My intro to Bolivia came in the car on the way from the airport. Upon passing the 2nd traffic accident in the space of 5 minutes, I enquired “Hay muchas accidentes?” … “Si si” he replied – and then went on to explain that the van drivers were crazy. It didn’t take me too long to surmise that it wasn’t just the van drivers though. It was already mid-afternoon by the time I’d checked into my (filthy) hotel room, so I wasted no time in heading out to Café del Mundo for a delicious sandwich and then across to Hotel Presidente to see about rappelling down its wall dressed as bacon – disappointingly it was closed for renovations and “might be open tomorrow” so instead I looked around a few shops before heading back to the hotel. Just crossing the roads in La Paz is an adrenaline adventure though. No concept of lights or crossings or defining who has right of way here. Just step out with authority and hope for the best.
Day 2 in La Paz I was initially torn between seeing more of the city via the highly recommended red caps walking tour (and trying again to do the rappel) or doing the very popular “Death Road” mountain biking trip. I suspected the views would be incredible on the latter, however did have a concern or 2 about the “safety” standards in Bolivia – and I’d already heard directly that even the good bikes weren’t anywhere near the standard we’d enjoyed in Colombia. The death road option was thrown out the window though at the welcome briefing when one of my new tour mates recounted how she’d spent 3 hours of her death road trip that day hauling out the dead body of a 22 year old girl who was riding in the group in front and had gone off the edge. It sounded like a something out of a horror story, not a holiday. So, walking tour it was.
Whilst the walking tour confirmed that there wasn’t actually a whole lot of “sights” in La Paz, it was thoroughly interesting to learn about the San Pedro prison (which seems to function more like a hotel than a jail), the current president and some of the crazy things he’s come out with – such as a public announcement that eating too much chicken makes you gay and drinking coke makes you bald…. Or the policy idea he had to tax all women who were over 18 and didn’t have children to give it to those under 18 who did have children… or the revelation he shared after completing one of his first major trips in the job… confirming that “there are more Bolivians in Bolivia than anywhere else”… Sometimes it’s fun to know there are countries who have people potentially more embarrassing than Tony Abbott in charge. We also visited the witches market (llama foetus galore) and learnt about the importance of offerings and rituals in their culture. Homeless people beware – burying someone alive in the foundations of a new building is a practice that is thought to bring good luck to the construction.
Witches market
Backwards clock to pay homage to the sundial traditions of the indigenous people
Where the President would live if it wasn’t such a ridiculously dangerous place for him to live
After the tour, the rappel was unfortunately still closed, so there was time for lunch and a trip up the teleferico for some great city views (and surprisingly cheap due to it being a public transport rather than tourism initiative) before our meeting for the night bus to Sucre.
Pristine football pitch amidst the chaos
Our transport to the terminal was about an hour late, but this was expected as “we are in Bolivia now chicos”. Once we boarded it became clear that it was our driver’s questionable decision making ability that was the most likely reason for the delay. Instead of doing a lap around the block, opting to do a 34 point turn in a street that was just 1 lane in each direction with parked cars on either side… as you do. We made it to the terminal just in the knick of time though, and were delighted to find our night bus had proper beds that reclined to 170 degrees, as the only way to not be completely terrified by the driving antics was to be sound asleep. Ignorance is bliss. It was also rather blissful to be ignorant of the on-board toilet situation for the 14 hour journey… at first the driver advised he wasn’t going to open it for the first 4 hours (which seemed to be a rather arbitrary bladder test at best)… and then he decided he wasn’t going to open it at all. Clearly stopping so people can pee on the side of the road was a much better option than him having to clean the toilet at the end of the journey.
Arriving in Sucre was a pleasing change of pace. Known as “The White City”, it was certainly a lot calmer and cleaner (and whiter) than La Paz. We had a traditional breakfast of Saltenas (kind of like an empanada) and Horchata (a sickly sweet strawberry and coconut milk concoction) before Karina attempted to give us a walking tour. The attempt being somewhat thwarted by all the racket and blockages of the parades owing to the day being a National Day…. I swear every second day in South America seems to be a National Day!
There were also some facts dished out at the market about it being some sort of festival of the sausage, so we opted to celebrate said sausage fest by spending the afternoon relaxing in the sunshine over a beer and a sausage on a balcony with a good view of the city. The only other thing we were required to achieve that day was booking our tours for the next day. The most interesting, least likely to die choice appeared to be the hike down part of the Inca trail followed by a hike out to see the dinosaur footprints, so 6 of us signed up for that one whilst the majority of the rest of the group opted for a day of chillaxing.
