Salt, Snakes and Hammocks

---

Did I say in the last posting that "we now have our travel boots on" ???
ahh, how naive of me.....

It should have read "we have our travel slippers on". Travelling through Argentina and Chile was a long holiday compared to Bolivia.

We crossed the border into Bolivia at dawn after an overnight bus trip from Salta in North Argentina. After walking across the border and being grudgingly admitted to the country by a Bolivian soldier, we made our way to the bus station and got our first taste of travel in Bolivia. It was bedlam and a case of every man, woman and animal for itself we fought our way into a dilapidated bus with huge amounts of people, rabbits and dogs. Where, we cried, had the lovely buses of Argentina gone!!

We had decided to visit Bolivia to see a number of things - first being the world famous Salt Plains. The Salt Plains are a huge prehistoric lake that dried up over the centuries to leave a massive area covered with salt deposits. Covering an area of 12,000 sq km they are the largest salt plains in the world and the highest at 3,500m (the whole of Bolivia is at a huge elevation and boasts basically the highest 'everything'!!).

After a few hours of making our way along dust tracks (tarred roads are few and far between) we arrived to Tupiza, the first major town in south Bolivia. To get to the Salt Plains we needed to get to a town called Uyuni. We checked out the bus journey - over 8 hours by regular bus - but were informed by a "kind" local that there was also a jeep going that promised to get us there in 4 hours. Always one for a short cut, we bought tickets for the jeep.

We loaded into the back of a regular jeep with 8 locals - a very tight fit!! Off we headed out of town only to stop on at the bridge and the driver picked up 2 of his friends. Unfortunately for us they were both glue sniffers. Unable to really hold themselves together and one continually drooling at the mouth, they were a complete mess. So off we headed on a "short cut" over the mountain roads in a jeep of 8 locals, 2 glue sniffers and us 2 gringos, all to the sound of blaring electro pan pipe music!!

It was a 4 hour journey involving high speed driving at the side of mountain tracks. As the roads got narrower, the pan pipe music got louder and the driving faster. We were getting slightly aprehensive as we sped across the mountain short cut and could hear mutterings about "gringos" from the driver. Thankfully the glue fumes were starting to get us high and helped to make the journey from hell a little better and calm any frayed nerves. After 4 hours it seemed as we had arrived at our destination as a small town drew into focus. The jeep stopped and we all poured out. Looking around however, it was quickly very clear that we were not at Uyuni but only half way there. We had been sold a dud journey. We had to load our backpacks off the jeep and were told that another jeep would be along to finish off the journey. So nothing for it but just sit at the side of road on the backpacks and hope the jeep came along. After an hour a jeep pulled up and the driver got out. We made ready to throw our bags onto the roof of the jeep. But the driver just walked off....seems he was in a bad mood and refusing to drive to Uyuni today. So it left us in a small quandary....how the hell were we going to get out of this town (it was not exactly the type of place to find a Jury´s Hotel or any kind of bed for the night).

Fortunately after an hour a beat-up old blue bus pulled up and seeing our only chance of escape we clambered aboard, hoping it would at least get us some of the way along. So off we set (with parrots and lambs on board this time) along a dry river bed out of the town for about an hour before the bus driver finally found a dirt track leading into the mountains. After that it was a fairly uneventful journey except for the driver having to stop the bus every hour or so to cool down the engine. We arrived into Uyuni about 10 hours after starting out. I suppose we should have taken the bus but that would have been way too easy and not half the fun!!

And so onto the Salt Plains. We did a 2 day tour in a jeep (just some regular people, no glue sniffers this time!!). The Salt Plains proved to be an otherworldly experience as we sped across them in a jeep, just salt as far as the eye can see. Most of the houses around the plains are built from blocks of salt dug from the plains. In fact we stayed in a "salt hotel",an entire hostal built from these blocks of salt, right down to the table and chairs and the beds!! Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and it showed on the Salt Plains as well as the other places we visited. We came across on guy on the salt plains who was digging out salt blocks to use as barter for llamas. He spent everyday just digging out and shaping blocks of salt with a small hand axe. Different world.

