High and dry

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Bolivia

My rating: 6/10

Daily budget (travel, food and accommodation): USD $25 = 15 pounds

When: 28 October - 11 November 2012

Bases: Copacabana, La Paz, Sucre, Uyuni, San Pedro de Quemez, Huayllajara

Main sights: Isla del Sol, Juan de Vargas Costumbrista Museum, Litoral Museum, Murillo House, La Paz Cemetery, Cretaceous Park, House of Liberty, Train Cemetery, Uyuni Salt Flat, Galaxies Grotto, Devil Cave, Colorada Lagoon, Morning Sun geysers, Polquers thermal springs, Green Lagoon

Top 3 experiences:

1) Southwest Circuit
2) Day of the Dead at La Paz Cemetery
3) Sucre

Southwest Circuit

If truth be told, the Southwest Circuit is hands down the best thing about Bolivia. It´s a surreal, otherworldly region in which everything you thought you knew about lakes and lagoons and mountains is twisted and turned on its head. For many tourists, it´s the only reason they came to Bolivia in the first place. And I doubt anyone leaves disappointed.

The Southwest Circuit is the deceptively dull-sounding name for a 3-day tour of - yep, you´ve guessed it - south-west Bolivia. Basically, you just jump in the back of a 4x4 and get chauffered round a seemingly endless stream of eye-popping natural attractions.

First up is the Uyuni Salt Flat, the world´s biggest salt flat. Think of it as a giant seabed where all the water´s long since evaporated but tonnes of salt remain - a brilliant white landscape stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction.

It goes deep too, which is just as well really because there are several salt mines where locals dig up the stuff to produce agricultural products, the unlikeliest of building materials and even table salt. You´ll never look at the salt on your fish ´n´ chips in quite the same way again.

It´s also a great place to take some physics-defying photos. When it´s dry, the lack of landmarks means you can snap all sorts of impossible shots by painstakingly aligning objects in the foreground and background simultaneously (if you´ve got a better camera than me, that is...). When it´s wet, meanwhile, the horizon disappears completely and the ground becomes a perfect reflection of the sky. Very weird.

On our trip with Oasis Tours, we then took a slightly different route to the majority of the 4x4 tours to see a beautiful, out-of-the-way site called the Galaxies Grotto.

This tiny cave lay undiscovered till 2003, which gives some idea of how remote the region is, and it´s filled with delicate ancient corrals and algae that have effectively turned to stone because of the amount of calcium in the area. As a bonus, there´s also a pre-Inca cemetery and a stunning viewpoint over stony cacti and the salt flat nearby.

What else?

Well, there are half a dozen lagoons that each have their own unique characteristics. One´s bright red, another´s bright green (or brown if you´re unfortunate enough to visit on a still day like us), but they all share photogenic settings amid a huge variety of multi-coloured mountains. Why such strange colours? Because this part of Bolivia is one of the most mineral-rich areas in the world with the likes of magnesium, borax and lithium literally seeping out of the ground.

Oh, and there are bright pink flamingoes. Not just one or two, either, but thousands of them spread over three distinct species. As if there wasn´t enough colour already in this weird and wonderful desert.

What´s more, strange things are also going on beneath your feet. You can visit one of the world´s highest geyser basins where sulphorous vents discharge huge plumes of super-heated gas. It´s so hot here that the ground literally fizzes as you walk on it.

Of course, if it all gets too much, you can always relax in the hot tub - natural thermal springs are the perfect way to beat the traumatic icy mornings. Of if like us you´re heading over the border to Chile, the perfect way to sign off from Bolivia in style.

Day of the Dead at La Paz Cemetery

This one might sound a bit morbid but bear with me.

La Paz Cemetery is a place worth seeing at any time of the year because the Latin American tradition of storing ancestral remains in coffins above ground is given full expression here. There are what can only be described as apartment blocks of coffins onsite, with some of the grandest flats reserved for heroes of Bolivia´s various ill-fated wars. They don´t win many.