Looking out over Sucre
They clearly love their foosball
Sucre markets
Some like it hot
When we woke for our hike the next day the clouds looked ominous and more than a few of us questioned the sanity of our decision to go out hiking for 7 hours. The company had cleverly taken full payment in advance though so we were committed. As we started out, it was cold, wet and foggy – so we were left to imagine what beautiful views there might be – mostly important for the stories we planned to tell the others. Thankfully it did eventually clear up and the views were pretty awesome.
We stopped by a waterfall for lunch where we had to contest with a bull for the space, before continuing on in the direction of the dinosaur footprints. Despite the altitude most of us were walking at the same steady pace, except for the Irish duo who kept falling a bit behind. Then all of a sudden we hear some ferocious barking and see Shane and David running towards us being pursued by a few dogs – “It bit me the f’ing C he screamed (though without the censorship). And there pretty much ended David’s time on the tour – he would have to fly to Santiago the following day to commence the rabies treatment – turns out the walk wasn’t as low risk as we thought.
When we got to the dinosaur footprints they were quite an impressive site – and strangely untouched and unprotected. Apparently millions of years ago there had been a river there and then a volcano had erupted creating a layer which preserved the footprints of the dinosaurs who were attempting to escape. Almost more impressive than the footprints themselves though was our guides ability to draw a picture of each of the different dinosaurs whose footprints we could see using just a couple of rocks as his pen and paper. We had another sandwich whilst we admired the prints, before setting off back home, this time each armed with a rock to pass the dog house. No incidents this time around.
In the evening we went to a great steak place for dinner, and buoyed by some horrendous 2-4-1 drinks, we were keen to kick on somewhere. Only trouble being that Sucre is not exactly a town known for its nightlife. We had a bit of a dance at joyride before heading back out on to the street to plan our next move. We heard some music coming from somewhere around the corner and went to investigate. And what should we luck upon but a huge Jesus concert – what the? The only thing happening after midnight in Sucre was a Jesus concert? It was all a bit odd, so I called it a night shortly after.
Next day was a chilled morning in Sucre followed by a bus trip to Potosi. The high danger activity for that day turned out to be eating the Bolivian specialty for dinner. Beware steak buried at the bottom of a tomato based soup with chips around the edges and a fried egg on top. 10 hours later, I was tasting it again and again and again. Vomiting at an altitude of 4060m is not to be taken too lightly either – it was like an extreme sport. Unfortunately this meant I missed the trip to the silver mine and the chance to purchase dynamite from the miners market. Though the one positive of food poisoning is it goes as quickly as it comes, so I was feeling much better the next day and able to wander the town a bit before it was time to board the bus to Uyuni.
A few hours later we pulled up in what looked like a deserted demolition zone, and Karina announced that we were on the main street (oh dear) – and in just 8 or so blocks we’d be in the centre. We were torn between being grateful that we weren’t too far from the centre, or being concerned by it – there really was nothing to see for miles. Turns out the town of Uyuni is a sort of failed mining town – construction commenced expecting a boom and then the mines were nationalised and the local companies closed down so the boom never came. The end result being dishevelled looking buildings and not much to see or do besides inhale dust and purchase more alpaca merchandise. Thankfully they have a great pizza place run by a Canadian (far and away the most efficient service we encountered in all of Bolivia) so the evening was sorted and the only time we had to kill was the following morning – most of which I used to upload some blog photos on the high speed connection at the internet café – no wifi in this town.
View from the hotel in Uyuni
After lunch we got in the 4WDs that would virtually become our homes for the next 2.5 days adventure through the salt flats. First stop was at the train cemetery – a bizarre dumping ground for old trains. We had fun climbing all over them for photographic purposes, and a few split pairs of pants later, it was time to get back in the cars.
Next up we visited a tiny village with a “salt factory”…. Said factory was actually just a little old man scooping up plastic bags full of salt from the pile on the ground beside him, and then melting them shut. He was very good at it though.
A bit later we stopped at some piles of salt on the outer edges of the flats – stand-in guide Brooke Pachamama Forysth explained to me that this was part of the salt mining process… squares were territorially marked out in the salt, then this was scraped into piles and left there to dry out, before collection and delivery to the old men for bagging. Rightio then.
