Just as I decided it was time to leave Cusco, I randomly bumped into a girl that I had met 2 months earlier in Iquitos and as it turned out we were both heading in the same direction, we decided to travel together. So that night we boarded a bus from Cusco "direct" to La Paz, capital of Bolivia. Turns out that "direct" was a term used very loosely on this journey. The first 8 hours went fairly smoothly, I somehow managed to sleep a little despite the backache and legache. Then we arrived at the border town of Desaguadero, which I have since seen described as one of the continents´ filthiest towns. We got there at 6am and joined the back of a huge queue for the Peruvian border police to get our passports checked as the first part of a complicated process of border crossing. After 2 hours of not moving, we realised the border police office didn´t open until 8am. That´ll explain it then. So freezing cold, still groggy from trying to sleep on the bus, starving hungry and dying for the toilet, we finally get to the front of the queue where our bags are searched for drugs... this is apparently an opportunity for the police to steal cash from tired and unsuspecting gringos, but unluckily for them I hardly had any.
Next step in the process was Peruvian immigration control. It turned out I had exceeded the allotted 90 days in Peru by 3 days, which meant I had to pay a fine. They wanted the money in Peruvian soles, which was unhelpful as I had just changed my few Peruvian soles into Bolivian pesos seeing as I was about to cross into Bolivia... So I had to hang around for ages while some dodgy guy ran off with my Bolivian cash to exchange it.
Final step was Bolivian immigration, which is where it really got ridiculous. They checked my passport, asked my nationality, and then announced that England wasn´t on their list of countries. Full stop. I said, ermm it definitely exists cos I live there? After being told to wait "un momentito" about a hundred times while everybody else in the queue had their passport stamped, we ended up with a whole team of Bolivian immigration police trying, in their woefully disorganised manner, to solve the problem. The solution was, they finally discovered, that England is part of Great Britain. As printed on the front of my passport. Duh..
I hurried to the Bolivian border a few hundred meters away where our bus was waiting, and made it with minutes to spare before the bus pulled off to continue the journey to La Paz. By the time we arrived in the capital, we were exhausted, starving and ready to drop... and it was about 10am.
I ended up having 3 days in La Paz, taking time to acclimatise to the high altitude (about 3600m above sea level) and explore the weird and wonderful witches markets here, where they sell all kinds of medicines and items that the Bolivians rely on to bring them luck and fortune. One of the main features of the markets is, sadly, dried llama foetuses... they are everywhere, at different stages of development and some quite clearly capable of life had they not been culled, complete with their fur and eyes. Its so shocking to see them, such a terrible sight as there are SO many. Apparently the Bolivians bury them under new buildings to bring them luck. At first I was horrified, and still am when I see them. But having spent a week in Bolivia and seeing the extent of the poverty here, I can almost understand why they place so much reliance and hope on these tokens of luck, however barbaric and outdated they seem to us. The people here have nothing, and no hope of ever having anything. I saw poverty in Peru but really nothing like I have seen here, its so sad. Everywhere there are old women sitting on the pavements, huddled in piles of brightly covered blankets, silently chewing wads of coca leaves which suppress hunger and cold, their deeply wrinkled faces show the misery and hardship of their lives. They try to make "a living" if you can call it that, by selling knitted finger puppets or small bags of popcorn, each fetching 1 Boliviano. To put that in context, there are 15 Bolivianos to a British pound. Even worse are the old people who are almost or completely blind, incapable of more than a painful shuffle to rummage from one rubbish bin to another looking for something to eat. To see people living like that is heart-breaking, they have no family, no-one ever talks to them or even acknowledges that they exist. I saw one old man who had a deep knife slash across his face and shockingly, both his hands had been cut off and he had nothing but stumps to clutch an upturned hat to beg for a few coins. His hands had probably been chopped off as punishment for stealing... maybe a loaf of bread to feed his family, who knows. Its hard to walk around ignoring the many people who are pleading for money, especially the really young children with dirty faces who rub their stomachs and say in poor English, "please, food". How can you ignore that?!
Anyway after a few days of immersion in the chaos of La Paz, we were ready to move on. Next stop, a place called Uyuni down in the south of Bolivia which is famous for its salt flats. We opted for the slightly more expensive but much less painful option of flying, rather than the notorious 12 hour bus journey over unpaved roads. The first half of the journey was ok, then we changed planes at Cochabamba and boarded an old propellor-driven plane which held about 16 people. With my newfound sense of adventure, I was excited rather than scared, even when the pilot (wearing chinos and a brown leather flying jacket..) fired up the engine and it sounded like my old mini with a blown exhaust. But half an hour into the journey, the rough motion and intense heat from the sun started to make me feel sick (or maybe it was the appallingly bad Katie Holmes movie that they were playing during the flight). It took every bit of control to not vomit for the next hour, and even for a good few hours after we landed, I felt sick. Yuk, I won´t be repeating that journey.
