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Published: June 17th 2011
We crossed the border in a shared taxi from Peru to Chile in the opposite direction from what we had done 2 month previously. We arrived into Arica and got dropped at the bus station at around 8pm. We didn’t want to spend any time here; we just wanted to get to Bolivia, but we knew the Chile Bolivia border was only open during daily light hours so we were expecting to find a cheap hostel to spend the night before catching a bus the next morning. A quick scout around the bus terminal showed us that there was a bus leaving at midnight. We didn’t know how it would be crossing the border in the early hours, but keen not to waste time and to save on a nights’ accommodation, we booked 2 tickets. We got completely ripped off when we exchanged our remaining Peruvian soles into Chilean pesos, meaning we then had to visit a cash point as well to take out £5 worth of pesos so we could afford to eat dinner, and the machine charged us £4 for the pleasure! This is not something we are going to miss about travelling! Anyway, we boarded a very old
looking bus, found our seats right next to the stinking toilet and were pleased to discover we were surrounded by smelly old men which tend to snore loudly all night long. First impressions weren’t great and things got worse when we started moving. They handed out blankets, but had run out by the time they got to us at the back, and the roads were horrendously bumpy and dusty and as the toilet smelt so bad the window was left open meaning we were struggling to breathe through the dust cloud that now hung in the back of the bus. Two hours in, we were freezing cold, everything we owned including us was covered in dust and sleep was not happening! At 3am the bus came to a stop, we had arrived at the border which doesn’t open until 8am. So we had 5 hours to try and kip on a very uncomfortable and freezing cold bus, soothed by the constant snoring from our neighbours. It was another of those moments when you think, was this really worth saving a few quid on a hostel for?! Eventually morning came and immigration was fairly straight forward (Bolivia doesn’t seem to care!)
and we were pleased when we pulled into La Paz bus terminal at midday – a lot sooner than we expected.
We jumped straight into a cab and requested to go to ‘Oliver’s Travels’ (Lonely Planet quote: ‘the worst or the best cultural experience in La Paz is to be had at this pub thanks to its typical English crowd, beer, football and food‘) The reason we were so keen to get there was that the Champions League Final was kicking off at 2.30pm and we wanted to see it. So we checked into a room opposite the pub (60 Bolivianos for a double room – about £5.20 – cheap!), rushed to drop our smelly Colca Canyon laundry in for a wash and headed to the pub where we ordered 2 beers and a BLT. We could have been anywhere in the world, the place was packed full of travellers, and the large majority were British. To our surprise, in walked a face we knew and not someone we’d met on the Gringo trail! Jenny Webb (nee Smith) was there with her husband Tim! It was great to see a fellow Frintonite and we spent the match catching up
and swapping travelling tips and stories. It really does feel like a small world - completely by chance that we were in the same spot at the same time, it makes you think how many of this moments do you miss out on in life by looking the wrong way or taking a different road or something.
La Paz sits at a breath taking 3660m above sea level, and we knew that altitude sickness was a real risk here. The advice we had been given was to eat lightly, drink lots of water and avoid alcohol – sensibly we started our stay with 3 large beers each during the football and then we couldn’t resist when we saw an Indian restaurant with the familiar name ‘The Star of India’. Unfortunately the service was slow and our eyes were bigger than our bellies so we went to bed later that night feeling rather uncomfortably full and Laura had a growing headache, possibly a result of the altitude or our ignorance of the advice we’d been offered!
We had a lazy morning the next day to recover from our terrible bus journey and watched the Monaco Grand Prix in bed.