After Uyuni we headed to La Paz the capital of Bolivia. We had been told by many people that La Paz was a dangerous city and robberies were extremely common. When you get such startling advice you can't help but be prejudiced. We were extremely conscious of our bags when we arrived but to be honest we found La Paz fine. In fact we grew to enjoy La Paz. It won't win any beauty contests (and that´s being generous) but it does have a certain charm, mostly in the fact that it has a huge area of the city devoted to on street markets. These markets literally go on for miles as they wind their way up one side of the hills of La Paz. Stalls dedicated to fruit, veg, meat, fish, hardware, tiles, etc etc. Simply everything you could every want can be found on sale on the side of the street of La Paz. The city is built entirely on mountain sides and there is not a single part of it flat, as soon as you start to walk you will either be going up a hill or down it!! We ended up staying in la Paz for 4 days instead of the originally planned 2 days. The reason was that we were planning to go to the jungle but the only plane that flew to the jungle landed in a field and if there was any rain then the flight was cancelled due to flooding.

After 4 days and eventually a dry day we got to catch our plane to the jungle to a village called Rurrenabaque. The journey was great, it was a tiny 18-seater plane with the passengers squashed right behind the pilots. Landing in a field was not half as rough as you would expect and after skidding for about 300 meters, we were able to taxi along to the shed at the end of the field that served as a terminal. Rurrenabaque itself was a great little town, a real tropical feel to it as you would expect from a town on the edge of the Amazon jungle. It was extremely laid back and had a cool bar called Mosquito Bar that did one of the largest lists of cocktails I have ever seen. Given we were booked on a jungle tour the next day, we took it relatively easy on the cocktails...

The jungle tour was a huge highlight of our trip. We got a jeep to a river bank about 3 hours outside Rurrenabaque where we were told we would be met by a guide to take us upstream by boat to a camp in the jungle. When we arrived our guide was no where to be seen. It seems he was lost and after an hour of not turning up someone left on a motorbike to find him while we were left to laze along the jungle riverbank and to wonder what type of guide where we getting if he was getting lost on the way to the riverbank!! That all changed however, when after an hour our guide arrived. Speeding along on the back of a motorbike he could have been a South American Indiana Jones - a tanned and weather beaten leathery face, large machete hanging by his side and missing a finger as a result of a alligator attack. He was the real deal and any lingering doubts we had evaporated!!

It was a great trip upstream to begin our 3 day trip in the jungle. We saw a huge amount of wildlife even before we reached our camp. But I have to say that the alligators seemed small - perhaps the result of watching too many Hollywood films where the alligator is usually the size of a car. It was great to go snake hunting and get to catch an Anaconda Cobra!! But the biggest thrill took place on the last night as we went alligator hunting by torchlight. We spent about 2 hours silently gliding downstream in the dead of night in a small boat looking for alligators. It was amazing to realise that the alligators are easy to spot as their eyes light up like amber jewels when torchlight crosses them. But that was only half the fun. Our guide announced we were to wrestle an alligator into the boat!! After a few failed attempts an alligator was cornered and after a bit of a struggle he was "wrestled" into the boat. Crazy experience!! It was a really interesting experience to actually hold and examine the alligator (before he was gently left back to the river). On the last day we were allowed to actually get into the river and swim around a little - the guide assuring us that it was "unlikely" that there were any snakes or alligators in that spot!! In fact we did come across some pink river dolphins. Not being a very good swimmer I was more concerned about staying afloat than getting bitten!!

There is no other way to put it, Bolivia is a mad country and you actually need to relax and realise that nothing really works as you would expect. Everyone seems so laid back as to be practically horizontal. Buses usually go when stated but sometimes they are not bothered and just don´t leave at all. In a cafe if you order a coffee, be prepared to wait at least 15mins before they arrive back to you (even if you are the only person in the cafe). If you order a coffee and an orange juice, you will get your coffee after 15mins but you will never get the orange juice!! Though it must be said that you never get the feeling they are not bothering because you are a gringo, it seems that there are just not that bothered in general and enjoy taking life very easy indeed!! But there is an air of apathy that is sometimes hard to reconcile with the poverty here. One girl we met told us how she had gone to the market to buy some oranges, a woman was selling 4 oranges so the girl said she would take them all, the woman would only sell her 2 as she explained "what would l do for the rest of the day". All in all, we have had a fascinating time here and really enjoyed hanging out in Bolivia. It also feels as if we have travelled the entire country squashed into the back of a van!!

After all out excitement on the Salt Plains, La Paz and the Jungle we decided to take it easy and head to Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca and on the border to Peru. Despite sharing its name with the club in the Barry Mannilow song, It ain't "the hottest night spot north of Havana" but instead is a sleepy little town perfect to hang out in for a few days. We spent most of the time swinging in hammocks overlooking the lake and reading books. The only interruption coming from the occasional sheep wandering around.

Next stop Peru

Dave

---