Across the Salt Flats and the Atacama Desert

Uyuni, Bolivia to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, three days crossing the most amazing scenery I've seen so far in South America. The Salt Flats in particular amazed me, the hexagonal patterns the salt makes are beautiful. Also the first time I've stayed in a hotel made of salt bricks and slept on a bed made of salt, thankfully with a mattress on top!


Fun in the Salvador Dali Desert


Green lagoon wasn't so green!


Getting up at 5:30am for sunrise was worth it just for the length of our shadows.


Sunrise


Sunset


Wandering around an active volcano!



Red Lagoon


The barreness of the driest desert in the world amazed me, 0.5mm of rain each year.


A target tame llama. I've decided llama meat is just as yummy as alpaca meat.


A four year old toilet attendant, making sure we all paid our two Bolivanios while her Mum worked in the shop.


Cutting salt bricks, only indigenous people are allowed to do this. They sell for about a US$1 each.


Salt Flats


An island in the midst of all the salt. The cacti grow 1cm per year, so they're protected.



I was amazed by the patterns in the salt, almost always hexagons (something to do with the molecular structure of salt).


Fighting with a dinosaur! Perspective is very writer in such a flat place.


The salt hotel we ate lunch at, like the one we stayed at that night, even the table and stools were made from salt.

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Potosí, Bolivia

Once one of the richest cities in the world, thanks to its silver mine Potosi is now just the highest city in the world at 4100m. The main tourist attraction is to tour the mines, that still operate without modern machinery. Pedro my guide had started working in the mines at age ten, despite Bolivian law stating the minimum age is eighteen. By eighteen back issues caused him to take a vacation, he joined the army for a year and eventually became a tour guide.

After getting dressed up in gumboots, water proof clothing and hard hats, our first stop was the refinery. All the minerals extracted go through a simple refinery process before being exported, mostly to China.

In the mine the tunnels were narrow and sometimes very low, I was very thankful for my hard hat. Our first stop was a group of miners having a break. This involves chewing coca leaves and drinking alcohol, as they claim they can't eat food underground. We spent about two hours walking around the different tunnels and seeing different groups working.

Seeing them mine with pick axes and lugging thirty kilo bags out on their backs felt like we were stepping back in time. Though watching them set up explosives while drinking 96% proof alcohol was a little worrying! There is also lots of worshipping of Pachamama and underground devils and gods. Bolivian women only come underground on the day of Carnival, so they can gain an appreciation of the work of their husbands and fathers.

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Sucre, Bolivia

Sucre is known as both the white city and the sweet city. It is definitely both, white walls everywhere and some great chocolate. It is also the capital of Bolivia and was central in independence from the Spaniards, so there are many museums to visit.


The Liberty Building



It is also starting to become famous as the home of 12092 dinosaur footprints. They were found by the cement factory when blasting in their quarry. So now next door to the cement factory is a dinosaur park. They're hoping UNESCO will step in and help them to preserve the footprints.





From the park I headed off on a 10km hike to the Seven Cascades. They weren't quite the waterfalls I expected but it was nice to be out in the country. And while the rest of the group swam I got to relax and enjoy the blue sky and greenery.







Sitting in the central plaza and watching life go on around me has been entertaining. I particularly enjoyed the "zebras" who help people cross at zebra crossings and the random religious parades.





There are quite a few people begging in the streets or attempting to sell homemade goods. And many boys working as shoe shiners our attempting to sell things. The contrast in their lives to both mine and richer Bolivians is confronting. As is the level of wealth shown by the use of gold and jewels in the Roman Catholic churches. Today I was shocked to see a gold plated choir area in a Jesuit building.


(Now part of the Liberty building)

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La Paz, Bolivia

It's been an interesting six days in La Paz, living at 3600m above sea level with a cold. I can now climb the three flights of stairs to the hostel's restaurant without stopping!


Bolivia is known for it's protests, I think this one had something to do with keeping milk production natural. There was also a transport workers strike that day.


Public transport consists of old American school buses and minivans. I love how the buses are all painted differently but are all blue.


By chance I discovered the yarn market just up the hill from my hostel. Mostly acrylics but I found one shop selling llama and alpaca.


On Thursday thanks to a friend of a friend I was able to visit a drug and alcohol rehab centre in El Alto (the city above La Paz). I was lucky to visit on the one day a year these amazing ladies bring an enormous lunch for everyone.


On Saturday I headed to the south of Lima with a fellow Aussie traveller and checked out the Valle de la Luna. It really does look like you might be on the moon. On the way back we travelled two lines of La Paz's public transport system, a cable car system. It was a great way to get a perspective of how big the city is and see the contradictions between different areas.


Arriving back at the hostel there was a random parade coming down the street.


Street performers are a regular part of traffic downtown. This guy particularly impressed me, as do the people dressed up as zebras stopping people crossing against the lights at peak hour.


Tonight I wasted four hours attending Cholita wrestling. Probably the only wrestling that begins with the women taking off their bowlers hat, shawl and earrings. Supposedly it began as entertainment in an area with not much happening and then women wanted to participate to. Best described as WWF Bolivian style, though I'm still not sure about the food that was thrown. There were more locals than tourists in attendance but the tourists left when the men's performance started. At least it is generating income in an area which normally wouldn't get tourist income.

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Lake Titicaca

Did you know that beer has a very different froth at high altitude? I've spent the last five days on the edge of Lake Titicaca at almost 4000m. Walking up three flights of stairs is still very hard on my lungs.

The first stop was Puno on the Peruvian side, not a very exciting city and the tours from there are very touristy. I did a one day tour to a an island made of reeds and then stopped for lunch at another island.


Lunch with a view, the snow capped mountains on the right are in Bolivia. On this island the men must be able to knit well before they can marry, the women weave instead.


An explanation of how the reed islands are constructed every 25 years. I'm still not convinced people actually live there full time now, seemed a bit of a tourist trap. There was an Australian couple on the tour with me and they were just as skeptical as me.


They really are islands amongst the reeds, complete with houses and boats made from reeds. They even eat the reeds and have cattle graze on them.

Copacabana on the Bolivian side has been much nicer. A laid back town of 2000 people, on the edge of the lake, it has just enough services to keep both foreign and local tourists happy. My main activity was a hike on the Isla Del Sol. We didn't manage to find the stone table where the Inkas made their sacrifices but had a really interesting 10km hike. Although the three hills we had to climb were difficult at such high altitude.



So glad I don't have to do my washing this way.


At times it felt like we were working through the Aussie bush. Apparently the Spaniards introduced Eucalyptus trees to South America in the 1800s.


The water around the island was so clear and very bright blue.


Sunset over Lake Titicaca, from a rooftop cafe.



I had a lovely long walk along the edge of the lake on Saturday morning, as everyone was getting ready for the busy day ahead.

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