we had not tried it out, the Chileans were fascinated with it and we all kept diving under the water to take photos, what we forgot was that certain people were naked… not a pretty sight!
Soon it was time to start our journey to and across the Salar de Uyuni, but before we could get to our 4x4s we had to go through passport control to leave Chile and enter Bolivia… simple…well it would be if James had all of his correct Chilean visa forms! It seems that he was not given these when he arrived into Chile, and after much persuading the Chilean officials let him through and we were in Bolivia! After a quick brekkie of
hot bread and tea in an old hut we got into our groups for the 4x4s. We were lucky enough to be in a group with two lovely girls, Noreen and Theresa, whom we had met in Valparaíso but not so lucky when we saw that we had been given the oldest 4x4 vehicle of the lot. It did mean that we only travelled with five of us in the car and not six which meant a bit of extra room, but no air-con (it was freezing outside but very sunny on the salt planes and that car soon felt like an oven and we couldn’t open the windows due to all of the dust from the tracks!) and no cd player or radio so we couldn’t connect the iPod, which meant we had the same tape of local music playing over and over for three days, it drove us all mad by the end!
On our first day we drove out to some lakes including the beautiful green waters of Laguna Verde and some thermal pools at the Termas, where Sam and Jim decided to take the plunge but Jim Suddenly realised that his swimmers were packed in
his bag which was now tied to the roof of our 4x4 with all the rest of our gear, so Teresa came to the rescue and said he could borrow her bikini bottoms and much to our shock (we should have known!) he accepted! The water was really warm and only James & Sam ventured into the pool. Claire disappeared for a while, it turns out she' was in fact stuck in a toilet. After much laughter we headed out to the geysers and by this point we had reached 5000m in altitude and the headaches were starting to set in. Jim was already feeling the effects of altitude sickness and so we quickly left and got to our first refugio/home at Laguna Colorada, it was still at about 4775m. Soon after getting there Claire developed altitude sickness and after some food went to bed but Jim had started to get better and so the rest of the groups stayed up playing cards and star gazing and tried to keep warm, no central heating here! By about 8.30pm everyone was starting to feel the effects of the altitude and so headed to bed. We can honestly say that night at
Laguna Colorada sleeping on the hard wooden beds with two rented sleeping bags between the three of us was the coldest night of our lives! Things were so bad that we slept in all our clothes, coats, waterproof, hats and gloves and we still froze. We shared a room with seven people that night and not one of us slept! We were all feeling rather ill the next morning and keen to get on the road and get down to lower altitudes!
We headed out to see some more lakes, Laguna Hedionda, Laguna Caňapa and Laguna Chiarcota and were starting to get a bit sick of lakes when we stopped at Valle de Rocas (Valley of the Rocks) and got to stretch our legs having a look at all the random shaped volcanic rocks, our favourite was the one that looked like South America.
We then started on a long ride to our next refugio but on the way we had a minor accident when we caught the edge of the track and were thrown across onto a rather rough area and both Sam and Claire, who were in the back seat, flew into the air cracking their
heads on the roof. Sam ended up with a nasty graze to his head and Claire badly strained her neck, but we were just glad that our driver had gained control of the car so quickly - as we could easily have turned over and we had no seat belts in the car so it could have been interesting! Shortly after this our car also broke down and we had to get out and push it twice! We were very glad when we arrived at our accommodation for the night, the Hotel de Sal… yep an entire hotel made from salt, even the table we ate from and the beds we slept in were made from salt! When we booked our trip we had some initial concerns about staying in the salt hotels as we had heard that they had been built in the middle of the salt planes and were damaging them with all the hotels waste products but they have since been rebuilt on the edge of the salt planes and are much better environmentally. The night in the salt hotel was much more comfortable as we managed to get another sleeping bag and extra blankets, it was
also at a lower altitude and it had showers with hot water!! After dinner we watched the sunset over the edge of the Salar de Uyuni - stunning.
