Buenos Aires to Bolivia

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Our footsteps
Casey and Tanya Arriving in BA, finding our hostel had lost our booking for the first night
was a crap start, no great drama though as we were able to find
accommodation next door for the night. We had just come in from Iguazu Falls
having been able to find a $50 flight each to avoid a 14 hour bus trip,
which we were both more than happy about.

STEAKS in Argentina......WOW in the first 3 days in BA we had steak 6
times....I thought I had died and gone to heaven, Tanya on the other hand
kept telling me that girls can't digest meat as fast as guys can.....and
hence her refusal to have it for a 7th time in a row!

Well BA was first class, had a humongous group of friends going by the time
we left. Ciaran, Celine and Lisa, the mad Irish 3 that we had met up at the
Falls were in town which meant a lot of very late nights out, right from the
start. BA is a party town and Millhouse, the hostel we were staying at is
where it all starts, something going on everynight until around 1am when
everyone heads out and hits the clubs (all 160 people or so that stay each
night).

BA was all about getting up at around 11am, doing a little something during
the day, but ensuring you're home by 3pm for a siesta, wake up around
7pm-ish, an hour or so to get ready and head out for some great food
(normaly steak) with a bunch of friends. Back to the hostel around 10-ish
have a few drinks, normally a few champagnes or more, and head out to the
clubs anywhere between 1am to 3am......back home by 10am to do it again.

Hard to describe BA, we really enjoyed it, planted our feet for 15 days -
was really nice....actually unpacked properly, did not have to change rooms
or anything silly like that, just relaxed and not try to cram things into
each day. On one of the Sundays we visited the mother of all markets,
probably measured at least 5 square city blocks with antiques, chandeliers
and bizarre stuff from who knows where was being sold and some tremendous
street side food stalls.

Actually went and watched a couple of movies while there, very funny stuff,
being shown on the old 1960s screens that are concave that were used for the
old 3 tube projectors. Well they updated the projectors but not the screens,
so everyone on the edges of the screen gets really tall and skinny.

Walked and walked and walked in BA, we saw botanical gardens which are
where members of the public who do not want their cats any more are more
than welcome to come and dump them, the gardens are full of over 400 cats
they say.

Went with our Irish buddies to take in one of the famous Tango shows, not
just a regular Tango show mind you, but a Jazz/Tango show.....sensational
show, the jazz band was one of the most famous in South America and they
rocked, and choreographed strangely well with the dancers...Fantastic
performance. After the show we tried our feet at Tango lessons in the hostel
which was a crack..... just like old times at salsa!!!

Did a few tours around town...into La Boca, the world famous bizarrely
colourful street with Tango dancers at every restaurant, the virtual prison
Boca statium...where Maradona paid more than US2m for a private box a few
years ago. More barbed wire and fencing than most super max prisons.
>Other than that not to much to report about BA, the clubs are
first-rate....food is second to none, as was the wine and champagne and a
real cultured colonial/European feel about the place.

Flew for AU$45 to Santiago from BA after one last (or maybe a few) big
nights out.....Arrived around 6pm at night and went on a mission for Chinese
for dinner....funny the things you miss when travelling.....found one with
beef and black bean and fried rice - we were both very content. Tried doing
a bit of sight seeing the next day but Santiago is quite crap really, and
neither of us were really feeling up for it, so with my birthday the next
day we checked out of our $20 a night hostel and checked into the 5 star
Crown Plaza. My God I have never been so happy in my life to walk into a
hotel room. Our own TV....! More than one pillow, our own shower & bath (and
it's clean!) and best of all no Americans watching the Academy Awards
outside our door until 4am!

It was bliss....had room service dinner, breakfast and lunch....never left
the room after we arrived....Hotel car to the airport the next day and we
were gone....Santiago mmm would comment but really didn't see it......did
not mind though.

Flew into Calama right at the top of Chile, home to the world's largest
open cut mine....got an mini bus down to San Pedro straight from the airport
and an hour and bit later we arrived into the funkiest weirdest little
tourist town you have ever seen. Obviously being in the countryside of
Chile, technology is not quite up with the times and that made it even
better. Every building in town is made of mud and not a spec of concrete or
bitumen is to be seen. San Pedro has been on the map for only 8 years or so
as it became a back-backers' gateway into Bolivia from Chile, hence almost
overnight this sleepy little town has transformed itself into a backpacker
Mecca.......somehow either by default or on purpose though it has kept its
old style South American charm....
Dinner each night was around an open fire at various restaurants along the
main strip....

Surrounded by some truly weird and wonderful landscapes such as the "Valley
of the Moon" which really did kinda resemble the moon, we went here to check
out the sunset on the second night as it is truly dazzling looking out over
the desert and watching the colour of the volcanoes in the background turn
from red to blue to green.....

Took a couple of full day tours, as it's really the only way to see stuff
around the area. Headed down south to a salt lake full of pink flamingos and
walked around on a very bizarre salt lake, which was far from flat, almost
moving under foot - all sorts of different minerals are fighting to get to
the surface creating a multi-coloured surface pockmarked with holes.

On our travels the tour took us through endless miles of desert.....and I
mean endless until out of nowhere we arrived at an oasis village. Out of
this world......middle of the desert and there is a small creek coming down
from the Andes Mountains where the snow melts and creates this 300m wide
oasis around it. Literally miles upon miles of nothing, no vegetation
whatsoever and bang!!! there is this lush almost forest for a 600m strech,
supporting a small village and a few farming crops. Stopping in a few of
these villages was very intersting, seeing water management systems put in
place a few thousand years ago and families who have never left the area.
Completely self sufficient out there, make their own mud bricks for the
houses and grow all their own food. Mind blowing what one can survive
without, when you do not know what exists to start with.

