The Bolivian Salt Flats & Northern Argentina

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Hola.

Once again, there's plenty to update you on so here goes...

From La Paz, we travelled to Potosi, formerly the richest city in South America which was exploited by the Spanish for its vast deposits of silver. The city, the world's highest at 4,060m, is a world heritage site but is now a pale shadow of its former self, as only local co-operatives continue to mine there, exploiting whatever seams remain. However, the city is a pleasure to walk around full of lovely buildings in a state of semi-dereliction and cobbled streets. A number of the group did a visit to one of the mines where they had to make offerings to the devil (that is who the miners worship/pray to), dress in huge orange jump-suits (they looked like graceless oompa-loompas), and got to blow up stuff with dynamite (there is a brilliant video of Jules falling over trying to run away from the charge in his jump suit). I didn't go for the simple reason that I thought I would get stuck in one of the tight passages.

As Potosi is so high up we still had to take it easy, which is something the Bolivians (and South Americans generally) excel at. Wandering the streets in the late morning on a weekday, no-one seemed bothered to be in school or at work but rather were content to sit and chat or browse the paintings at an impromptude street gallery that was set up by the main square, causing major tailbacks in the surrounding streets. Unlike other tourist destinations, no-one was bothered to sell us anything, which meant we spent at least an hour on our final day searching high and low for somewhere to buy breakfast, before settling on some salteñas (like light Cornish pasties, 12p each) from a street stall.

I also experienced this laid back attitude when I tried to use the Bolivian postal system. On entering Potosi's main post office (a beautifully ornate but run-down building), I was presented with an individual counter for each possible postal service, before selecting the stamps cabin (honestly, I´m not joking). There I had to wait patiently for two middle-age women to stop gossiping before one took my money and then painstakingly wrote out my order in a massive log-book whilst the other spent an eternity leafing through several stamp books to find my stamps. After a well deserved break and a chat, the second lady then proceeded to cover my card with stamps (which she failed to lick properly so they came undone - I would have thought it would have been covered in basic training) and then stamped over them in ink, by which point the address was barely visible. As far as I know, none of the mail I've sent from South America has yet reach the intended recipients.

The rest of my time in Potosi was spent wandering down the quiet side streets, checking out the main museum (which houses one of South America's best preserved mints for producing coins), and climbing up the narrowest staircase in the world (seriously, I couldn´t get my shoulders through the passage without scraping them), to get a view from one of the towers just of the main square. In the evening, a few of us tried one of the local whiskerias, a drinking den for locals (and not a depot for cat food), where we naturally had rum and cokes, and not whisky. Going to the bars out here is like stepping back in time before the smoking ban in the UK, as the air was thick with smoke - people drinking, smoking, dancing and having fun to excess - who wants that? I think we are right to try to stamp that out in the UK.

Also, just a quick word about the hotel we stayed in, which was not built - not just not furnished but not actually built - the space where the second and third floors should´ve been where just empty. Really, it was the most bizzare sight.

From Potosi, we travelled to Uyani, a non-descript town of dust, litter and mud brick houses that sits on the edge of the world's largest salt flats. The travel days are all pretty much the same - we have a couple of card schools at the front, a number of readers and quite a few people who listen to their i-pods. I like to vary it up between sleeping copious amounts or starring blankly out of the window. That day we crossed the Bolivian altiplano, a vast barren plain surrounded by mountains, and situated at 3500-4000m. In total, we have now travelled over 7,000km since the start of the trip in Ecuador.

On arrival, we dumped our stuff and headed to Minuteman pizzas, self-styled as pizza with an altitude, given that Uyani sits at over 3,600m, where we celebrated the birthday of our tour leader, Jo, with vast quantities of pizza, wine, and cocktails. I stepped forward to make a speech on behalf of the group (public speaking and over elaborate report writing are probably the only skills I bring to the group from my local government background) to thank Jo for all her hard work and to pass on our appreciation for her efforts. Whilst heartfelt and sincere, I naturally hoped that this would carry favour and reduce my chore burden for the next few weeks. As it turns out, I was wrong about that - bugger. The night was finished off with the traditional shoving of the birthday girl's head into the cake, some dodgy Bolivian fireworks that ended up burning the scalps of several of us (those still with hair anyway), including myself, and then more drunk dancing, finishing with the big group dance in a circle, which is more for physical support than team bonding.

