Bolivia Review

From Salar de Uyuni

It has been more than three seeks since my last post and a lot has happened. In shortened form, here is what I have been up to:

Gran Poder

The day after our arrival in La Paz was a huge religous festival, known as Gran Poder. There is dancing and drinking in the street and a parade of costumed dancers from all corners of Bolivia that lasts from 6:00 am until well after 8:00 pm. Eve, Mary and I went to the parade in the morning, before heading back to our hostal in the afternoon. That evening we went out again to enjoy the festivities, eat shishkababs made from cow heart and potato and drink beer and chicha morada.

El Camino de la Muerte

Meeting in the mornining at our hostal, we ate breakfast with our group before loading into the chase vans for the trip up to la cumbre ("summit") at 4700m (15,420 feet). From there, we road downhill, descending 3520m (11,549 feet), to the village of Yolosa at an altitude of 1180m (3,871 feet). The first part of the trip was along the new, paved road. Then second part was over the old, true "death road," so named because it was the most dangerous roads in the world, before the construction of the new road three years ago. The road is narrow and unpaved and there are sections where great waterfalls cascade over the track from cliffs high above. Despite the small amount of traffic it recieved, each year hundreds of people plummeted to their deaths in busses that would drive off cliffs hundreds of meters high. The road is still used by local coca farmers and adventure-seeking cyclists.

In retrospect, descending the camino de la muerte was perhaps riskier than I had anticipated. There were several crosses indicating where tourists like ourselves had lost control of their bikes and fallen to their deaths. Indeed, according to our guide, there are tourists dying every few months. The natural danger of the route is compounded by the poor quality of the bikes that we had. Mary had a tire blow out, Eve and I had trouble keeping our chains on and my rear brakes failed twice. All of us were fortunate to have this happen on "safe" sections of the road. I hate to think what would have become of us had we been unfortunate enough to encounter these problems while rounding a corner above a cliff 100 meters high.

La Paz and Food Poisoning

Back in La Paz, we went out to eat with Derek, a Kiwi travelling journalist we had met on the camino de la muerte. I ate some street food that, by the middle of the night, had made me quite ill. I spent the next two days recovering on antibiotics.

Huayna Potosi

Eve, Mary and I set out to climb Huayna Potosi when I was finally feeling better. Mary was a little slow in the morning, and by the time we reached the trailhead, it was clear that she was not doing well at all. It seemed that she was coming down with whatever I had had. We hiked back from the trailhead to the glaciar viejo (4800m/15,750 feet) where we made camp for the night. Mary decided to bivy so that she would not wake us up if she needed to use the bathroom. This was quite generous, considering that the temperature at night was going to be well below freezing.

The next morning, after packing up our camp, Eve and I decided to climb up to the campo roca (5200m/17,000 feet) at the snout of the glacier. Mary would stay behind, and when she was feeling better, climb down to the trailhead and catch a ride back to La Paz. After a few hours of climbing, we reached the camp and set our tent on a narrow platform, surrounded by the tents of other parties. After lounging in the sun all afternoon, we decided to start preparing for the upcoming climb. While I was making water from snow collected off the glacier, who should walk into camp but Mary! This was truly an amazing surprise, considering how ill she had been the night before.

That night, Eve and I set out at around midnight. We were the first rope team on the glacier and started climbing by the light of the moon and stars, which were so bright on the now that we did not need our headlamps to follow the tracks in the snow. We climbed steadily, resting only rarely. There were a huge number of climbers on the mountain and from above we could look back on the flicker of forty tiny lights in neat rows moving up the glacier below us. Nearly all of the other climbers were guided and inexperienced. This lead to bottlenecks at a few sections on the route. We climbed through the night, depite these annoyances, and by sunrise had climbed to above 5900m (19,000 feet).

Eve was exhausted, but determined to climb to above 6000 m. We reached the wall up to the summit ridge and, after waiting our turn, began climbing upwards. The exposure and angle were moderate as we climbed a snow slope up to a band of rock and dirt. This scared Eve a little. The rock and dirt were poorly heald together by fast-melting ice. Still, we made it over this section together and onto the kinfe-edge summit ridge at 6060m (19,882 feet). To the east we had views of the Amazon basin, to the north and south, the lesser peaks of the Cordillera Real, and to the west, the vast expanse of Lake Titicaca and the great volcanos of the Cordillera Occidental on the Chilean border. Ultimately, we decided that it was not worth climbing to the summit itself (6088m), a small mound of snow a few meters away, given the long line of climbers waiting for their chance to plant their feet on top and snap a few photos. Instead, we rested where we were for awhile to regain some strength and calm our nerves, while watching the spectacle of climbers at the summit.

After waiting for a break in the procession of climbers, we got in line, and then headed back to more level ground. Once off the ridge, and after a quick but necessary bathroom break in a crevasse, we started back down the mountain. We were tired and thirsty and made slow progress. Still, by 11:00 am we were back in camp where both Eve and I napped briefly before helping Mary finish packing up. We hiked back down to the trailhead and met the taxi at 3:00 pm. We were an hour late but, as fate would have it, so was our driver, so ultimately neither had to wait for the other.

