Still in Tarija

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Tomorrow I am leaving for the Salar de Uyuni. After checking out a few of the tour companies in town, the French couple and I decided on El Grane de Oro. They all offer more or less the same trip; 4 days and 3 nights through Southwest Bolivia and ending in the Salar, but the receptionist at El Grane de Oro seemed the most honest about everything.

Bolivia is a gorgeous country. Tupiza makes me think of the old west, it dry and dusty and very poor, but the mountains are magnificent. Yesterday, after a bit of a rain storm in the afternoon, we hiked into a canyon just a couple of km from town. The mountains are mostly a deep red color and the formations are very dramatic and look like great big slices of rocky clay. Today, the French couple and I took a 5 hour tour on horseback of the surrounding canyons, not offically the same route followed by Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, but its certainly is not hard to imagine them riding through there a hundred years ago. During our tour on horseback we happened to run into two other Americans from NY who will be joining us tomorrow. We asked the tour company to hook us up with a party of two as five in a jeep brings the price way down. The whole thing won't put me too far over budget.

The food in Tupiza is not bad. There are a number of pizzerias that cater to the tourists, but the central market is certainly more interesting. The central market downstairs is crowded with vendors selling all sorts of meat and produce and upstairs is a something like a big dining hall. There are numerous stalls, each with a little stove and a local woman cooking big pots of rice, potatoes, meat, chicken, and pasta during normal meal times and locals just pick the one that looks the best. I think its important to get there early to make sure everyhting is till hot, but its all inexpensive and filling.

I was actually hoping to attach some photos to this blog entry but the internet connection here is way to slow for that to be posible. I think after the Salar I will spend a day in Oruro and hopefully I will have enough time to vist Parque Madidi north of La Paz, before meeting Gomez in Cuzco on teh 24th. Madidi is supposed to be one of the world's treasures for wild life and I would really like to see some of teh Amazon while I am here

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