Tatio Geysers one morning was an ordeal in itself. Dragged ourselves out of
bed at 4am, stood shivering cold outside the hostel for 25min waiting to get
picked up, finally embarking on the roughest bumpiest mini van journey you
have ever been on. At 4300m above sea level they are the highest in the
world and spectacular as we have never seen anything like it before.
Essentially a large flat valley containing countless blowholes blowing
steam, the eruptions are caused by the snow melting and flowing underground
until it comes in contact with the volcanic rock, causing it to build
pressure. The water is so high in mineral content they leave brightly
coloured streaks across the land.

Next morning we took off on our 4 day 3 night overland crossing into
Bolivia. Getting picked up in a bus with about 16 people on board for the 1
hour trip to the border, it's like a mini survivor episode. You have an hour
to figure out who's cool and who's not and who you could not stand to be
jammed into a 4x4 with for the next 4 days with....Forming alliances and
deals with each other we crossed the border into Bolivia and managed to end
up with a fantastic group of 6 some of whom we are still with today. Managed
to score a 4x4 that was built this decade which was a great start and took
off at 100km across the desert. First day was a fair amount of high speed
action zooming across the desert, stopping at various points for some pics,
pulling up at some more Geysers and jumping into a thermal pool just before
lunch was a nice start to the trip. Bubbling and hissing all around you and
you're sitting in the middle of it in a pool that's at about 36c....very
nice....no dancing girls though!!

First night Casey nearly died......sleeping at 4480m above sea level, head
pounding with altitude sickness, sleeping in the noisiest bed no more than 5
foot long with a half metre sag in the middle at 5c whilst 16 other farting,
snoring punters around us slept.....I tell you I was ready to die right
there and then.....counting the hours as they went by I managed no more than
30 min sleep in total.....funny thing though....get in a 4x4 next morning
going accross the desert in Bolivia and fall asleep.....what the?

Next couple of days did some more serious 4x4ing...into the rougher hillier
sections....landscape changing so often from one extreme to another, such a
diverse country. The last night was spent at the now famous "Salt Hotel" A
hotel constructed entirely of salt from the salt flats around it. The walls,
floor, chairs and tables are all made from blocks cut from the flats.
Rather novel. Went out on the flats and watched the sun set and headed back
to the hotel shortly followed by Casey's earliest night ever, in bed at 7pm
and had a much better sleep as we were now down to just 2900m....

Up next morning for sunrise and spent the rest of the morning playing around
taking weird pics of ourselves out in the white wilderness. Visited the
famous Cactus Island out in the middle of the white sea and saw the weirdest
thing we had ever seen.......thousands of cactus growing up to 12m tall
covering the island.....Tanya was in heaven with all the succulents
everywhere..... Spent a good 2 hours climbing all over the island before
heading off at 130km toward Uyuni across the remaining 65km of salt.
Finishing the tour via the train graveyard where most trains from around the
continent were sent for recycling up until 10 years or so ago....now turned
into one of the weirder tourist attractions....

At Uyuni where the tour dropped us, we had lunch, drank beer and jumped on
an overnight bus for Potosi with our new group of 7 we had been travelling
with the last 4 days.
Potosi was once the world's richest city above London and New York, rich from
silver. The Spanish started mining more than 400 years ago and although they are long gone the mining continues in much the same fashion as it once did.

The mine tour is the draw card for this town; it's one of the more
adventurous/dangerous tours you can do in this world. All dressed up in gum
boots and hard hats we headed to the miners' market where we were to buy
presents for the miners so they are more accepting of us in the mine. I left
for the Banos (toilet) for 2 min and came back and there is Tanya holding 5
sticks of dynamite and detonators...scary stuff. Also bought them juice and
alcohol which is deadly stuff at 95%......

Heading into the mine was insane....they say one should be left stunned
after the visit. In the pitch blackness in temperatures above 45c and at an
altitude of 4650m above, it is hard work for anyone let alone the workers.
The smell of noxious gases like arsenic, acetylene and asbestos is so strong
it knocks you off your feet. Terrible taste in the mouth.
Crawling on hands and knees through the most claustrophobic spaces, lowering
each other down holes hardly big enough to fit through - the entire group
was freaking. After an hour or so of "getting used to it" we arrived down on
level 4 and took a break with 4 of the workers. (There were no children in
the section we went into, but they start as young as 10 years old in the
mines and life expectancy given the conditions is no more than 20
years.....and you're dead from health failure almost guarantied) So the
alcohol we had bought as a gift was opened and mixed with juice and then
anounced that because it was a Friday that the entire bottle must be drunk
otherwise it is bad luck to the Gods of the mine for the coming week. So 30
min of sitting around 100m below the surface later we started our trip
up...half pissed in the dark, in a silver mine in Bolivia in South
America.......What the???

An experience like no other........there are no words for it......the
conditions are something that you read about in books not stuff that
actually happens now at this time. We will never complain about our jobs
again in our lives - that's for sure......! These men just work for the
money and then die...simple as that. We would never do it again but
appreciate what we saw....

Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That
way, when you criticise them, you're a mile away, and you have their shoes.

Please double click pics to view them as some of our comments only work in slideshow...cheers

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