As we continued on our journey, we had a less than riveting stop at the salt hotel before we finally got out to a nice big expanse of nothingness which would be perfect for all the funky photos we wanted to take. However it turns out with modern cameras being so smart, that it is actually quite difficult to trick some of them into taking the shot you’re after. One day I will properly learn how to actually use the manual functionality on my camera! In the meantime though, we were blessed to have Karina as our tour leader – she was an expert through years of practice and demonstrated phenomenal patience in taking almost ALL our photos. Thanks Cray Cray!!
Sunset was next on the agenda and it was absolutely stunning. Only trouble with it was that it meant that the sun (and with it our warmth) was going for the day. When the overnight temps get as low as around minus 30, it’s so nice to be able to retreat to your modern hotel with heating and hot showers and plentiful warm blankets….Pity our hotel had none of these things. It did have walls made of salt though so that was pretty cool to look at (via your head-torch) whilst you sat there shivering. And it was definitely $5 well spent hiring the sleeping bag!
Blossoming bromance
Road to nowhere
The next morning we set off for an “island” that had some super cool cactuses all around it. We did a nice hike to the top, took some photos and came back down (again reminded that down is soooo much easier than up at altitude). We then drove a bit further before it was time for some more photos playing with the perspective…. It was made much easier by the sun being directly overhead, but eventually we ran out of creative steam and jumped back in the 4WDs.
Bolivia giving us the finger
It’s worth mentioning that we’d developed quite the relationship with our driver by this point. Whilst he never uttered a word, nor cracked a smile, he did have a wonderful habit of starting and ending every car trip with the same song – #176 – or “Imillitay”. We quickly developed an admiration for this dedication (he even did it for car trips that were less than 5 minutes) and enthusiastically sang and “danced” along every time it came on. We decided he must have a very good sense of humour to behave in such a manner – but was just too shy to say anything (or smile). After about another hour of bouncing along to the panpipes, the car in front stopped for a toilet break so we pulled up behind them – and it was a good thing we did – turns out we were leaking more than Julian Assange. Driver Dan must’ve been paying too much attention to the song selection to notice the temperature gauge had gone waaaaay beyond hot. Sit tight kids, we’re going to be here awhile.
The drivers played around inside the bonnet whilst we played some “football” (on possibly the worst surface you’ve ever seen)…. And then it was eventually decided we might as well have a picnic lunch here. At least the scenery was nice and the sun was out. I enthusiastically chowed down on my tuna pasta salad – enhanced by the boatloads of extra tuna from all the non-tuna eaters, and washed it down with a swig of Coke. Being stranded in the desert actually wasn’t too bad (yet).
With lunch well and truly finished, it was becoming clear that the work on the car wasn’t, so we kept ourselves entertained for a while longer with a game of charades. Eventually the drivers fessed up that they couldn’t properly fix the car, but had done enough to get it to the next town, where we would be met by a new car that was being sent from Uyuni. A real blessing that we’d broken down in one of the few parts of the desert with mobile phone reception.
Upon arriving at the town, Matthias was absolutely salivating – and it wasn’t just because Imillitay was playing. For a 2 horse town that only seemed to have one convenience store, we counted no less than 4 soccer fields! No prizes for guessing how we were going to fill the time here. We rounded up enough for a game of 4 on 4, whilst the others procured some beers and took to the sidelines for heckling. Let’s just say the heckling is much easier than the running at 4400m! Much to the disgust of the fancy footed duo of Matthias and Zed who were accompanied by the boundless enthusiasm of Cray Cray and the tenacity of Fancy Francy, my team of Lara with the cat-like reflexes, Sneaky Shane with his runs from the back and “Party tonight?” Manu managed to carve out a surprise 5-0 flogging! Better still, our new car was here (and had our old MP3 hooked up and ready to go). Given we’d lost a few hours of daylight, there wasn’t time to see the talked about lagoons and volcano viewpoints so we just made our way directly to the hotel instead.
The outside temperature was definitely colder than the previous night, but the 50kgs worth of blankets provided did the trick and we had a nice warm night’s sleep – until the alarms went off at 5:10am ahead of our 6am departure. The 20 metre walk from the door of the hotel to the cars was bone-shatteringly cold – and we then sat in the freezing vehicles for a further 20minutes or so, before we were fully loaded and ready to go – at which point, thankfully there was some heating that came with the engine being turned on. This lasted for about 15minutes until car #3 (the rave machine) copped a flat and some engine troubles – and it seemed the chosen method of repair was going to be to just fleece everything from our vehicle. About 30 minutes of shivering later, Imiillitay was playing and we were on the road again – this time we were last out of the blocks as they wanted the dodgy car to be in the front. Only trouble was which car they thought to be the dodgy one. We didn’t last another 10 minutes before our “new” vehicle completely conked out. Our driver desperately sending his SOS signals to the car(s) infront – but it was to no avail – with the speed demon lead vehicle now in 2nd place, they were both miles away.