My first sight of Uyuni was quite a shock. Its a small town in the middle of nowhere, with hardly any cars, lots of seemingly empty buildings and loads of stray dogs roaming the streets. I could feel another dog-rescue mission coming on again and warned my companion accordingly.
Our mission for the trip was to get to a salt hostel near or on the salt flats (literally, a hostel made of salt) and after a day or two of exploring the area independently, we would book one of the well known tours to see the rest of the area. We found a tour agent who sold us 2 nights in a salt hostel for a bargain price of 70 Bolivianos (about 4 quid) including breakfast and dinner! That afternoon we jumped in the agents jeep and set off to our destination, which was conveniently located in a small town so we could buy provisions if we needed. Or so they said. When we got there, the "town" was nothing more than a collection of dilapidated and mainly uninhabited buildings. Worse, the "hostel" had no running water - not even for flushing toilets, washing or showering - and it turned out during our first nights stay, that dinner and breakfast was NOT included. The hostel is used mainly as a one night stop over for organised tour groups, who bring their own food and cooking equipment. Luckily one of the groups contributed some of their food for our dinner so we didn´t starve.
Despite the complete lack of facilities, watching the sunset that evening was stunning, in a landscape which was desert for as far as the eye could see, with the faint outline of mountains on the horizon. As it got dark, a storm started up in the distance and I stood outside for a long while, wrapped in my llama wool poncho and drinking coca tea (proper hippie!), watching the lightning streaking down to the ground and lighting up the whole sky like daylight. Later that night it turned into a full on hail storm which threatened to blow in the windows of our bedroom.
Next morning however, the sun was out and the sky was blue. All the tour groups had departed... and so apparently had any chance of breakfast. A Bolivian woman who I thought was the cook eventually got it across to me that there was no coffee or tea, no milk, no food. Breakfast was NOT included. Out of sympathy, she managed to produce some stale bread rolls and some eggs from her own food supplies, and boiled us a kettle of water. Soon after, she left with her husband, taking the cooking gas and water supplies with them. We were stranded in the hostel alone. At first it was kind of funny (kind of) but then we started to get seriously worried as we realised we could be there all day with no way back into town. A few tour groups turned up for lunch on their way to the salt flats, but they had no room for us in their jeeps and soon departed as well.
By the early afternoon, we were seriously worried and decided to walk "into town" to look for a lift. By pure luck, we found a Swiss guy who was travelling around South America in his jeep, and was heading to the salt flats. He kindly offered us a lift, and we jumped at the chance of getting out of the hell hostal. We had quite an exciting drive across the salt flats, which were partially flooded and so it was like driving across the Antarctic except it was really hot and the ground was salt not ice. Its an amazing landscape, blindingly white and almost impossible to see where the land ends and the sky starts. We eventually arrived at our next destination.. and that of every other tour-group-in-a-jeep: the salt hotel. This place is apparently $60 a night, but was no more luxurious than the hell hostal, with beds made of blocks of salt covered by bumpy old mattresses, little or no running water and disgusting toilets. Luckily they had no rooms free, so after taking a few photos and letting the strangeness of the vast salt landscape sink in, we jumped back in the jeep and headed back to Uyuni town, hooray! As an added bonus I got to ride on top of the jeep and had some really amazing views from so high up.
Back in Uyuni, there is nothing to do but sit around and chill. The whole town seems to have been built around tourism, and the main plaza is full of backpackers who are either waiting for their tour to depart, or waiting for a bus out of there. The plaza itself consists of tour agencies, pizzerias and shops selling hats, scarves, ponchos etc made from llama and alpaca wool. The sun is HOT, it burns quickly and had us taking off layers like we were on the beach. But as soon as you step in the shade, its cold and my fingers were blocks of ice as I drank endless glasses of lemonade to pass the time.
Enough was enough, we needed a plan. My travelling companion decided she´d seen enough salt to last her a lifetime, and jumped on a plane back to Cusco. I booked myself on a 3 day tour to see the rest of the sights of Uyuni. That is enough for a blog entry in itself, and will have to wait for another day!
