I’m sitting in the ‘Extreme Fun Pub’ in Uyuni, Bolivia, killing time whilst we wait for a train at midnight to take us to La Paz. We have just finished an amazing 2 ½ day jeep tour of southern Bolivia. After making the easiest border crossing I have ever made in my life (passport, stamp, stamp, $3, no bag check) we piled into a jeep with four other people (Akiko from Japan, Damien from Sydney and Abbi and Vanessa from the UK). Our bags made it on top of the jeep and our non-English-speaking guide drove us off into an almost uninhabited part of Bolivia, though not before making a stop in the most makeshift bathroom I have ever encountered – behind the skeleton of a bus. In a word – gross.
The tour was purported as an ‘extreme jeep tour’, so we weren’t too sure what to expect. Thankfully it just meant some shitty roads, or non-roads. We trekked our way through the Bolivian desert, following faint imprints of tyres that deepened or weakened to a point of weaving through haphazardly through the sparsely scattered vegetation that grew in quantity as we plunged further into Bolivia.
Our first stop was at a place called (I think) Laguna Blanco: the white lake. Not quite white, but nonetheless beautiful and towered over by numerous volcanoes and mountain ranges. It was also quite cold – the wind whipped through my clothes and reminded me that we were indeed not in Kansas anymore.
Next was the stunning Laguna Verde (green lake). A beautiful aqua-marine green expanse enveloped by further volcanoes, including the 5960m Volcan Licanbur. The green colour comes from the oxidation of copper found within the lake and elicits the most wondrous photogenicity. Unbeknownst to us, we were quickly ascending in altitude – in a space of a couple of hours we had ascended over 2000m – Laguna Verde is at 5000m. I was to later rekindle my love for Franscisco, who had warned us about altitude sickness and given us the name of some medication to take to prevent it. Many, many people suffered at the high altitude (we ascended to 5000m and slept around 4300m), but thankfully all I got was a slight headache.
Not too far from Laguna Verde was a quick pull-over looking at something that roughly translates to ‘the coloured mountains’, which is a wonderfully accurate description. The mountain was a gorgeously oxymoronic harmonious cacophony of rusty colours. From white at the apex, through ferrous reds and browns down to a deep brown peppered with dark black-grey.
Termas de Polques was our next stop and gave us another hot springs. Andrew and I were quite wary, with vivid memories of the luke-warm and the modesty-revoking cold aftermath, however these hot springs were truly hot; sitting around a lovely toasty 30ºC. We climbed in and relaxed in the wonderful, wonderful heat with around a dozen other people. Eventually I had to get out because I was too hot. Thankfully, getting out was not even remotely painful – a little chilly, but you could relax in your own sense of modesty and get dressed slowly.
We had to wait a little while for our driver as he had gone back to help out another jeep which had lost a wheel along the way and needed repairs, but then we were off to the Geiser de Sol de Manana; more geisers. These ones were much bigger than the El Tatio geysers in terms of circumference, but because we got there just after midday, were nowhere near as active. You could see right into the geysers, thick clay-coloured liquid bubbling lazily underneath the slowly spiralling steam. These geysers also had much more sulphur than El Tatio, which was obviously very pleasant.
We then arrived at Laguna Colorada, which was a deep red (for reasons that Andrew and I debated for a while and will google at some point) fringed with white, impinged upon by blue waters and inhabited by llamas and flamingos. We were staying here the night, so we dumped our bags in our rooms before heading out for a walk around the lake. It was a little chilly and windy as we trekked up a small hill to look out over the lake, but we are big and tough, so it was okay. There are three species of flamingos in the area, including the rare James species; we desperately tried to get a decent photo of them, but they were too far away to get any decent photos.. We thought as we arrived here before three that we would have plenty of time to explore, but the sun sank behind the mountains surprisingly early and when that happens, everything almost instantly freezes. The wind increases in intensity and taunts you with the distance back to the accommodations. So we trotted back to our accommodations, which to our dismay was only partially warmer than outside.
They fed us a good dinner (all meals on this tour were fantastic – healthy and filling. AWEsome) and we trekked off to our rooms because it was so damn cold. In fact, we were all in bed for warmth by 9pm. We slept in several layers of clothes (including thermals), four blankets and a sleeping bag and we were still cold. Except for Andrew the freak who slept in his jockey shorts and was fine (he DOES have a super cold resistant sleeping bag). It wasn’t the greatest night of sleep, and when we woke my towel was frozen to the window. Frick.