We knew it wasn’t good news. We’d surmised from the previous 2 break-downs that our driver knew the least about mechanics of the 3 – and we were now on our own in the middle of the desert without any mobile phone reception (seriously, why they don’t invest in some sat phones is beyond me, but that rant is for another day). DJ Dan opened the bonnet and pretended to do stuff whilst we sat there helplessly. Matthias dreamt about football, Zed busied himself making video diaries, Julie and I sat there rocking back and forth attempting to maintain a temperature above hypothermic, and Shane decided he needed to take action. So he set off towards the horizon, in what we could only guess was a quest for the nearest Toyota dealership. As time bore on, finally we saw another vehicle in the rear-view mirror. But alas, it stopped a few kilometres short of us. To dump a passenger out the door. Wait a minute – that’s Shane!! What was he doing in the car, and more importantly, why were they dropping him off miles away (when clearly they were about to drive straight past the rest of us in a minutes time)? Despite the rather unusual decision to ditch Shane, they did pull up beside us for a while and possibly offer to help – they didn’t appear to do much mechanically but we were hopeful they might at least be able to get a message to our other vehicles who were presumably stopped somewhere up ahead waiting for us.
Over an hour must have passed by the time we were finally joined by our other vehicles (containing the drivers who we at least held a skerrick of hope about their ability to fix the car). So they set about playing under the bonnet whilst we continued to shiver. Matters were only made worse when reports came through about the creature comforts that the “First class” passengers in the lead vehicle with the fancy steering wheel cover were enjoying… not only did they have heating, but they were sitting back enjoying a Robbie Williams DVD… there were even rumours that there was an on-board skittles dispenser catering to their every candy whim. Oh to be one of the privileged few.
We were alternating between sitting in the car for relative warmth (or at least to exclude the ferocious wind from the equation) and stretching our legs in the sun outside, when every now and then a strange request would come through from the drivers. Or more accurately, the same strange request would do the rounds again. They wanted ladies stockings – and seemed surprised the ladies weren’t carrying them. I would like to know what lady does bring stockings to the desert though!! Eventually they realised that no amount of asking was going to conjure up a pair of stockings, so the shirt off driver #3’s back was deemed the next best substitute (for replacing a destroyed fan belt I believe). We felt slightly bad complaining about the cold when this guy has stripped down to almost nothing – but it was hardly our fault they were attempting to cross a harsh desert landscape without spare parts or any means of communicating with people back in the town who would have spare parts.
More and more time passed, more video diaries were made and more charades were played. People were understandably starting to get increasingly frustrated though. Eventually a decision was made that Karina would need to hitch a ride with the next random vehicle to pass by in order to get back to the hotel where she had a means of communication to attempt to re-jig the plans. Among other things, there was no way we were going to be at the Chilean border for our scheduled 2pm transfer. So off she went, leaving us in the hands of the locals. About an hour later, the driver of the lead vehicle determined they should also go back – his thinking was to shuttle everyone back to the hotel and start again (with yesterday’s broken car that was magically going to have been fixed).
With the boss of the drivers and Karina now both having abandoned us, young Matthias was deemed to be in charge – not sure if it was the hat or his superior command of the Spanish language that made him such a frontrunner for the role – but there were more than a few fearing the possible outcomes of this decision. Like all good leaders though, he wasted no time in delegating various responsibilities and I was more than happy to be named as head of food. My first decision would be that we should consume the entire contents of the esky without further delay, to increase our chances of being able to squeeze everyone into 2 vehicles if it came to that. I was holding very little hope for the ability of our drivers to get either of our cars moving again (they’d been at it for over 5 hours by this stage)… and I was hungry. So we tucked into our chicken wings and rice. For a brief moment at least, it was better to be in cattle class.
