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Published: August 1st 2008
Copacabana
Sunset over Lake TiticacaOur first stop in Bolivia was Copacabana on the shores of lake Titicaca. We found a really cool hostel, set on the hillside over looking the lake. Aside from the view the best thing was that the rooms had heaters and the showers had hot water, a rarity in this part of the world! We decided to stay for a few days. It’s quite chilled out, not much to do but we met an Irish and a Kiwi couple who we later spent a couple of weeks travelling with. So I caught up on some reading and sitting around and Steve went over for a day trip to the Isla del Sol with a few people from the hostel to see the sights.
From Copacabana we took the car ferry - check out the photo, over the lake and headed on down to La Paz - the highest capital city in the world apparently. Incredible views as you drive into it. La Paz is situated in a large crater surrounded by huge mountains. Everywhere you stand in town you can see the snow capped peaks. It sits at around 3000 to 4000 meters.
The hostel we had picked
Bolivia
Crossing the lake. It ain't no Woolwich Ferry I tell ya! was more like a student union bar and we were the oldest people there by about 10 years! But again the room was clean and the water hot. From there we (Steve) decided we should mountain bike down ‘The Worlds Most Dangerous Road’ from La Paz to Coroico, it descends from about 4900 meters to about 2600 in a couple of miles then turns into a one lane gravel road with a sheer drop to one side at some points up to 600 feet! We’d heard some good stories and some not so good stories about this during our trip from other people, but we thought as long as we were sensible it would be fine. Anyway despite all the horror stories it was brilliant. The first 20km or so are on just a regular road, which I thought was the most dangerous because of the speed that everyone was going. I spent most of this part of the day at the back of the line and thought at one point the instructor was going to make me get back on the bus for being too slow. But when we actually got onto the death road I managed to keep
La Paz
Anyone for Llama foetus? up, even though was the only one to get a flat tyre. It rained for pretty much the whole day and we were head to toe covered in mud by the time we got to the bottom, but pretty pleased with ourselves nonetheless.
The bottom had an animal sanctuary and hot showers and some food. It was a place where volunteers looked after badly treated or abandoned animals, where monkeys and puppy’s lived side by side?! Then it was off for a 3 hour bus journey back to La Paz, far scarier than the mountain biking.
La Paz is a busy bustling city with lots of markets and people selling hooky dvd's on street corners. One market called the Witches Market sold all number of potions and poltices including dried llama feotus! The food in Bolivia was however not as interesting, we were there for three nights and had a fried breakfast and fish and chips in the English Pub, Alpaca curry at the local Indian and ham and cheese toasties at the hostel. I think all the foreign muck was just getting to us.
We then decided to head toward the Salt Flats in Uyuni for
Bolivia
The coldest bus journey ever. a three day jeep tour that would end with us arriving into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. The Irish and Kiwi couple we met were also going that way and headed on before us to book a tour.
Steve and I couldn’t book our first choice (a train) to Uyuni and ended up on the ‘not so first class’ tourist bus. We had heard that this was one of the worst bus journeys to do in South America because the condition of the roads is so bad, plus the locals had been setting up road blocks throughout Bolivia so we were less that looking forward to it.
The journey took eleven hours, the first five or so were fine and we were wondering what at the fuss was about, then the driver went off roading and for the next four or five hours we were being thrown around the bus - if you can imagine one of those weight loss machines where you wrap the belt around your waist and it shakes, well imagine that a whole bus does it, that’s what the bus journey was like like! It was torturous and the bus had no heating whatsoever AND it
Salt hotel
Can you believe they didn't have salt on the table at dinner time?! was freezing outside. When we finally arrived Steve went to wipe the window so we could see out and there was ice on the inside of the bus! We eventually made it to Uyuni in one piece and met up with our friends to start our trip of the salt flats.
Day one - we were loaded onto the jeep with our driver, guide and cook (same guy!) and headed for the train graveyard, we are not entirely sure why this was here because we speak little Spanish and our guide spoke little English! Then onwards to the real reason of the journey to see the island in the middle of the massive salt flats, all you can see around you is white ground and blue sky for miles and miles, our driver/guide/cook made us lunch and we all sat round a table made of salt! Later in the evening we headed to our accommodation for the night - a hotel made completely from salt! The tables, chairs, floors, walls, beds in fact all but the toilet and mattress were made from salt, so we played some cards and polished off the wine we had brought with us before
Salt flats
Vicunas out on the range. dinner. Then off to bed for an early night.
Day two - we got up early leaving the salt and heading into the desert where we saw red lakes, green lakes, white lakes, Vicunas and wild flamingos which was pretty cool. By this time we had already seen plenty of llamas, alpacas and desert foxes - A Bolivian Safari our driver called it. We were also going upwards in terms of altitude as well so it was getting even colder. Our next night was spent in a grim guest house in the middle of the desert at approximately 4300m above sea level which is almost the highest we’d been apart from the beginning of the death road. Their was one small wood burning stove to keep us all warm, which wasn’t left on during the night. We slept in all of our clothes, beanies and snowboarding jackets in a sleeping bag under about 5 wool blankets and a duvet. One guy left his watch (with temperature gauge on it) outside. It recorded the temperature as -12 and that was without wind! We had to get up at 5am the next morning - actually not as bad as it sounds
Salt flats
There is little gravity on Mars. because it was warmer up than in bed. We had no breakfast and no toilets because the water froze over night so all the toilets were not working.
Day three - first stop was some natural geysers followed by hot springs, although no one was interested in the geysers because we all still wanted to use the toilet and have a cup of tea. We arrived at the hot springs and only one guy in the group was brave enough to strip off at 6am and try out the hot springs. After breakfast we left to see the most impressive lake Largo Verde, because it was windy and very, very cold, we’d almost hit 5000 meters at this point we soon rushed off to the Chilean border.
All in all it was a great trip, the landscape was more like the pictures you see of Mars or the Moon, but after three days freezing cold and cooped up in a jeep we were all glad to see Chile with it’s modern conveniences and paved roads and rise in temperature!
Chile Straight after leaving Bolivia the road drops 2000 meters in a matter of minutes the
Chile
San Pedro de Atacama. Quiet little town with a busted ATM. sun was shining and we arrived into San Pedro de Atacama, a small village in the Atacama desert in the north of Chile. Whilst it was great to have hot showers and some home comforts we were shocked at the difference in price, we paid the same for lunch as we may have done back home. Plus there was only one Visa cash machine within a hundred mile radius that rarely gave out money. Because of this we could only stay two days.
During our time we managed to get in some sandboarding though. It’s probably not going to take over the world anytime soon. It takes about 20 minutes to walk (yes walk!) to the top of a sand dune for about 20 seconds to get down. That is if you can get down. Surprisingly sand is not as slippery as snow?!
We hung around a bit soaked up a little sun and jumped on a bus to Salta in Argentina.
Finally - click here if you want to watch our short sandboarding video! (23MB download)
Sandboarding Video
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Lou
non-member comment
AWESOME
These pics looks amazing, did you hire a photographer to follow you around? Loving the miniture pics, made me laugh out loud at my desk - made me look demented so had to show a few people and they laughed too. Oh you brought a little bit of happiness to grey London. Keep having fun guys, we miss you!