The next morning we were up at 5am and driving across the beautiful salt planes in a race to get to the Isla de los Pescadores to watch the sunrise over the salt planes. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt plane in the world; it is 12,000 sq km and resides at 3653m! The sight of the sun rising over the planes made the whole three-day journey worthwhile, it was awesome. The island itself is fun and covered in loads of different shaped cacti. We then got some time to have a walk on the salt planes and take some funny photos, as everything is so flat you can do some great perspective photos. The boys got a chance to have a footy game on the planes, as someone had brought a football. Then it was back in the car and off to Cementerio de Trenes, basically a train graveyard about 3 km outside of the town of Uyuni, random place but fun. We finally arrived in Uyuni (3675m)
and decided to treat ourselves to a nice hotel with hot showers (well luke warm water is better than freezing cold!), which had a great Pizza restaurant attached (thanks for the recommendation Janette and Dave) . We spent the afternoon recovering and exploring the town and then booked a local bus to Potosí for the following day, as there was not that much to see in Uyuni!
By the end of the bus ride Sam looked like he had been in a fight as he still had the large gash on his head from the 4x4 accident and whilst on the bus a 2L bottle of water fell down from the overhead compartment and hit him on the other side of his head, which Claire had to try and hold together with butterfly stitches hastily made from elastoplasts! We were glad when we finally got to Potosí and checked into our hotel.
Potosí is the world’s highest city residing at 4060m and is also a Unesco World Heritage site. It is a pretty little town with some nice cafes and views but the main reason we had decided to come to Potosí was not for another dose of
altitude sickness (inevitable though!) but to explore the Co-operative mines in the Cerro Rico mountain. Yes they have fully working mines and tourists can pay to go and take a look.
A few years ago silver was mined in Potosí but that has since depleted and now the locals mine for minerals. We had thought long and hard about whether we should go into the mines, mainly for safety reasons as health and safety regulations were non-existent but curiosity got the better of us and soon we were dressed in bright yellow overalls and black boots, with a hard hat and headlamp. Next we were taken to the miners’ street market to buy…. you’ll never guess….dynamite. We all bought a couple of sticks of dynamite, some fuses, some nitro-glycerine and of course some fizzy drinks and coca leaves. All of these items were to be given to the miners we were about to meet as gifts for allowing us to have a look at their work.
Before we entered the mine, our guide decided to show us a little test explosion using some of our dynamite, just in case we were in any doubt that it wasn’t real!
Crazy stuff! Soon we were clambering through the small entrance of the mine and being plunged into darkness. The living conditions for the miners are pretty bad. Temperatures can reach 45ºC or get down to freezing, most of the time they work only by the light of their small headlamps and the sounds of dynamite explosions constantly echo around the mine. We all had to wear dusk masks due to all of the dust created from the dynamite explosions! We met a number of miners, often numerous family members work in the mines and most of them seemed happy just to have a job. Most of the miners don’t eat anything whilst they are mining, they just chew lots of coca leaves, their teeth go black and they drink fizzy drinks to quench their thirst. Whilst in the mines we were taken to see Tio, a statue (looked like it was made from papier-mâché, very freaky) of a devil that the miners worship for protection and good luck. We got to walk/crawl/climb around in the mines for about an hour and the whole experience was very bizarre, it was like something out of a film.
After our mining experience
we caught a taxi onto our next destination, Sucre a Unesco Cultural Heritage site and also the constitutional capital of Bolivia. However, this was not the reason we visited here…we wanted (well Sam did) to see the dinosaur tracks! So the following morning we dragged a rather reluctant Jim onto the “Dino Truck”, an old truck with a huge plastic dinosaur head stuck on the front, and headed out to Cal Orcko. Cal Orcko is a small park up in the hills filled with huge plastic dinosaurs, but the main attraction is the dinosaur tracks that could be seen on what looked like a large cement wall covered in various lines of animal prints, after much scepticism we were convinced that these tracks really were from dinosaurs. Before leaving we watched what we thought was going to be a documentary abut the tracks but what actually turned out to be a room showing ripped off DVDs of the BBC series of “Walking with Dinosaurs”… very funny. We headed back to Sucre and spent the afternoon exploring the town, eating ice cream and bumping into a local parade of people dressed in what looked like Halloween costumes, all a bit random!