We had a quick lunch before heading to the Museo de la Coca, it cost less than a £1 to enter and we were given a 30 page booklet in English to translate the information as we wandered around. It started a bit repetitively given that we already knew a fair bit about coca leaves from the Inca trail, but it got more interesting when it went on to talk about Bolivia’s cocaine production and facts like how coca cola used to contain cocaine! We left the museum and went to book onto a tour down the infamous Death Road. This is basically 64km downhill bike ride along what has become known as the world’s most dangerous road (due to number of vehicles that disappear over the cliffs and cyclists that have lost their lives here). Safety is obviously a big issue and the tour companies cash in on offering a range of bikes from single to full suspension and charging you accordingly. For us near the end of our trip, money is tight, so we set off to find the most reasonable deal – i.e. the cheapest! We ended up booking the tour for 290B and we met people
that paid 700+! We spent the rest of the day wandering around the Mercado de Hechiceria (Witches Market) where you can buy all sorts of delights such as dried llama foetuses which you are supposed to bury under the porch of a new home to bring you good luck. There was also a huge arrange of touristy shops selling typical South American crafts at cheaper prices than anywhere else we had been. Wandering about La Paz is very tiring, its built on a steep hill, and even walking up a stair case at this altitude leaves you breathless! We returned to our room for a rest and only ventured out again to eat dinner – a Mexican, and very nice it was too (we weren’t overly keen to sample traditional Bolivian food; first impressions were that hygiene is not high on their agenda!)
After an early night we got up and made our way to our tour meeting point for the 7am breakfast. We met the 10 other cyclists as we ate and palled up with an English guy called Mick on his gap year. We were each issued with a helmet, sexy coat, trousers and gloves and boy
did we need them! We were then driven up to the start at La Cumbre at a chilly 4960m where our bikes were taken off the roof rack and issued according to how much money you had spent! A quick safety talk and we were off for a 5 minute practice stint to get used to the bike. Strangely the brakes were the opposite way round to what we have at home. For the first hour we rode on tarmac roads which were used by a fair bit of local traffic. Dan soon found himself whizzing along at the front of the group and racing with Mick and the Germans, whilst Laura opted for the slow and steady approach towards the back. The scenery was stunning, but it was a little unnerving passing lots of memorials with fresh flowers of the people who had lost their lives on this road. After an hour ‘cycling’ (we’d barely pedalled at all!) we were given a quick snack, and then it was back into the van to drive the 15 minutes uphill (very kind!) before we started the real scary bit! For the next 3 hours, we were riding on single track unmade
gravel roads with sheer drops down into the valley. The scenery here was very different – more jungle, but still stunning with the clouds hanging below the mountain tops. We took off some of our layers before we set off again, and it was brilliant fun! Laura got closer and closer to the back of the group until it was just her and guide, whilst Dan was practically leading at the front! The downside of the cheapness of our tour was the fact we only had single suspension bikes – this didn’t make for a very comfortable ride! We stopped several times for photographs and to give our bones a rest from the shaking – we both developed blisters on our hands even with gloves on! We passed through a couple of small waterfalls and rivers towards the end of the tour, but being at a much lower altitude, we soon dried off. In total we were on the bikes for about 4 hours and we reckon we only had to pedal about 100 times to cover the 64km!! It was brilliant fun and a real adrenalin rush – if you go to La Paz you have to do the
tour. But a word of warning, it really is dangerous – Jenny Webb did it the day after us, and a Japanese guy in the group in front sadly died. We enjoyed a nice lunch by a swimming pool where we got thoroughly attacked by biting flies before we begun the long journey back up to La Cumbre and down into La Paz. Bus travel in Bolivia isn’t comfortable and we were really glad when we were finally able to get off, go home and shower! We treated ourselves to a bottle of Argentinean Malbec that night and had a lovely meal where we enjoyed watching a duo perform live traditional music on Spanish guitars. It was great, until we went home and we could still hear one of the men banging away on his cow bell until the wee hours! A brilliant day – one of the best things we have done since we’ve been away!