Next day sporting our obligatory Minuteman pizza t-shirts - I having had to go back at breakfast to upgrade to an XXL (everyone's tiny out here, honest, I haven't just been stuffing my face with pizza (hmmmm) for seven weeks) - we set off for one of the best days of the tour. First stop, was a train cemetary at the edge of town, which seemed to house every pre-1950 train in Bolivia. Cue many interesting Indian Jones style photos with people posing and running on the tops of trains.

From there we went to a small village on the edge of the salt flats where the entire population of a few hundred people makes a living from the salt. The co-operative produces 2-3,000 kilos of salt a day with most of the process still done by hand. A kilo bag of salt retails at the equivalent of 3p in Bolivia! What was more fascinating was that they still build with massive salt bricks that are very durable and look to be the only building material for miles around (it is very desolate out there).

Then we went out onto the Salt flats in our 4x4s. I doubt it's possible to describe to you the sheer scale, isolation and beauty of the salt flats, so I won't even try (...only joking). The Salar de Uyuni is over 12,000 sq km and was once part of a prehistoric lake that when it dried up left the vast salt flats that remain. Once you get out there, it's possible to see white as far as the horizon, leaving big mountain chains in the distance looking like small dots.

What was surprising about the trip was the variety of landscapes on the flats themselves. We were able to see a wet area, where the water lapped over the salt like a lake, producing strong reflections from the sun overhead in the water, bouncing back from the salt underneath. We also saw geysers, pyramids of salt crystals which look like icebergs with the water underneath them, and salt plains which looked like crazy paving, as the salt crust had split into numerous hexagons.

We travelled out about 80km to Cactus Island for lunch, so called because it is a rocky outcrop with giant, 6-8m plus cacti growing on them. After lunch, I took a stroll to the top of the hill in the baking heat and was rewarded with panoramic views of the flats and sunstroke. The majority of the group contented themselves with taking arty photos using all sorts of props, as the vast acres of white allow you to take photos without the usual perspectives. Hence, people were posing alongside action heros, falling out off wine bottles (how poetic for many of us!), or standing on top of the world. The only limit was one's imagination, so I took about two photos and retired to find a beer and some shade.

We finished the day back at the 'lake' area, watching the sunset over the horizon, with the light reflecting off the water and the salt. It was very tranquil and stunning but unfortunately I was sat shivering in the back of the 4x4 having caught too much sun (again). Thankfully, we have a wonderful collective group spirit and I was told in no uncertain terms to grow a pair and get on with it. All in all though, it was an excellent day out and well worth doing if anyone should get the chance.

The next day we had another horifically early start (4am), as we headed for the tourist town of Tupiza, close to the Argentine border. The journey was quite eventful as the road out of Uyuni was blocked by an overturned lorry, and we had to take the truck off-road and over a dried-up river bed to get round. Naturally, we in turn got stuck and had to dig the truck out using shovels. The rest of the journey was spent trying to hang on as we negotiated numerous windy roads with uneven, dusty surfaces. The Bolivian landscape we passed through was very dry with just cacti and thorny bushes being able to survive. although obviously being South America there were football pitches marked out, even in the most unlikely of places.

Tupiza is famous for being the place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed by the Bolivian Army. Nowadays, it is a pleasent enough tourist town specialising in horse riding and other outdoor activities. We only had a few hours before we carried on our journey, so after an average meal, we quickly retired to bed. The highlight of my time in Tupiza, therefore, was the bathroom which was the size of a normal W.C. but which meant you showered above the toilet as the showerhead was practically above the toilet.

The next day, we set off at the relatively sedate time of 5.30am, heading for Salta in Argentina, a very pleasant town and popular tourist destination. As usual the border crossing took an eternity due to the South American's insistence on operating their border controls like a nightclub. It is strictly a 1 in 1 out policy, with only a couple of people working at anyone time to check documents or belongings. I don't think there is much Britain can export to the developing world these days but surely these countries would benefit from our undoubted expertise in queuing.

