So step 2 in South
America arrives as we cross the border from Chile into Bolivia and as we do
it’s the first step in slowly going up, up and up to higher altitudes. The
higher you go, the groggier you get. Fit at sea level? Try panting like an old
man after walking up a few steps while at 4,000m! It’s crazy the difference it
makes. In 2007, FIFA temporarily banned international soccer matches from
taking place above 2,500m as it gave teams an unfair advantage! The majority of
our time in Bolivia was spent well above that elevation, regularly getting
above 4,000m- no marathon running for us at that height!
So how do you combat
this? Well, the locals chew cocoa leaves to help them, tourists tend to drink
teas made from these leaves to help them (because chewing them is horrible!)-
other help comes in the form of drinking lots of water, chewing cocoa sweets
and in the words of one of our guides “just keep breathing”- easy!
Thankfully our start to
Bolivia came in the form of a guided tour of the salt flats in a jeep with
minimal walking involved so we were able to save our energy for other pursuits.
We did a 3-day tour starting in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile with the first
step to cross the border to Bolivia. To get there you drive an hour into the
desert on beautifully paved roads, then you see a sign for Argentina straight
ahead as the beautiful paved road continues, next to it is a sign for Bolivia
to the left as the paved road disappears and a big dirt road opens up ahead-
welcome to Bolivia!
Migration control a few
hundred meters after this turn off is entertaining as it consists of a hut
where you have to pay 150 bolivianos ($30) to get into the Bolivian national
park (and therefore Bolivia). During that time, nobody checks bags, vehicles,
people or anything really! Just pay your money and enter the country. Clearly a
very open relationship between the two countries- nothing to hide here!
In giving us the guidelines
for how much money to bring on the 3-day tour, the tour group included a buffer
to pay for essential things like the occasional snack, park entries and to pay
for toilet entries! We learned quickly that there’s no such thing as a free poo
in Bolivia! Every place you stop charged for entry into the heaven that was
their water closet. Unfortunately the more you paid was more a product of
location (no toilet for another 7 hours!) rather than quality of the facilities.
Sometimes holding it was more then just an economical decision!
The salt flats
themselves were absolutely spectacular. The first two days were spent visiting
sites closer to the Chilean side such as beautiful mirror lagoons with gorgeous
water and other lagoons with thousands upon thousands of flamingos with haunting
red water. Huge contrast in the sites. All the while being surrounded by mountains,
volcanoes and climbing right up to 4,700m. The poor jeeps certainly earned
their money.
To spend three days
within the confines of a jeep with a group of six strangers, you need to be
able to entertain yourselves, You also need an element of luck to get a good
group of strangers as we all know some strangers can be stranger than others! Thankfully
we got very lucky and had a great group who made the journeys shorter- car
games have never been so valuable! Also pays to have a good group as the key to
taking photos on the salt flats as you’ll see, is having good photographers and
very willing mannequins!
We entered the first
section of the actual salt flats on the third day and it was the highlight of
the trip for me. As we went there during rainy season, we had the benefit of
driving through a large section of the salt flats that were under a few inches
of water. This creates a surreal scenario where the jeeps are driving through a
place where you can’t see the horizon and the sky is reflected fully in the
ground because of the water to give an amazing affect of driving through the
sky. Definitely some of my favorite photos were here. Amazing.
The second part of the
day was when we got to the dry part of the salt flats and we got to play some
more with the never ending horizon, the mannequins and our cameras. Some kids
never grow up! Being dangled by a giant, attacked by a dinosaur, dropped out of
a Pringles tube, jumping over jeeps were a sample of the photos. Like I said
you need very wiling mannequins to get the job done! Loved the photos we got
here and had great fun taking them. The salt flats should definitely be very
high up on any to do list of the world.
We had been tipped off
that the town of Uyuni, our end point of the trip, was not worth staying a
night in so once we landed there in the afternoon, we headed for the bus
station and booked ourselves on a bus out that night. The tip about Uyuni was
valid although we did eat in a restaurant called “16th of July
restaurant”, both our birthdays- very random! Due to our remedial Spanish
levels, we were unable to get any free drinks, cakes or gifts- a missed
opportunity!
Our night bus brought us
to Sucre, apparently the capital of Bolivia although still a bit confused as to
whether it actually is or not. it says it is in the constitution and they have
signs up everywhere calling themselves the capital but for all intents and
purposes La Paz is the capital. Sucre, is a really beautiful place with all of
the buildings white with red roofs. We did some walking around it and you get
some fantastic views over the city of all of the red roofed buildings and even
walking around the city there are beautifully ornate buildings. A nice
stopover.
After a couple of days
in Sucre, and given the night buses had worked so well, we booked another one
to get us from there to La Paz. The bus was fourteen hours and as its Bolivia
and we deserved a treat we went for the full on “cama” ticket which is
basically a chair that turns completely flat so it’s a bed- first class if you
will. Because we’re worth it!
Not the most pleasant of
journeys as we made the rookie mistake of getting tickets at the back of the
bus. We were too eager to get tickets as far away as possible from the toilets
that we forgot that the back of the bus is where the engine is and being on top
of a bus engine on bumpy Bolivian roads is not the best place to be. Despite
all that we had managed to catch some sleep in between bumps, it’s amazing how
high in the air a lying person can go when a really big bump is hit! My wife,
the experienced mechanic, had reservations about the bus from early on. I
quelled these with the comforting lines “it’s Bolivia, all the buses are crap”
and “that black smoke from the exhaust is perfectly normal”.
At 3am she had her
opportunity to say I told you so, if only she had the chance.