We spent one last day in La Paz before we caught a night bus out of there. We did some more shopping in the markets, and visited the view point Mirador Laikakora which was unfortunately closed for some reason. We had to
laugh when we saw people dressed up as zebras stopping the traffic and helping people to cross the road! What a great way to ease unemployment! We decided to wander back to our hostel via the prison called San Pedro which was made somewhat famous by the book called ‘Marching Powder’ (which we still haven’t been able to get our hands on despite being told it would be everywhere in South America!) We had heard that you used to be able to take tours, but this had been stopped and Naomi and Steve confirmed that they weren’t able to go in when they had a tried a couple of months back. We literally just wanted to take a photograph and head back, but as we approached, a guy came up and introduced himself as Dave from New York. He said if we wanted to go into the prison we need to get a form from the police station, we said thanks but no, and went to sit in the plaza. Dave found us a little later and sat down for a chat. Turns out he has spent 12 years in San Pedro for drug smuggling, and he has 2 weeks
left before he is released, so they are letting him out each day to slow integrate him back into society and he has the job of trying to recruit tourists for the tour. We were keen to go in and see what it was like, but firstly we didn’t want to take our passports etc in which we had on us, and secondly we only had an hour until we had to be at the bus station and the tour takes 2. Dave explained to us that San Pedro is like a city within a city; the drug barons pay to live in plush condos and can pay the guards 200 USD to come out for the day. Wives and kids are allowed to come and stay! There have been 2 escapes from the prison, the first were Vietnam war survivors who used bed sheets to climb over the walls and the second was a wealthy American inmate who paid off a guard 30,000 USD and walked out the front door as if he were a tourist; the guard was arrested and incarcerated the next day for trying to use counterfeit bills! A while back, they took 300 murderers and
moved then to a more secure prison, so now San Pedro is quite a nice place to do your time! But they are threatening to close it so the inmates all had hunger strike! For the first 2 years of Dave’s prison sentence he said he was nearly killed and he showed us some horrific scars on his head, elbow and knees. It was really interesting listening to real life prison tales. At the end of our chat, Dave asked if he could tell us a joke and if we liked it, we buy him some soup from a street vendor. So we gave him 10B (less than £1) and he went off on his way. 5 minutes later he came back around and suspiciously told us they had run out of soup, hmmm. We didn’t get to do the tour which was a shame, but we left the plaza feeling a little more educated and like our 10B had been well spent no matter what it was later spent on. We will definitely read the book when we get home.
We caught a night bus out of La Paz and it took a very chilly 11 hours to
get us to Uyuni. Sleeping on buses in Bolivia is incredibly difficult, the second half of the journey felt like being pushed down a dirt track in a shopping trolley! We were dropped at 6am on a road in the pitch black and luckily met by several touts trying to sell us their salt flat tours – the reason we had come to the climatically challenged Uyuni with sits at 3669m. We went with the guy who owned the nearest agency and were glad to sit in a warm place. We sheltered here for an hour before deciding we should shop around for prices and leaving – good move, we found the exact same tour for cheaper, so we booked it up and had a couple of hours to kill before we set off at 10am. That’s all the time you really want to spend in Uyuni – there’s nothing there. We met our fellow 4x4 jeep buddies – an English expat (Rich), an American from Hawaii (Jamie), and a Slovakian couple (Miro and Reneta) – a good group who all spoke English, hurray. Unfortunately we then met our ‘guide’ Nelson, who didn’t speak any English (that we heard) and
he in fact turned out to be more of a driver than our promised tour guide. We got on the road and after only 30 minutes of travel, we had stopped due to a flat tyre! Nelson set about fixing it and left us all feeling slightly worried that this now meant we didn’t have a spare for the 3 day trip! We got moving again fairly quickly before stopping at a town called San Cristobal located totally in the middle of nowhere. We bought a few over priced treats before moving on to our first lunch stop, which was also conveniently located in a town far far away from civilization, we really did wonder how people survived here! At first we weren’t sure whether it was llama or beef, although we knew it was over cooked! Not bad food, but certainly not up to the standards we received on the Inca trek. We ate with the other car load of people we were travelling in convoy with, without being rude we were very glad we got the group we did! It wasn’t long after lunch before we turned off the unmade ‘road’ and headed into the unknown. It started
