Riding through the Fiery Canyon

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We left Uyuni for Tupiza at 6am on Jan. 17th by bus. This was one of the dustiest bus rides of our lives. It was dusty when we got on and it got worse as we rode through the dustbowl that was southern Bolivia. Many buses in Latin America had two people working them, the driver and a fare collector. On this bus, the fare collector was a very dusty 12-year old. As we've noted before, it was not unusual to see a child doing an adult's job in Bolivia. He seemed confident and happy. He enjoyed his authority and gained self respect from his job, but we wondered where would this fellow be in 20 years time? Would he get a chance to go to school?

The bus took 8 hours, including a seemingly pointless two-hour stopover in a small town midway. The stopover was not a total loss as we had some of the best empanadas ever from an old lady selling them at the bus station. We finally arrived in Tupiza and checked into the Hostal La Torre, a friendly and clean place. We spent the afternoon/evening trying to get some carbs into us after the long bus ride, however being siesta hours on Sunday meant it was doubly hard to find anything. Then evening was spent trying to extract some entertainment from the Spanish telly, but you don't want to know about that.

What the heck were we doing in Tupiza anyhow? We stopped there only because other travelers told us that we just had to go horse riding in Tupiza, we just had too. And so on Monday morning, we were lead by a guide from our hotel to a local ranch, where we were outfitted with cowboy hats and some kind of velcro leggings (cowboys had velcro?) to protect our pants.

There were just three of us in our party - Eva, our guide, and I - although we ran into other groups on the way. The horses were complacent and knew the route very well. They were a little hard to steer because they had more confidence in their sense of direction than ours. The first part of the trip took us through the outskirts of the town, where I felt a little inconspicuous. None of the residents were riding on animals, although I expect they used to before taxis, trucks, and buses came to town.

We headed for some hills just out of the town - one last chance to explore Bolivian geology. We were riding through a desert country with huge red rocks and cacti around us. It looked a lot like the American Southwest has looked on my TV in old cowboy movies. In fact, these hills were notorious for being the final haunts of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They were shot to death in a mining town of San Vicente, a day's journey from here.

Our ride took us past the Devil's Gate (Puerto del Diablo) and through the so-called Inca Canyon (Cañon del Inca), a canyon with high red rock walls on either side. The canyon got narrower and narrower until it was obvious we had reached the end our road. We paused for a brief rest and then headed back. On the way we surprised to see some pretty spectacular lightning strikes, even though the air felt very dry. There was never any rain in spite of the threat. We were back by 1 pm with time for lunch before our bus ride to Villazon, our last stop in Bolivia before crossing over the Bolivia/Argentina border.

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