So, I know that I have missed a whole bunch of my trip... like a month through Argentina and Chile, but I wanted to write about stuff happening now.
I´m am currently in La Paz, Bolivia... not for too long though because I´m not such a big fan. I´ve been in Bolivia for about 2 weeks and have been all over the place already! Things in Bolivia are definitely much, much different from anywhere else I have ever been! It´s a nice change because this is the experience I was hoping for in my south america trip. Unfortunately, my stomach has been disagreeable since I´ve been here and it´s NOT warm even though I am pretty close to the equator now.
I made my way to Bolivia from Humahuaca, Argentina with a Kiwi girl I had met in southern Chile on the catamaran to start the ¨W¨hike and then ran into again walking to the same bus in northern Chile. I was so happy to have someone to travel with and we are pretty good travel buddies, so we are still traveling together! We made our way north from the border crossing to a town called Tupiza. The first bus trip was an experience and just became typical after the next few through Bolivia. The buses here aren´t too bad... they just don´t have bathrooms, so you have to learn to ¨hold it¨... for hours... They also play Bolivian music pretty loud, which would be cool and authentic and all if they didn´t keep playing the same songs over and over and over... also, there is some chick they listen to that sounds like the chipmunks on speed. Most of the roads aren´t paved so the rides are much slower than they are anywhere else and much bumpier.
The town of Tupiza is well known for several reasons. First, it is the starting point for a lot of tours to the Uyuni salt flats, so there are a ton of gringos walking around. Second, it is a really beautiful place in itself to explore. It looks a little like Sedona, Arizona with red rock mountains and dark green foliage. Third, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hung out there for a little bit and eventually met their demise just outside the city.
So, the first day Rochelle (my Kiwi friend) and I arrived, we wandered around for a little bit to get a feel of the city, ate some dinner and checked some emails. At the internet place, a local guy sat down next to me with a Buffalo Bills jacket on!!! He was all thugged out ghetto style with his Yankees cap and a BILLS JACKET! It was crazy. When we got back to our hostel, we found that we had a new roommate. The funny thing was that it was another Kiwi woman and I had met her about a month ago in El Chalten! Crazy!
The next day, Rochelle and I went to the market and bought some food for dinner. I think it cost us about 3 dollars in total and we had 6 different types of veggies and quinoa. We made dinner that night and were so careful to wash everything in bottled water and peel everything... except the tomatoes!!! I was being a little reckless because I was super hungry and ate some of the tomatoes that were not peeled or cooked... I definitely felt it the next morning. I was so sick for the whole entire day and couldn´t leave the hostel! LESSON LEARNED.
I was feeling a little bit better the next day and we booked a tour to the salt flats for the following day. A frenchman that I had met in El Chalten joined us for the tour as well as an american couple from NYC. The next morning, we all piled into a 17 year old jeep and took off for the 4 day, 3 night trip through the southwest of Bolivia.
Overall, the trip was amazing! We only had a little bit of trouble with the car, altitude, car sickness... and we saw absolutely incredible sights from pink and grey flamingos on purple lakes, to bubbling grey geysers at 5000 meters elevation, to a bright green lake, to tons of llamas and vicuños, to brilliantly colored red mountains with other colors striated through the same mountain, to an absolutely amazing expanse of a salt flat. It was worth the flat tires, spending up to 12 hours driving around in a jeep, our jeep getting stuck for 3 hours in mushy salt, sleeping in near freezing temperatures... maybe even below freezing? and filling up our gums with loads of coca leaves to fend off the altitude sickness.
After we got back to Uyuni, we got out of the jeep just to get back into another vehicle to go to the highest city in the world, Potosi (4000 something meters high!). That bus ride was worse than any day we spent in the jeep. It left in the middle of the night and crawled through the darkness on bumpy roads next to giant clifs. It was the scariest bus ride I have ever taken and lasted about 7 hours, stopping only once for us to go find an alley to take a leak in. We arrived in Potosi at about 1:30AM in the freezing cold and eventually made it safe and sound into our nice warm beds about an hour later.
Potosi is a beautiful small city. It has no supermarket, almost like the rest of Bolivia and you have to buy everything from one of the several bustling markets located throughout the city. The architecture is in a beautiful, old colonial style and much of the important buildings in the center are painted bright yellow and there are churches everywhere... there are something like 80 churches in the city of Potosi...