to get a bit exciting as we ventured through streams and over bumpy sections of the desert like landscape, which didn’t help the comfort levels - we made the mistake of sitting in the back seat which afforded very little leg room! Our next stop was as some extraordinary rock formations that seemed very out of place. It was fascinating to see the different unusual shapes. We learnt they were a result of a volcanic explosion. Nelson our ‘guide’ unfortunately couldn’t tell us any more than that! Dan took the opportunity to do some rock climbing and we both took loads of pictures. Our group was doing the entire 3 day trip in reverse so that we could watch the sun rise over the salar on the final day. This was a good thing, but it did mean we were covering a lot of miles on day one. So we swiftly moved on to travel the great distance we had to cover. We stopped at a point overlooking a lake where we had a great view of the mountains with some very cool clouds above! It looked spectacular as the sun set causing the sky to turn a big array
of pretty colours. As darkness fell we arrived at our first hostel, boy it was cold! It was painful to peel some layers off to put more on, but it had to be done (these were the same clothes that we had put on yesterday morning and slept on the bus in! Nice!) Our group was getting on very well, chatting and swapping stories as we settled into our 6 bed dorm before playing some cards and drinking tea to warm up. Dinner consisted of soup, pasta and pineapple (not served together thankfully). They eventually opened the bar to us after much asking and we bought some wine and beers and sat around until they literally turned the lights off on us at 10pm! Time for bed, we were all looking forward to climbing under the many blankets and warming up (no clothes were removed before this happened, including hats and gloves!) Apparently it reached minus 15 degrees during the night but luckily we couldn’t tell under all our clothes and blankets.
At 6am, we had a quick breakfast before we made our way to the 4x4 nice and early, it was certainly fresh and no one had the
courage to try the showers (same pants for the 3rd day in a row! Lovely!) Our first stop was at Sol de Manana geysers basin which sits at a breath taking 4950m! Very impressive and a strong eggy smelly of sulphur! You could literally see mud bubbling away and the ground cracking. We then drove a fair way in the jeep and it begun to lightly snow – something we haven’t experienced in a long long time! We pulled up at Lake Verde – stunning, although not very green. We went for a walk around the lake and we amazed when the wind blew and you literally saw the lake change to an emerald green. The friction from the wind stirs up sediments containing copper and lead minerals which turn the lake green! The lake it located at the base of Volcan Licancabur (5930m) – we had seen this before whilst in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile – it literally sits on the border. We drove back past the Valle de Dali, Nelson’s words ‘they are rocks’ and we guessed that they are named after a Salvador Dali sculpture due to their unusual shaping. It was still fascinating, despite
the lack of explanations which was a bit of a shame. It was then finally time to peel off the clothes (a painful experience) as we reached the Termas de Polques hot springs. It was a relaxing morning dip at 4200m and 30oC and nice to sit in the pool in a completely natural setting – our best hot springs yet! Luckily neither of us suffered at all with the altitude, we met lots of people that did. Finally feeling slightly cleaner, we set off back to the hostel for a quick lunch, before hitting the road once more. It was a long journey to the stone tree – pretty self explanatory and this was the first time that we encountered lots of other tour groups who were heading the other way. The assured us we were heading to warmer places, but it was very hard to believe them... it was freezing! Next we stopped at Laguna Colorado which was bright adobe red and had lots of flamingos standing in it! We thought they were tropical birds! Unfortunately they were quite far out, but instead we got to photograph some friendly woolly llamas. We drove for miles and stopped at