We had pulled over in a
small town, perfectly normal for these buses in the middle of the night,
however they had turned the lights on which is unusual as they tend to leave
sleeping travellers lie. After five minutes and a larger number of people
leaving the bus then normal I went down to investigate. Señor Brian is on the
case. Raised voices were being aimed at the staff outside the bus and bags were
being taken from the hold. The phrase I kept hearing over and over was “en
outré bus”; even I could figure out that there was an issue!
So with the engine seemingly
having failed, we frantically got our bags and went to follow the crowd- just
like all the guidebooks say to do, walk down a strange road in a strange town
at 3 in the morning with no idea where you’re going! Around the corner we go
and find that there’s another bus from the same company waiting, great says I,
they must have predicted the problem and rung ahead to get a replacement bus.
On we go. Turns out this is the non-first class bus that left 15 minutes after
us and is already full of passengers. Welcome to Bolivia!
So with 6 hours to go to
La Paz, no seats available, no space in storage for our bags, us 1st
classers find ourselves well and truly in steerage! We were so eager to get on
the bus rather than be stranded in whatever town that was, Aoife found herself
upstairs with the majority of passengers, standing room only while I found
myself downstairs with less standing passengers but with all of our bags! I
barely had enough space to stand in let alone get my ass on the ground. To
assist matters, I ended up standing next to the seat of a particularly grumpy
old Bolivian man who started poking me for invading his personal space- it’s a
long way to La Paz!
When travelling you do
tend to teach yourself to sleep in less than ideal conditions but standing up
with rucksacks on either side of me, on a Bolivian bus, on bumpy roads, the
best I could do was stand and lean my head against someone else’s headrest (not
the old mans!) and try to stay vertical. A new low was reached.
It was like the company
had heard about my blog and wanted to give me material for it! I can see the
posters now- “The Night(mare) bus”- coming soon. As you can imagine, we were
like the walking dead when we got to La Paz and for the second time in twelve
hours we followed the locals, this time as they went to the complaints
department! We stood back and let the negotiations take place, phone calls were
made, calculator with figures typed in being passed back and forth. Eventually
they agreed that 70 bolivianos ($13) compensation was what our night was worth-
I’ve never felt so cheap! There was me thinking my dignity should be worth at
least $20.
No touristing was done
that day as showers and sleep were far more of a necessity. Scrubbing off the
stench of that bus trip could take a a few years and the help of a psychologist!
So having detailed the
worst part about Bolivia, how about one of the favourites? Usually when you
come to these countries, the tourist shops sell lots of clothes pertaining to
be local clothes that clearly none of the locals wear- contrary to popular
belief you don’t find that many Australians in kangaroo shirts or Irish in
leprechaun outfits walking down the streets. Bolivia is the exception to that
rule and it’s fantastic. They sell wool jumpers with llamas on them, coloured
blankets you can use as shawls or to carry your goods, crazy hats again with
llamas on them- all of which you’ll find the locals walking around in! It’s a
country that is definitely years behind its neighbours when it comes to
development and that’s part of the charm. So on every street corner you’ll find
locals in traditional outfits selling their wares. It certainly helps to
transport you to another land and to appreciate how developed other countries
are. There’s a lovely innocence to it, as they seem perfectly happy with the
way things are for them. Not pushy to sell things, just happy to set up their
stall sell a few things and get through the day.
From something totally
Bolivian to something totally touristy- our final day in La Paz was spent
cycling down a charming road nicknamed “Death Road”. Why the morbid name? Well,
it’s a road famous for the death toll it racked up amongst people who used it.
Obviously the original name wouldn’t get tourists flocking so the renamed road
was born and it is now the top tourist attraction in La Paz. This unpaved,
windy, skinny, cliff side, downhill 60km road was a main road in regular use up
until 2007 when a new road was built. In the 60km this “road” drops from 4,700m
in altitude to 1,200m. On seeing the road, you’d also be surprised to hear that
it’s a two way road although given I’ve told you it’s name is death road I suppose
that shouldn’t surprise you too much.
So the widely known
“Worlds most Dangerous Road” was our final stop and a tour company called
“Gravity” were the people tasked with getting us down this road safely. Aren’t
tourists just hilarious creatures? So with pants, jackets, helmets, gloves and
double suspension bikes supplied, we set off to roll safely down this hill and
take in the amazing scenery as we do. Oops, that’s mistake number one- first
thing they say is cycle the road, do not look at the scenery while cycling! In
most places there is a 400m drop off the road with no barriers to stop you, you
miss a turn then you miss your flight home, simple. The road is littered with
memorials to people who’ve died going down it- four tourists died last year
cycling it (we were told afterwards). It’s no doubt a lot safer than it was
years ago but it is still fraught with danger. The company started this in 1999
when it was still a fully functioning road- buses, cars, trucks going up and
down the road. What would be a great idea? Let’s add in a bunch of tourists with
no mountain biking experience to cycle daily down it too. What could go wrong?!
Thankfully nothing as we were expertly babysat all the way down while regularly
stopping for photos and breaks. Only one fall between us, I won’t say who it
was but thankfully she fell over away from the cliff not towards it, another
vital lesson to implement! No harm done. As weird tourist activities go it was
right up there but certainly made a very memorable day out.
So after ten days in
Bolivia, we move onto Brazil for some caipirinhas to cool us down.
Fantastically different to other South American countries and with loads to
offer, we had an absolute blast in Bolivia. It really was great to get high!
Our route:
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
to Salt Flats in Bolivia, Uyuni, Sucre, La Paz (days trips to Tiwanaku and to
Death Road), fly to Sao Paulo
