Bolivian White

We arrived in Bolivia last week. First stop was the capital La Paz. It is a city with a pretty dramatic setting, in a valley with huge snow capped mountains around. There is nothing particularly exciting to do in La Paz, but it has a good atmosphere and is a nice place to wander around. There are loads of markets and stalls with indigneous women selling things.

Our next stop was to Uyuni to visit the Salt flats and the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina. We went on a three day trip in a jeep with four other tourists, the driver Carlos and the cook Marianna. Marianna was the only cook we saw dressed in the traditional Bolivian way, with a bowler hat and plaits down to her waist.

On the first day we went out on to the salt flats. The salt flats near Uyuni are the biggest in the world with an area of about 12000 m2 that used to be covered by an enormous prehistoric lake. We drove to a catus covered island in the salt, Isla del Pescado, and climbed to the top. From there all that you could see was this white salt desert that looked like snow in all directions.

The area around Isla del Pescado seems to attract lots of different people. Apart from the expected tourists there was a film crew and group of dancers dressed like Incas (except in very short skirts) recording a music video in the middle of the salt. There was also a ballerina being photographed dancing around and some one doing a headstand by themselves, presumably just for fun.

At the island we sampled Marianna´s cooking for the first time, which was quite nice if you didn´t eat the meat, and discovered that the best way to spot our jeep from a distance would be to go to whichever one had the bonnet up.

After lunch we drove out of the salt flat to a small village to spend the night. On the way we saw some vicunas, a small endangered wild relative of the llama that looks like a deer and has beautiful wool.

The next day we drove into a strange high altitude desert with bizarre rock formations. We went to several lagoons where there were lots of flamingos eating algae, proving that flamingos don´t just like warm places like Florida. We also saw some Viscachas which look pretty much like rabbits until they move, when you see that they have long tails and hop like kangaroos.

The second night we went to stay at a basic lodge inside the National Park at Laguna Colorada, a bright red lake at 4500m, which two of our group fell into to.

In the morning Carlos woke us up at 5:00am in the freezing cold to go and look at some Geysers. Unfortunately the jeep wouldn´t start so Carlos decided to unfreeze the engine by starting a fire with paper under the bonnet. That got it going for a bit but when it stopped again he got the gas cooker off the top of the jeep. At that point forseeing the headline, six tourists plus cook die in explosion, we got out of the jeep. It turned out though that Carlos just wanted to remove a piece of the engine and heat it on the gas fire rather than sticking the fire itself under the bonnet. Strangely after that the jeep did get going again.

The geysers at 5000m (the highest we went) were really spectacular and after that we went to some thermal pools where I defrosted my feet. Then it was on to Laguna Verde (green due to natural arsenic deposits apparently) and up to the Chilean border. At the border we droped three of the group off before driving back to Uyuni. Altogether a pretty amazing trip.

Today we came down to Tupiza a town right in the south of Bolivia near the border with Argentina, that is surrounded by desert that looks like the wild west. We are planning to stay for a couple of days before heading north again.