3 other Lagunas called Hedionda, Chiarkota and Canapa. We opted for photographing the last of these from the car; we were too cold to go outside any more than was necessary! We also drove past an active volcano – smoking away, we think it was called Volcan Ollague, but again Nelson wasn’t very forth coming with any such useful information – the 6 of us were now taking it in turns to read bits out of the Lonely Planet to help educate each other! We did manage to get out of Nelson that it would be an hour’s drive more before we arrived at our salt hotel for the night. We enjoyed another beautiful sunset and had to laugh when the other jeep picked up a hitch hiker who instantly climbed onto the roof before being let into the warmer car. Goodness knows what he was doing in the middle of nowhere, but we soon dropped him off once more in an equally desolate location! It was now pitch black and we had been driving a lot further than expected. It soon became apparent that Nelson was in fact a bit lost! We were driving across the salar (salt flat)
by this point so there were no clear road markings or lights in sight. We were all in good spirits laughing at our somewhat desperate situation, we were especially glad that we weren’t in the other jeep at this point or we might have just got angry. After lots of driving and several stop offs for the drivers to confer, we saw 2 lights in the distance! Hooray! It took a long time before they seemed to get any nearer, but eventually we pulled into a small town. It took a further 10 minutes of driving around the block for them to find the salt hotel. We were instructed to sit in the jeep while our ‘guides’ went in. The quickly returned – the hotel was full! Perfect! We tried to find another one, which lead to us driving back out of town – our smiles begun to fade and tempers started to rise slightly (not helped by the need for the toilet!) The drivers had no idea where they were going! We did manage to find the 2nd salt hotel, but this one was apparently too expensive for us – we found out it was £1.50 over budget. Next
they pulled us up at a deserted building with smashed windows and no furniture! We really did begin to think we would be spending the night in the jeep! Finally at about 9pm, we found a normal hostel that was basic, but had space and was in budget! We were served dinner at 10pm and enjoyed several bottles of red wine (Bolivian wine isn’t as bad as you might think). We were asked if we still wanted to get up to watch the sun rise as it was already so late, and given that this was the whole reason we were doing the tour in reverse which had caused these problems, we all agreed we would still get up. Nelson looked quite disappointed by our enthusiasm as it meant a 4.30am start!
We got a few hours kip before the alarm went early (not bright but pitch black!) We’d left by 5 and tried to have a nap in the jeep but driving on a salar isn’t smooth, unsurprisingly. By 6am we had arrived at the Salar de Uyuni (the world’s largest salt flat at 10582km2) where we shared a group breakfast beer – one we’d left over from
the night before. Nelson wasn’t keen to drive further for us to watch the sunrise over the water, citing all sort of ridiculous excuses about one-way roads, but eventually Rich and Miro used their Spanish to good effect and we got the spot we wanted. The sunrise was a very magical and special experience. Dan watched most of it from the roof of the jeep. The scenery was so incredible, we were surrounded by mountains on all sides, the ground was made of a salt crust which resembled snow and has incredible flatness, and a huge part of the salar was covered in a thin layer of water which made for perfect reflections of the surrounding landscape. It was well worth the early start and we took a lot of photographs. One of the best moments of our travelling – very special. Nelson then broke the ‘salar highway code’ by driving us back down the ‘one way street’ to a lovely salt hotel (like what we were meant to sleep in the previous night) for breakfast. Everything is made out of salt bricks, including the table, chairs and bed bases! Very cool. Once we were fed and back into the
jeep once more, we began a long drive across the Salar de Uyuni, through the shallow waters. It was like being in a dream, you honestly couldn’t see where the lake finished and the sky started, everything was just blue and white (the clouds and their reflections). The photographs just don’t do it justice, we were in complete awe – the most incredible thing we have seen to date and probably will ever see. Nelson was as useless as ever but we do know a little about how the salt flat was formed: During uplift of the Andes Mountains, a high plateau was created. Some 30,000 – 42,000 years ago the area was a giant prehistoric salt lake called Lake Minchin. Over time most of the water evaporated, leaving behind 2 huge salt deserts and 2 small lakes (Poopo and Uru Uru). During the wet season, Lake Titicaca on the Peru/Bolivia border overflows and discharges water into Lake Poopo which floods the salar. The salt crust which covers the area has a range of thicknesses varying between 10cm to a 11 meters. Geography lesson over. We eventually passed from the flooded section to the dry where we were able to
