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Published: March 11th 2009
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Tupiza
We travelled across the border at 6.30am and got tickets for the 7.00am bus to Tupiza. The bus was everything we expected it to be (we had warnings from Rich and Cath about the buses in Bolvia). This clapped out old thing arrived and was promptly packed to the rafters with people. There was no road so the four hour journey was pretty bumpy but on the plus side the scenery was amazing (we would have taken some phots but the windows were filthy.. as well as the seats!). The main reason for heading to Tupiza was to book onto the Salar De Uyuni salt flat tour but Tupiza is such a lovely little town, we were so pleased we choose to do the tour from there rather than Uyuni as we had a great couple of days.
We checked into a nice hotel and imediatley noticed how much cheaper Bolivia is compared to Argentina and Chile. Mark had been very keen to so some horse riding and we had read that Tupiza was a good place to do it as the surrounding scenery is very pretty and it is where Buch Casidy and the Sundance Kid met
their end. We booked a three hour horse ride and it was fantastic! I will let the photos do the talking but it was such a fun morning even if my horse was a bit greedy and wanted to stop for food every two minutes! Also she was a bit of a control freak and had to be the leader of the pack so after stopping to eat she would gallop to get to the front again - as an inexperienced rider I just held on tight and hoped for the best, much to Mark´s amusement!
Later that afternoon Tupiza was celebrating carnaval, it was the craziest carnaval we had ever been too. people danced through the strees to music all dressed up in brighly coloured traditional Bolivian clothing and as they went past the crowed pelted them with water balloons, shaving cream and water pistols! We were standing with a few other tourists to watch the carnaval and as a group of gringos we also became obvious targets for the kids as well, by the end of the day we were all soaked and covered in shaving cream, it was great fun! Although after having a couple of
Horse Ride in Tupiza
They made us wear the hats! beers at the festival we had our first taste of altitude sickness which left us both with a really bad headaches and light headiness. We decided that alcohol and altitude do not mix so a very sober couple of weeks were to follow.
Salar De Uyuni Tour
We left Tupiza the next morning for our four day three night tour of the Salar De Uyuni, we were in a Toyota Land Cruiser with three other girls for the trip (Nicki, Sinead and Elana). This tour is one of the absolute highlights of our whole trip, we had four days of such stunning scenery and took so many photos. Again the photos can do the talking.
Day 1 - We left the hotel and climbed for the whole day as we were going from just under 3000m to 4600m on day one which left us both suffering again from altitude sickness, which basically made us feel really weazy due to lack of oxygen. Luckily we had bought some pills to help and it was not bad enough to detract from the veiws out of the car window. On the Salar de Uyuni at the time of year that
we were there it is very hot during the day and very cold at night (down to -5) so we were very shocked to find our accomation on the first night had a broken window! They fixed it up with some cardboard but still we dressed up warm for bed. Socks, long johns, thermals, t-shirt, scarf, hat, sleeping bag and three blankets - check. Still cold - check! The room was really uncomfortable with just a concrete blocks and a couple of llama skins to sleep on, but in hindsight it was all part of the experience and we loved every minute of it.
Day 2 - was spent visiting lots of different lakes, laguna blanca (white lake), laguna verde (green lake), laguna amorillo (yellow lake) etc. They were all amazing and lived up to their names, we saw one red lake as well which is apparently the only one like it in the world. At each of the different lakes there were lots of flamingos which was amazing, they were so beautiful. Later that evening in place of a shower we took a dip in some hot springs, at an altitude of 5000m it was quite an experience.
The last stop for that day was to visit the geysers which were very cool but unfortunately my head gave out completely at geysers with a mix of the altitude and the sulphur (5000m is our altitude limit before it all goes to pot!), lucky for me we went back down to a comparitively low 4500m to sleep for the night which was much better.
Day 3 - we spent they day driving through the dessert, we stopped at the famous rock that is shaped liked a tree to take some photos and again were awed by the scenery, one way is snow capped mountains and the next way are red mountains it was very surreal. We stayed that night in a salt hotel which was really cool, it was lucky that our group got there first as we managed to bag the only double room (all the other rooms had 6/7 beds in like dorm rooms).
Day 4 - up early at 430am to catch the sunrise, the day was spent on the huge salt flat which neither of us have ever seen anything like before, it looked like snow and ice. The morning was spent taking
´crazy photos´which was good fun before finishing our trip in Uyuni (complete dive and we were glad to nab the last two tickets out of town) where we took an overnight bus to La Paz.
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