sudamerica 2009: the bizarro world of bolivia part one
6th-feb-2009 - posted by dtra
a lot to get through this week, been pretty hectic in bolivia the past week, so i'll try to keep it short, lots of pictures of course, the best ones will have to wait till i get back, some only for facebook unfortunately. anyway, arrived in bolivia last week (forgot which day), went to tupiza in the south west, and stayed there for two nights (another change here, transport and accommodation reviews will be in normal posts rather than complete separate ones), the bus ride to the border was fine cos it was in an andesmar bus, then the bus ride to tupiza from villazon was actually better than expected, and only took two hours, though i still haven't seen a paved road outside a city. we (me and phil from ireland) stayed at valle hermosa hostal, which was pretty good, though had to pay for breakfast, it was clean, and near the bus station. tupiza was a pretty nice place, chilled, pretty quiet, although there was supposedly a mega karaoke disco going on every night, which we were never able to witness.
ok, down to business, we did a horse riding tour (of three hours) guided by a kid (he said he was 18, and had been doing it for two years), it poured rain, and we thought we might have to cancel, but the skies cleared, and we managed to get some really nice pictures coming back. here is a picture from the day, many more to come (i took like 95 photos).
we then went on the quintessential tour (with la torre tours from the hotel in the lonely planet, it cost $1 000 bolivianos for five people) of the salt flats of uyuni, this was a four day, three night affair, in which we stayed in basic refuges (no showers) along the way. all the sights were great, but we had a puncture on the first day, which lead to two others (the replacement tyre was bald) through the tour. got a heap of great pictures, but when it came time to review the tour, the guide/driver and cook got quite upset to see some lower than expected scores. i wouldn't recommend them based on the lack of fun element, the poor tyres on the car, as well as the very rigid timeline that the guide seemed to follow (we always had to be at lunch around 12pm, and our finish point by about 5pm), which meant that we missed some great photo ops, and had to take a lot of photos from a moving, shaking car. notes about the guy at the hotel, we asked who else was on the tour, and he said three people, one englishman, one irishman, and one spanish girl, turned out to be three french people; after we put deposits down, we asked if there was breakfast on the first day, he said, yes, at 9.30am, so i didn't buy anything in preparation, there was no breakfast. also, we tried some trick photos on the salt flat, but they didn't really turn out that well, see more later.
when we arrived in uyuni, we decided not to spend a night (considering that no toilets worked because there was no water), and headed straight for potosi (where i will be leaving tomotrrow), the highest city in the world (4060m). to be honest, i've only felt the altitude when walking around, no altitude sickness for me yet , which is a good thing. anyway, the main thing to do in town is the mine tour, where allegedly, over 8 million people have died in the 450 years that the mine has been operating.
the mine tour is pretty harsh, as you walk (not standing straight of course) through parts of the mine, and then see some crazy stuff, and also talk to some of the miners that are working on the day. we bought some gifts for the miners, like 96% pure alcohol (they mix it with water), coca leaves (they do make your mouth a little numb), cigarettes, and soft drinks.
i also bought a stick of dynamite, hoping that our guide would let it off, but he took half of someone elses and blew that one up, and i didn't get any video, d'oh. what a waste of money, anyway, in the mine, the miners worship the devil, known as tio, look it up on wikipedia. strange , but that's what they do, me and phil watched this film called the devil's miner before we went on the tour, which sort of explained a lot before hand.
so now i write this, and have one more night in potosi, before heading to sucre for some quiet time, and spanish study for at least two weeks. so don't expect too much over the next few weeks, but i'll try to keep it interesting. now for the review of the accommodation in potosi, the backpackers potosi (or la casona) hostel is clean, but not particularly great. not good for meeting people, and the bbq that they talk about on thostelbookers.com, and hostelworld.com, it doesn't exist. it's just not great, but i can't compare it to other places in town, so who knows if there is anything better. anyway, that's it for this week, more next week hopefully, with better spanish skills, and hopefully a supermarket so that i can do some cooking.
picture of me trying to do a silhouette at sunrise on the salt flats of uyuni, don't worry, i got it right for my gallery.
#33 dtra (david tran)
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