South American borders don't seem to be like European ones, in so far as the countryside and towns really do change as soon as you cross the border. On the Argentinian side we were suddenly presented with straight, tarmaced roads and flat green valleys which are ideal for farming. I felt sorry for the Bolivians who seem to have been given a dustbowl to farm. Arriving in Salta, we were delayed by road blocks and strikes, as one of the unions had taken the opportunity to welcome into office the country's first female president by demanding higher pay.

Thankfully, we weren't delayed to much as were quickly able to relax at the campside with 1 litre bottles of the local beer, Salta. It's one of the nice things about travelling in South America is that you don't need a guide book or an itinerary to tell you where you've been - simply look at what beer you've consumed over the past week or so and you'll have a pretty good idea. Each town or region seems to produce and drink its own beer, and naturally being the good tourists that we are, we end up sampling the local produce.

The first day in Salta, a few of us went rafting and canopying in a valley a couple of hours out of town. Although the water was fairly calm (grade three rapids), I was naturally the first person to fall out of the boat, apparently in an exaggerated slow motion backward roll, where it was just far to much trouble to stay in the boat rather the flop out of it. Naturally, I got ribbed about that. However, I seemed to over compensate after that, and when the shout "inside" was given I managed to wedge myself so thoroughly into the boat, I spent the next ten second just trying to get out. Joking aside, it was well worth doing as we managed to see Kingfishers, Cormorants, fish and even some horses resting in the river, as well as a rock face with seven different colour veins running through it and fossilised algaes.

After the rafting, we retired for lunch where we had the best steak I have EVER tasted in my life. People have mentioned the quality of the steak out here for ages but you can genuinely appreciate the difference. Naturally, I had about four pieces, which I began to regret as soon as I was fitted up with harness to go canopying (or ziplining) in. We did four lines in total, each probably a couple of hundred metres long and a few hundred feet up. It seems the trick to canopying is where you possition you right hand on the wire, as it is used to control the speed and maintain balance. So, for the first attempt I was desperately trying to hang on as best I could, so much so that I don't think I actually looked down to appreciate the view. By the end, however, I'd managed to do a decent run with good control and speed, thereby keeping my adventure sports reputation in place.

The next day, was spent pleasantly pottering around town, looking at the buildings and sitting on the main square. The local schools seem to be breaking up for their summer (& Christmas holidays) so there were many children parading through the main square with drums (all South Americans seem naturally more musically gifted than we are in Britain - no-one was murdering a recorder for a start) and banners. After lunch I climbed 1,070 steps (small change after the Inca trail) to get a view over the city because the cable car was broken and then almost immediately wished I hadn't as my view was interrupted by two great pylons and some floodlights. I'm all for making people's life easier but don't build something infront of what it is your trying to look at.

Returning back to the main square, I met up with some of the guys who had been horse-riding, who were looking very worse for wear as their guide had plied them with numerous bottles of his local wine at lunch, which they had continued to drink on the minibus. I wouldn't normally dwell on our drunken antics (mainly because they are too frequent to mention), but Jules spent a whole minute trying to suck up his Cuba Libre through the plastic cocktail stick, which he was given to stir his drink with, until we pointed out that it wasn't a straw.

Our brief time in Argentina was amusing for the way a number of girls on the trip looked like they were on heat (no dog jokes, please) at the sight of all the Argentinian men. I think it is fair to say that the Argentinians of both sexes are beautiful people, which is why the favourite way of passing the time in Salta was "people watching". Naturally, everyone is looking forward to our four days in Buenos Aires in January.

And so on from Salta and Argentina to San Pedro in Chile. Again, we had another agonising border crossing, both at the Argentinian end and the Chilian end (where our bags were searched - naturally dirty washing to the top, it's only fair), which happen to be an hour and a half apart (clearly nobody's too bothered about the desert in between). As usual, there were some stunning mountain shots, particularly on the narrow windy roads on the Argentinan side as we climbed up to another 4,000m pass, and as we passed another salt lake.

The next blog will hopefully contain a full description of Chile, including Santiago, as we prepare for Christmas on a ranch, secret Santa, and an old fashioned school sports day. God, it's a tough life out here...

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