However, the cemetery really comes alive on the Day of the Dead, which runs annually from midday on 1 November to midday on 2 November (we visited on the latter). This is when the whole of Bolivia takes time out to visit their ancestors and graveyards are suddenly transformed into the busiest places in town.

I first heard about the Day of the Dead in relation to Mexico. There, the start of November is basically just one huge party where everyone celebrates the lives of their late relatives by trying to have as much fun as it´s humanly possible to have in a graveyard.

Yet as we soon found out, while the Day of the Dead exists throughout Latin America, it´s much more restrained down south. At La Paz Cemetery, silent contemplation is the order of the day with whole families showing up to calmly pay their respects to their ancestors.

A few make noisier tributes - we watched one band of schoolkids play the same bombastic tune at each of their relatives´ coffins in turn - but generally they just spend the time quietly tending to the graves. And bringing gifts they think the deceased would´ve liked, from sweets and beer to fresh bread with ever-so-slightly-sinister faces etched in icing.

The Day of the Dead is an event that´s totally unlike anything in Europe. To me, it seems strange to visit your ancestors so publicly in front of all your neighbours. But spending the day at La Paz Cemetery has hopefully given me a tiny bit more of an insight into how they do things very differently in Latin America.

Sucre

In general, Bolivian towns are not pretty places.

It´s true that many boast spectacular surroundings - Copacabana, for example, lies on the shores of Lake Titicaca while Uyuni´s horizon is filled with Andean mountains. But most of the streets and buildings themselves are distinctly uninspiring, giving off the impression that they could quite easily be torn down and replaced tomorrow without anyone batting an eyelid.

Sucre is different. Technically, it´s actually Bolivia´s capital city owing to a quirk of the constitution but the atmosphere of the place is a world away from the grimy hustle and bustle of the de facto capital, La Paz. Sucre is a university town with a laid-back, easygoing approach to life. And it´s incredibly pretty to boot.

This is where the influence of the Spanish feels at its strongest. There´s an impressive 16th century cathedral, as well as elegant churches, picturesque archways and leafy plazas. So leafy, in fact, that we saw noisy parrots taking up residence in the main square on more than one occasion. You can´t imagine anything like that happening in La Paz.

Admittedly, there´s not much to do in Sucre besides admiring the architecture. Yet after trudging through Bolivia´s catalogue of chaotic, half-finished towns, the prospect of taking an afternoon stroll in well-to-do Sucre suddenly becomes very appealing indeed.

Random facts:


• The world´s largest collection of dinosaur footprints can be visited on a day-trip from Sucre.
• Although Cusco in Peru was the capital city of the Inca empire, Bolivia can actually lay claim to being the place where it all began - legend has it that the first Incas appeared on tiny Isla del Sol in the Bolivian half of Lake Titicaca.
• The most productive silver mine in history is located next to Potosi. Rich Mountain has been churning out silver for 450 years and counting.


Impressions:

One of the main things I´ve learnt about myself from travelling is that I´m not a patient person.

On the contrary, I´m the sort of person who always wants to visit new places and try new things. Put me in the same old surroundings or - worse - make me stay still for long periods of time and I soon get restless. My way of thinking is, there´s always so much left to see and do in the world that you need to move at breakneck speed just to try and cram it all in.

So what´s all this got to do with Bolivia?

Well, I´ve got to be honest here. Me & Bolivia didn´t really click.

When you speak to fellow travellers, they have an alarming tendency to go all misty-eyed when Bolivia gets brought up as a topic of conversation. They´ll tell you it´s got a fascinating history, stunning scenery and dirt-cheap prices. All of which is true. But there are a couple of issues they don´t tell you about, either because they never encountered them or because they´re looking back with rose-tinted glasses.

