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After scrambling to find people to go on a 4 day jeep tour of southwest Bolivia, I left Tupiza on 20 May with a driver/guide, a cook and 5 Israelis. For a country with a small population, I am amazed at how many travellers you meet from Israel. Not only that, so many places in South America have menus/signs written in Hebrew, as opposed to English. We'd paid $95 each, which covered everything for the next 4 days. Our guide was called Martin and like most Bolivians he had seen too much sun and had sun-burnt leathery skin. He also had several teeth missing. Sonia was our cook. It was like being back home as she both acted and looked like my mum.
Day 1 was spent driving through mountain ranges, herds of llamas and small villages. These villages were in the middle of nowhere, 4200m above sea level. The landscape was so barren and harsh, you wondered how these people survived. We stayed the night in San Antonio, which housed no more than 20 families. The village had no running hot water and electricty came on for only a few hours in the evening. Life not as we know
it.
Day 2 started unbearably early. We passed more tiny remote villages, semi-active volcanoes, lakes, mini salt plains and a desert that looked like a dali painting, before reaching 5000m above sea level to witness the geisers known as sol de manana. The basin was full of boiling mud pools and sulfurous steamholes. Several tourists have been known to fall in these mud pools which reach over 400 deg, but being Bolivia, we were allowed to get as close as we liked without being warned. Being this high up was taking it's toll on the group. The day before everyone had been in high spirits and full of energy; but today we were all feeling lethargic, had headaches and lost our appetite (even me!). We stopped at one village where there was a large football field. The local kids wanted to play against the gringos so we felt obliged. It turned out to be an awful decision. I foolishly started running around with the ball, only to suffer a mild heart attach moments later. My lungs couldn't work at this height and I felt the most acute pain in my chest. To overcome the altitude sickness we chewed cocoa
leaves, which amazingly did the trick. We stayed the night in what seemed like a military camp. The night was frightfully cold (temperatures can drop to -20 deg C at this height).
Day 3 was all about the flamingoes. We passed a series of different lakes, some were turquoise, some were bright red, but they were all full of different species of flamingo. That night we stayed in the pueblito called San Juan. We went to visit an ancient cemetery where the graves were open cocoons made out volcanic rock - it was very creepy.
Day 4 was the highlight and whole reason for the tour. We left at 5am to see the sunrise over the Salar de Uyuni. This is the world's largest salt flat and sits at 3,600m and is over 12,000 sq km. It is huge. We made it just in time for the sunrise and it was a truly magical experience. I cannot describe how beautiful this place is. You are surrounded by an expanse of white which merges into the blue horizon. We then headed to Isla de Pescado which is a cactus island in the middle of the Salar. It was very
Salar de Uyuni
Sunrise part 2surreal, especially as some of the cactii reach over 10m high. At this time of year, the salt flat is blindingly white, so you can take photos which trick the eye. We spent ages coming up with different shots. The tour ended on a high and we got dropped off at Uyuni, which is a bit of a hell-hole. Most backpackers start the tour of the salt flat from Uyuni and it has that backpacker-herd feel. The people that live here don't know what a bin is. I stayed one night and took a bus to Potosi, the highest city in the world....
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