That night we boarded a night bus to take us to the capitol of Bolivia, La Paz (3660m). We were a bit concerned that it might be a cold journey as all the locals had blankets with them. We were right, soon the temperature plummeted on the bus (not helped by the fact that most of the windows would not close) and we found ourselves wearing all our coats, hats and scarves to try and stay warm/alive! We decided to treat ourselves by staying in a nice hotel that friends of ours were staying at; it had a TV and hot/warm water but sadly no heating! We met up with our friends, Noreen and Teresa and headed out to explore the city, taking in the sights of beautiful Iglesia San Francisco, the San Pedro prison (made famous by the book “Marching Powder”), shopping at Mercado Negro (Claire was in heaven!) and also the scary delights of the Mecardo de Hechicería (aka the Witches Market), which has numerous herbs, drugs and potions and not forgetting the shrivelled Llama foetuses (locals bury these under the front doors of their new homes for good luck! Ugh!). The following day we went to
Salar de Uyuni
It is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt the Museo de la Coca to finally find out all the information on the sacred leaf that we had been given in various forms during our time in South America.
Soon we were booking a bus to take us on another little adventure. When we were in Peru a few months before, we had not had time to see Lake Titicaca but now we were in the north of Bolivia and so we would get the chance to see it, as the lake stretches out across both Bolivia and Peru. So we headed out to Copacabana (3800m), which lies on the south shore of Lake Titicaca. After arriving Claire had to go to bed as she was still suffering from the altitude and her bad neck but Sam and Jim went out to explore the town and the shores of the huge lake. Lake Titicaca is over 230km long and 97km wide and is one of the world’s highest lakes. Sam and Jim soon decided they wanted to go sailing so after taking Claire out for some lunch and then letting her go back to bed they went out and rented a small sailboat. Afterwards, Sam and James climbed
up to Cerro Calvario (3966m) to watch the sunset. On their way back to the hotel Sam spotted a young girl reading a magazine, but not just any magazine but Heat magazine! He bought the magazine from the girl’s mother and rushed back to give it to a very happy Claire, that was until he mentioned that the little girl had started crying when the magazine was sold so Claire made sure she gave the magazine back the following day!
As we had a few days left before Jim had to head back to Buenos Aires we decided to go into Peru to see the lake from the other side. Before leaving we took a boat trip out to see the Isla del Sol (the Island of the Sun), the birthplace of the sun in Inca mythology. After a long boat ride we arrived at the hilly island and had a chance to explore for an hour and on the way back we stopped at a small Inca ruin at the back of the island. We then had a mad dash to grab some pizzas before getting on the bus to take us to Puno in Peru. Our main
reason for going to Puno was to see the famous floating islands (Islas Flotantes) of the Uros people. The floating islands are made from layers of buoyant totora reeds that grow in the shallow waters of Lake Titicaca. They were built by the Uros people to escape the violence on the main land. We caught a small boat out to one of the many islands and then got the chance to go on the island and meet the people that live there and see how they live their daily lives. The layers of reeds make the floor very bouncy to walk on. Everything on the island is handmade, we even got to try on some traditional clothing and take a ride in a boat made from the reeds. Although the islands have become rather touristy, we had a great time and some of the reed-sculptures that we saw were amazing.