And then up pulls another random vehicle and out jumps Cray Cray! She was back, and she had a plan…. But was distraught to see she was now missing a whole carload of people. Had the driver not made his own decision to take them back to the hotel, the new plan was going to be to load both “good cars” to maximum capacity and the overflow could travel in the couple of spare seats of another G group who were to be passing by shortly. This would get us to the red lagoon, at which point there would be many more transport options opening up as it’s a major junction of roads. It was such a promising plan – but completely thwarted when Romy returned from the hotel sans passengers (as feared he hadn’t gone inside so had never got the message Karina had left there). It was just a comedy of errors, and poor Karina was back to the drawing board – and again without any means of communication. She sensibly decided that we should all at least get back to the hotel without further delay (the first class passengers were of course there already and expecting everyone else), but again she was overruled by some king size egos who unbelievably thought they might have actually fixed our car enough to drive it to the hotel. Never mind fixing it though – they’d completely destroyed it. Our initial problem had never had anything to do with the automatic transmission, but our new one certainly did. And if you can’t move an automatic into gear, well you’re pretty well screwed – even I know that. But we needed to waste another 30 minutes confirming this with some pointless pushing first.
Finally they conceded defeat and the 2 working vehicles were cleared to go back to the hotel. Thrilled to be leaving that square of desert behind, but a shame to have to abandon our driver (and Imillitay) with it. Realising we weren’t going to see him again, we quickly scrambled together his tip (no doubt inflated due to his music choices) and said our goodbyes. It was well after 2pm by the time we got back to the hotel (which we’d left 8 hours prior) and we were clearly still miles from the Chilean border and had seen none of the talked about sights – lagoons, hot springs, geysers…. All very beautiful I’m sure. But becoming increasingly high on everyone’s priority list was just getting the heck out of Bolivia!! As plan after plan fell through, only one remained feasible if we were still going to attempt to get to Chile. We were going to have to squeeze 8 in one 4WD and 9 in the other and backtrack to the nearest Chilean border in order to get there before it closed. This was going to be further complicated by the fact that we only had 5 “skinny people” and we also had more than a handful who were refusing to go in the vehicle with 9 because they weren’t comfortable with the crazy driving antics that driver had been displaying so far. The end result being that the 9 people in the lead vehicle were determined not by size, but by a willingness to actually get in the car… and that’s how I ended up spending the next 2 hours bouncing around the desert balanced on one butt cheek in a row of 4 across the middle. Needless to say we were all pretty happy to get out of that car and go through the Bolivian immigration. Even those who’d lost their forms did ok – apparently the going rate for a bribe to get out of there was just US $5 – not bad – I’d have been willing to pay a lot more at that point!
Get me outta here!
The cars then drove us a little further on until we were officially in the middle of no-mans land and would need to await our Chilean transport. Karina had magically managed to line it up to meet us at 5pm (despite the border being 6 hours further away from our planned border crossing) so we unloaded and waved our Bolivian drivers goodbye. It really just wasn’t our day though, and 5pm came and went with no sign of a bus. It turned out the transport had given some other people a lift instead – and we’d have to wait a bit longer. If only we had some phone reception… At least it was a slightly different middle of nowhere to earlier in the day though. We could also now see the border as it was just 2kms of flat road ahead of us, so could technically walk there if it came to it – but it was more of a tease than anything else as walking wasn’t a particularly appealing option with all the luggage we had (and bearing in mind we were at an altitude of about 4500m).
As time ticked on and the sun threatened to disappear behind the mountains, there was still no sign of our bus. It was getting cold and the border would close at 8pm (and we couldn’t have even returned to Bolivia if we wanted to as that one closed at 6pm) so we were left with no option but to walk. I had 25kgs in my big backpack and about 10kgs in the “small” one, had been carrying a cold/flu/variant of the Sarah virus since Peru, and had been breathing in copious amounts of dust for 3 days straight. Throw in the altitude and this was looking to be anything but a fun walk. By the time I stumbled over the finish line I was barely breathing – my nose was completely blocked and I couldn’t stop coughing long enough to get much of a breath in through my mouth. Brooke kindly came to my aid and filled in all my forms for me – the next challenge though was to be actually getting through immigration. Whatever was wrong with me, the Chileans were pretty sure they didn’t want it on their soil. They called Karina over and she had to vouch for me that it was purely altitude and I hadn’t previously been sick – it was far from the truth but I nodded along in agreement. Never have I been more keen to cross a border. And thankfully they let me.
First stop in Chile was a health post not far away where the doctor did a few tests, gave me 10 minutes on an oxygen mask and some mystery drugs to clear up my nose. A pretty good service for free! Conclusion was the blocked nose, dry air, bad cough, altitude and a potential allergy to the large volumes of sulphur in the dust were behind the problem…. But I had at least managed to avoid dying in Bolivia. Unfortunately with all that went wrong it hadn’t quite lived up to my expectations, but at least it was a fun group of people who I’d endured it with.
Musings of a Suerte Aussie Chica 