get out of the jeep and spend a long time playing taking lots of silly photos. The flatness of the area is great for taking photos where you can play with the perspective. We had great fun lining up photographs where it looks like we are holding someone in our hands and walking on a tight rope (this became very tricky when we tried to get our group of 6 all lined up!) The salt wasn’t so good for your clothes and certainly not beneficial to our poor camera - a Brazilian girl we’d asked to take a photo put it screen down onto the salt! This didn’t help our love for the other jeep! We drove further along the flat surface until we reached Isla del Pescado, an island in the middle of the salar which stuck out like a sore thumb! This hill of an island was covered in huge Trichoreus cactuses – a real contrast to the surrounding white desert. We had to pay a small entrance fee which allowed us to wander around the 1km long Isla using up the last of the camera batteries on the scenery and a pair of frisky llamas which made
us laugh! (Yes very mature!) We drove on and stopped for lunch at another salt hotel – this one was built right on the salar – goodness knows how it got planning permission. It looked great but we all felt it should be removed to preserve the environmental conditions of this unique landscape. On our drive off the salar, which pass a section which was being mined by the locals. They had shovelled the salt into neat piles which were then collected in a truck and driven to the salt processing factory. The final stop of the tour was at a train cemetery – Thomas the tank engines worst nightmare! Uyuni used to be a distribution hub for trains carrying minerals on route to the Pacific Ocean ports, until the mining industry collapsed in the 1940s and the trains were abandoned creating the cemetery. We took a few snaps, but rusty trains aren’t really our thing, it seems liked a strange way to end a day of seeing some of the most incredible natural beauty.
Nelson dropped us back at the tour operators in Uyuni and the first thing we did was book a bus out of there, we
really weren’t keen on wasting a night in this town. The bus left at 8pm, which gave us just enough time to swap details with our new friends, check the internet, collect our bags and have some dinner. The people from the other jeep were complaining, a lot and not getting anywhere. We weren’t pleased with the service the company had provided, but we’d love the things we’d seen and we’d had a great time so decided we wouldn’t moan, plus it wouldn’t get us anywhere, customer service in Bolivia is none existent. Instead we decided we would warn other travellers off the agency by posting about them on forums and blogs. So if you decided to book to do the salt flats tour in Bolivia, we would strongly recommend that you avoid ‘Latitude’ tour company! You have been warned!
We were the only gringos (tourists) on the bus which was so full of locals that they were sitting on the floors and standing in the aisles. We saw how many blankets they were all carrying and immediately panicked that we were in for another freezing night of bus travel. We were therefore pleasantly surprised when the bus turned
out to have some heating, and we arrived at our destination, Tupiza before 1am - we expected it to be 3am. We found a taxi and drove a short way to the highly recommended Hotel Mitru. We needed a good shower and a comfortable bed. None of the cheaper shared bathroom rooms were available so we had to pay a little more, but given the late hour we didn’t have a lot of choice. We were glad we had splashed the cash, the room was nice, the shower had reliable hot water (a real luxury which is quite uncommon in our South American experience) and the beds were comfy! Breakfast was also included in the price, and the next morning we were thrilled to see the selection of cereal, fruits, egg, bread, crackers, yoghurt, jams, teas etc. We decided we would fill up now and skip lunch to make up for the more expensive than planned accommodation! It turned out we had arrive in Tupiza on its 400th anniversary. By the time we ventured out of the hostel a huge parade was in full swing and the town was heaving with locals. Under Tupiza in the Lonely Planet it says
‘if every there’s a place where you want to throw your leg over a horse, brandish spurs and say ‘ride ‘em cowboy,’ this is it.’ So that what we thought we’d do!