We got up as quickly as we could to head off for the second day of our tour, which was quite a bit longer than the first day. Stops included looking at piedras (stones) which stood alone in a crowd amongst the barren desert, a flat tyre in which the boys proved themselves to be quite useful (and the pommy girls to declare Andrew ‘Handy Andy’ and ‘the perfect man’ (yeah, I thought they were going too far as well), and another set of coloured mountains, with the same colours as the first ones, but the colours jumbled.
The next lake was filled with flamingos which enabled us to get some closer shots. These flamingos were pinker and less camera shy, although my digital zoom did blur things a little. Another stop with some rocks (and increasing amounts of vegetation) and then took us to a remote town for almuerzo (lunch). The town appeared to consist of a single street and a few curious locals, though surely they must be over tourists by now. On our way to the next town we had to drive through a point with a sheer cliff drop, which made us all a little anxious. This next town was home to only six families, though had loads of dilapidated and deserted skeletons of houses. It did have a train and soccer goals. Priorities.
Another three hours took us to our next accommodation, which I am pleased to report was warm, had hot water and even electricity for 4 hours. It was like heaven. Dinner was great, we had a few drinks and had a good laugh at Andrew who really put his foot in it. You may remember that I mentioned we had a girl from Japan in the room. Damien was talking about a suburb in Sydney when Andrew opened up with a comment about rich Asians moving in. The jaws of Damien and I hit the ground as we stared in disbelief at Andrew as he CONTINUED to talk about this. And continued. And continued. I just put my head in my hands, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. One look at Damien though and I was rolling around in laughter. Then came the contortionist act of Andrew’s face when he realised what he had done. Fucking priceless. Ah, we haven’t let him forget it today though. Sweet, sweet pricelessness. To add to this, we were talking about it later and Damien almost put HIS foot in it. He typed what he was going to say on the laptop…..it was nearly bigger than Hiroshima. Ahh, boys. We had a bloody great night’s sleep, well ready for our last half day of the tour.
We nearly slept in and missed breakfast (I know, complete disaster), but we made it. The breakfasts in South America consist largely of bread rolls plus butter and a jam of some sort – in Chile and Bolivia it has been apricot jam, and on the tour it has been no different – though we DID get orange juice this morning which was great. Our accommodations were right on the edge of the salt flats, so today was entirely salt-flatty. A vast expanse of salt that seemingly surpasses the horizon, mountain ranges hazy in the distance and the sun blazing and glaring from above and below. The cold was almost a distant memory – when the wind went away we were left with a lovely warm toasty feeling that stripped off our clothes and elicited dreamy smiles to our faces. We stopped to look at where they cut out salt bricks from the plain that previously built the now illegal structures on the Salar de Uyuni, the salt flats.
An aside note: apart from the completely awesome tunes being played in this pub (including System), the walls are covered with dozens and dozens of perspective photos taken by the more creative than I out on the salt flats. Upon arrival here we cursed and admired as we wished that we had thought about doing similar things when we were there. Some of the shots were just amazing. And, some shots were just disgusting. A combination of perspective and reflective shots (presumably after a bout of rain) make it a nice thing to look up at the walls whilst I am typing. One notable involves four naked guys doing an evolution impression.
In the middle of the salt flats is an island named Isla del Pescado, a cactus-covered rock sitting atop the 12m thick salt flats. For a mere $3 we wandered around the island, taking a trail that ascends and descends throughout the cactus overlooking the ostensibly infinite salt plains. The cactus were an interesting two tone of I-dare-you-to-tackle-it spiny and seemingly white fuzzy soft at the top. One cactus was even 1200 years old.
Our last stop before Uyuni was the illegal salt hotel, I mean, museum on the salt flats. Kinda interesting, the last of its kind as all were dismantled years ago, but mostly irritating because you knew that they were damaging the environment and just didn’t care. After that we just drove into Uyuni and here I am, sitting in the pub, listening to Question by System. Yeah, I hate me too.
We are probably going to drink ourselves into a stupor before we board the train to La Paz at midnight. On a final note, a story from one of the girls from UK: their father and his golf buddies are designing software that controls dildos from the internet. Ah, the things you learn overseas.
Ciao!
Bolivan adventure photos