The first is cultural. The altiplano - the high plateau region of south-west Bolivia - doesn´t really feel all that different to neighbouring parts of Peru, Chile and (at a guess) Argentina. If you look at a map of South America, this actually makes a lot of sense. South-west Boliva, south-east Peru, north-east Chile and north-west Argentina bear plenty of geographical similarities because the Andean plateau flattens out here, so I guess I shouldn´t be surprised that there are plenty of cultural similarities too.

Bolivia´s share of the Andes is characterised by lots of small highland villages and big mining towns, traditionally dressed locals and westernised out-of-towners, beautiful handmade textiles and cheap tourist-baiting tat. Which is great, except that when you´ve been lucky enough to spend 2 months in Peru´s share of the Andes, it all starts to feel a bit samey.

Interestingly, this seems to work both ways as well. We met people travelling in the opposite direction, from Bolivia to Peru, who felt distinctly underwhelmed by the Peruvian highlands because they´d basically seen all the same stuff in Bolivia. Maybe the Andes is one travel destination where less really is more.

Now you might think it´s a bit harsh for me to criticise Bolivia simply because I spent too long in Peru. And you´d be right. After all, if you were going to visit Bolivia, the fact I got my timings wrong wouldn´t affect your enjoyment of the place one little bit.

But my second issue with Bolivia is a much more fundamental one, and it might well affect you too. Altitude.

Visitors to Bolivia generally spend most, if not all, of their time in the altiplano. However, the altiplano is one of the world´s highest regions, and boasts several of the world´s highest human settlements (along with neighbouring Peru, Chile and Argentina, naturally).

Potosi is 4,070m above sea level while the silver mine everyone goes to visit is another kilometre up from that. Despite not really being a capital city at all, at 3,660m La Paz is routinely labelled the highest capital city in the world. And there´s another city overlooking La Paz, appropriately enough called El Alto or The Heights, which is higher still at 4,070m.

To put those figures into perspective, Britain´s tallest mountain is just 1,344m.

Speaking of Britain, the NHS warns that anyone hitting elevations of 2,500m or above runs the risk of getting altitude sickness. Turns out I´m one of them. Not the life-threatening kind, thankfully, just the energy-sapping, appetite-killing, soul-destroying kind.

The interesting thing about altitude sickness is that it´s still not fully understood who will be affected and why. We met pensioners and heavy smokers who didn´t suffer the slightest inconvenience, whereas me & my girlfriend are in our 20s, relatively fit and healthy, and we were both wiped out.

Altitude sickness is notoriously hard to pin down. It´s estimated that up to 20 per cent of people are susceptible even below 2,500m, though most will never know it. Whether or not you experience symptoms can also change over time - I could go on a trek in Nepal and be fine (though after Bolivia, I doubt I´ll ever put that to the test).

It´s not even all that obvious when you´ve got it. Some people suffer breathing difficulties, migraines and even vomiting fits, but for me it manifested itself in what I can only describe as an overwhelming sense of apathy. Apathy when the time came to eat, drink or even see some of the amazing things that Bolivia has to offer.

In fact, I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Sucre so much was simply that at a mere 2,750m above sea level, I could almost feel the energy coursing through my veins again. Talk about natural highs.

Acetazalomide, or altitude sickness medication, helps to some extent. But supposedly, the main way to sort yourself out is to spend a few days on arrival at each new elevation acclimatising and not much else. Having said that, we spent 6 weeks in and around Cusco and we still had problems so god knows how long it would´ve taken to acclimatise fully.

As I said earlier, I´m not a patient person. The prospect of spending day after day twiddling my thumbs waiting for my body to get up to speed doesn´t appeal. Particularly when the places I´m going to see are remarkably similar to the places I´ve seen already.

Bolivia has its moments. The Southwest Circuit is worth coming for on its own (and then some) while witnessing the Day of the Dead is a unique cultural experience. But on the whole, the country left me feeling flat.

To truly enjoy Bolivia, you need to take it slowly. And sadly that´s just not in my nature.

Next stop: Chile

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