Straight from the wild, wild west literally. Very south of Bolivia, they lanscape is vastly different, and something Aaron has never really seen before. Dry and hot and surronded by the typical wild west pinacles and canyons you´d expect to see in the movies. Infact this is the place where Butch Cassedy and The Sun Dance Kid apparently meet their untimely fate, although its still not proven, you can still do a horse tour through the wild terrain and hopefully kill some Americans in support of Bolivias on going tradition.HA.I think the movie was shot here anyway...only the oldies may know as Westerns arnt my big thing.
Anyway, we headed off at the crack of noon to do a 3 hour horse treck into the surrounding canyons. It was simply amaising. First up was Puerto de Diablo or Devils gate, seems every geographical andean counterpart has a something involved with the devil. Horns up Metallers! \||/(._.)\||/
Giant phallic pinacles with helmits (jewish¿)jutted up from the red earth and Amy and Aaron galloped into the hot dessert, hoping not to fall off as we pretended to be novice riders from our Ecuador experience.
With aching bums we retired and ate huge 30cm Llama Steaks we purchased from the markets. What a feed! Then it was rest before embarking on the Slat flats at 9am.
Getting aquainted with our first kiwi mates we had meet so far, it was 4 of us and a driver. The tour over all was quite boring to be honest in the first 2 days. Its a massive 8-10 hr drive constantly each day. Stopping to change flat tires. The driver didnt speak any english, had the worst taste in music and would let us wind down the windows alot of the time. Dont get me wrong the scenery is fatastic, but much of the same, for the first two days.
The lakes we came across at first had potassium and magnesium in them for hair products. The next had flamingos, some ceramic additive called Borax and one had arsenic..hmmm. The third day was action packed..Aaron awoke once again with the shits..not happy Jan! The sights were better as we headed to stange alien landscapes with giant rocks being eroded away at the bottom. Huge top heavy rock formations and one in the shape of a tree. Next it was volcanic geezers spewing mud, in a usually fenced off cirucmstance in the west, we could walk right up to the holes and stare into the steam an burn ourselves..hooray!
We stopped for the last night at a beautiful hostal completely made of salt. The bricks were salt bricks even. We got up at 5am to see the sun rise on an Islan in the middle of the largest salt flat in the world. Layers stretch 20 meteres tick of water and salt. White as far as you can see. It is simply breath taking and magical.
We cruzed through Uyuini - probably the ugliest city to date, said good bye to our kiwi amigos and headed 6 hrs back to Tupiza! to rest up before Agentina and civilised society!.