Dan wasn’t so keen on the horse riding idea, but Laura’s enthusiasm meant he went along with it (especially when we learned how cheap it was!) When we booked our 3 hour trip, we enquired about safety, specifically if we would have a helmet, to which we were told yes. At 2pm, we left the hostel and met our horses and guide. Dan was feeling slightly nervous by this point! We were given leg protectors and a cow boys hat each – fat lot of good that would do in protecting our skulls! Anyway, we mounted our horses and were given a quick lesson in how to make the horse move and stop – this was all in Spanish but we got the gist. Dan’s horse immediately played up a bit, so our guide swapped him from the white horse to the ‘cow horse’ (black and white). Three minutes into our trip and we were happily walking along an old railway track when a dog starts barking
loudly. Laura’s horse gets scared and starts to divert across the railway and the road. We weren’t really shown how to steer the horse, so Laura just assumed the guide would come and put us back on the right path. The horse had other ideas though. The dog had spooked it so much that as soon as we were across the road, it begun to gallop up a side track. Having not ridden a horse since she was about 7 years old, Laura soon lost her gripping – her feet slipped right through both stirrups and she only had hold of one side of the reins meaning that her desperate attempts at pulling the horse to a stop just weren’t working! Dan could do nothing but watch as Laura and the runaway horse galloped off into the distance with Laura shouting nooooooooo! The horse turned off the track and into a field, Laura still clinging on for dear life, and then suddenly it’s heading for another field with a fence separating them. The horse leaps over the fence and finally comes to a stop with a quivering Laura still sat on its back. Laura leaped off thankful to be alive
still (all she could think about was an old episode of ‘Home and Away’ where a girl gets thrown off a horse and breaks her back – not something you want to do anywhere, but especially not Bolivia!!) and Dan and the guide trot calmly along, Dan laughing his head off and the guide looking very worried and trying to calm Laura down! Eventually once Laura’s heart had slowed somewhat and the scaredy cat horse had been put on a lead to the guide, we set off once more. Our roles had switched, Laura now sat petrified and hating it whilst Dan found his confidence and was happily riding along on his own! The horses took us deep into the Canon del Inca, it really felt like we were in the wild wild west – you couldn’t imagine a more different landscape from what we had seen only yesterday at the salar. The 3 hours past fairly quickly, although perhaps not quick enough for Laura who’s horse riding career is officially over! We had to walk back to the hotel for a lie down! That evening we went to a restaurant (a Lonely Planet ‘our pick’) called Alamos. We were
lucky to get one of the last tables. We ordered from the incredibly cheap menu and had to wait a long time for the food to arrive. It was nice, but they are sort of a victim of their own success, they turned away more people than they seated as they are popular with both backpackers and the locals. Still £2.50 for us both to eat out, aint half bad!
We spent a second night at the Hotel Mitru (shame it wasn’t summer or we could have used their swimming pool) and after another all you can eat breakfast, we headed to the bus station. The buses weren’t running as advertised – maybe because it was a Sunday, or maybe because of the celebrations, so we had to wait a while for the next bus to take us to the border town of Villazon 2 hours south. We arrived, spent the last of our Bolivianos on snacks and then crossed the Bolivia Argentina border on foot.
Just as we seem to end every blog we have written... we would love to have spent longer in Bolivia. We only spent 8 days there, but they were some of the
best days of our entire trip away (as you can probably tell from the extra long blog). We both agree that the 3 day salt flats tour is THE best thing we have done during our 9 months, and the Death Road excursion is up there in our top 10 (surprisingly not the horses though!) Despite being the poorest of all the South American countries and the hemispheres highest, most isolated and rugged nation, we loved it, and will definitely be returning to visit the many places we didn’t get to fit into this trip. But for now, we sadly enter our last of 16 countries..... Argentina.
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karen
non-member comment
stunning scenery
this was the blog id got really hooked on when you told us about salt flats incredible photos think you should enter a competition with them brilliant, the horse bit was well..........