We spent a couple of nights in Puno before heading back into Bolivia, but this time we decided to cross at a different boarder and do it by ourselves as we wanted to go to some ruins on the way back to La Paz. We caught a local bus
Happy to be out of the cold in Uyuni
NB: Cut number two on the other side of Sam's forehead where a 2 litre bottle of water fell on him. to the border town and during the journey Jim had a close encounter with some of the rather large local women! When we got on the bus we sat in the back row and there was one spare seat beside Jim, at the next stop a large lady got on board in all her beautiful traditional clothes (huge skirt and shawl and a bowler hat) and she was looking for a seat. Jim was thinking there was no way she would try and sit in the seat but much to Sam and Claire’s amusement and Jim’s frustration she walked straight over and wedged herself in beside Jim causing all three of us to be squashed by the window, things only got worse for Jim when a local boy got on playing the pan pipes (repeatedly for 30mins)! Next up was the border crossing from hell, which felt like a dodgy scene from a film. We exited Peru and had our passports stamped, then went to go through the Bolivian border (Desaguadero); however the Bolivian Police seemed more intent on getting bribes than letting us in. We were split up and lead into separate interview rooms. They straight away figured out
Dynamite Duo
Dynamite (check), Coca Leaves (check), Fizzy pop (check) and a Random dog (check) that Claire was the ringleader and drug dealer of our group as she was carrying 8 different currencies in a money belt and various narcotics (i.e. Asthma inhalers). Claire fought off these allegations with her pigeon Spanish and after a heated 10minutes the border guards were all smiles and telling us to hide our money! We then walked across into Bolivia and despite not having any local currency persuaded the bus driver to take us to the ruins. We finally arrived at our destination Tiahuanaco (Tiwanaku) ruins which turned out to be very expensive and much to Sam's frustration probably not worth the journey. The ruins are Bolivia’s most significant archaeological site from 700AD. But on the plus side James did get to try Inca Cola. We continued our long journey back to La Paz which involved a mini bus with the locals and another 2 taxis (as the first dropped us off in the middle of nowhere), finally we managed to find a hotel to stay.
Before we had left for Puno we had booked a trip to go mountain biking on the World's Most Dangerous Road. This road leads from La Cumbra to Coroico and plunges over
Not the safest thing to do
Yes that is dynamite with a lit fuse around Sam's head! 3,600m and 64Km. The name is due to the road having the highest annual fatality rate (over 100 per year), which isn't surprising as the two way road is only 3.2m wide. We went with a company called Downhill Madness as their safety record was supposed to be the best, however our guide was rubbish and he nearly fell off a cliff at one point. The equipment were awesome, full motorbike type helmets and suspension bikes. We were driven to the start by a business and split into groups based on ability Fast, Medium and Claire (slow). Jimbo and Sam both zoomed down the mountain at break neck speeds. Claire's journey was at a slightly slower pace, closely followed by the mini bus with the occasional bee stinging her inside her helmet. Along the way our guide pointed out various tragic accidents marked by hillside memorials. We arrived safely at Hotel Esmeralda, a tropical paradise where we had a great meal and a swim in the pool before returning to La Paz. Note for other travellers the mini bus journey back at night was probably scarier than cycling down the World's Most Dangerous Road!
Despite having very little time
left in La Paz, James and Sam were eager to visit the world's highest FIFA approved football stadium. It had recently been in the news as other nations had complained that playing at such high altitude would give the Bolivian team an advantage as the visiting teams would not be used too it. We walked around the national stadium and happened to find a friendly security guard who let us inside where a school sports day was taking place. We even managed to kick a football about on the pitch before mobbed by the school children. While we had our football fix, Claire was out shopping with our friends Noreen and Theresa (who we had relocated in La Paz).
James' time in South America was coming to an end and he had to start his arduous journey back to Buenos Aires. Little did he know of who he would meet at a random football match in the following days and we were sad to see him go (having had the 'best' time together). Early the next morning we ourselves left La Paz to fly back to Santiago - we picked up our full backpacks and repacked! We then had
a nice meal and last glug of Chilean wine and next it was off to Brazil to meet up with Claire's sister, Sharon.
Sam & Claire.
P.S. Again we got a bit carried away with the photos I think there's about 50 of them!!
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