Sucre and Tarabuco

The next evening we took a night bus to Sucre, the constitutional capitol of Bolivia. The cleanliness and architectual harmony of Sucre, also know as the ciudad blanca ("white city") was a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of La Paz.

The morning of our arrival, Eve and I (Mary was still feeling sick) took a bus to Tarabuco to experience its famous Sunday market. This was a bit of a tourist trap, but fun nonetheless. Was purchased a few more textiles and had lunch before heading back to our hostal that afternoon. At lunch, we had met a French couple and agreed to meet them for dinner, which ended up begin a lot of fun.

The next day, we organized an afternoon guided tour of the city. Mary, still not feeling well despite the antibiotics she had been taking, decided to sit this out as well. Our guide, a student at the university, was a lot of fun and a fountain of information on the history of Sucre, Bolivia, and the revolution, as well as the different ethnic groups that lived in the area. We visited two museums, learning about the broad differences between ethnic groups in Bolivia, and more detailed explanations of the differences between textiles from the Tarabuco and Jalq'a peoples. Mary, feeling better, joined us for dinner at La Taverne, a French Restaurant with excellent food and wine.

Potosi and Cerro Rico

The next afternoon, we took a bus to Potosi, which at an altitude of over 4000m (13,000 feet) is considered the highest "city" in the world. Potosi is the sight of Cerro Rico, an infamous silver mine that during the XVI century, made potosi one of the largest and richest cities in the world, rivaled only by Paris, London and Seville. Today, the mine is still in operation and remains the central activity of the local popultaion.

The night of our arrival, I started feeling ill again. After skipping dinner, I woke up in the middle of the night sick as a dog. I missed my scheduled tour of the mines and spent the next day in bed. Mary was also still feeling ill and Eve had homework, so we all spent the day in our hostal. That night Eve got sick too. The next day, feeling better, I got up and went on the mine tour. The tour was outstanding. It was highly educational and gave a first-hand look at the hellish conditions under which the miners struggle to earn between 10 and 50 Bolivianos ($1.40-$7.10) per day.

The Salar de Uyuni

The next day we left Potosi for Uyuni and the Salar, the world's largest salt lake (more than twice the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah). We arrived, checked into a hostal and found a hired a guide for a three-day tour.

The next morning we left for the Salar. We were in a Lexus 470 SUV with three Swiss-Germans (Olivia, Raphael, and Christian). We first stopped at the Train Graveyard, where there were a number of rusted locamotives on narrow-guage track from the hay-day of british train building in South America. From there we travelled to a salt-producing village on the edge of the Salar, where salt was stacked (8-10 days), then speard flat (2-3 days), then baked (to remove the water) and then ground, idodized and bagged. The work is all done by hand and the salt is sold for next to nothing. From here we traveled out onto the Salar itself, a vast expanse of white salt 5-6m (16-19 feet) thick to a "salt hotel" built from salt blocks where we ate lunch. From here we continued to the island Incahuasi ("house of the Inca"), about half way across the Salar. The island is covered by cactus, petrified coral from when the lake and was higher, and is the home to viscachas, although no one knows for sure how they got there across so many kilometers of lifless salt. From the island, we travelled to our hostal, also made of salt bricks, on the edge of the Salar. After dropping off our luggage we got back into the truck and drove over to a rock outcropping where there was a pre-Incan burial site and a cave filled with fosilized algae. From here we watched the sun set on the winter soltice over the Salar before returning to the hostal for dinner, folk music and a good night's sleep.

The next morning, we got up before sunrise and, after breakfast and packing the truck, left for our first stop: the army of rocks. These formations were made from folsilized coral also from the period when the lake was higher. From here we drove to the border with Chile, where there was a feria, at which the locals were trading and exchanging news from the two contries. As such, we were able to set foot in Chile, and can claim that we visited this country on our voyage. We then piled back in and travelled to some lava flows at the foot of a chain of volcanos. We then continued on to the colored lakes. The first was the laguna Cañapa where we were able to get close to a group of vicuñas eating at the edge of the lake. We then went to the laguna Hedionda where we watched flamingos before eating lunch. From here we travelled past three more lakes, stopping to take a look at a fox, before continuing to a high desert and a lookout over the "mountain of seven colors." We then made our way to the arbol de piedra ("tree of stone") for photos before finding our way to the laguna Colorado, a lake that is red in color due to a combination of minerals and algae. It is also home to a huge population of flamingos. Our hostal was just a short ride from the lake. Here we ate dinner, played with some of the local boys before heading off to bed.

The next morning, we got up early to head off to the lagunas Blanca and Verde in the extreem southwest of Bolivia. We arrived shortly before sunrise with great views over both lakes. After sunrise, we drove back towards the laguna Colorado. There we ate breakfast and bathed in the hotsprings at the edge of the lake. We then drove to some paintpots (think Yellowstone) and at an altitude of over 4800m (15,750 feet), we attained the highest point of out trip. From here, we travelled to the desert of Salvador Dali, so named because of the strange rock outsroppings found there. We continued to descend all the way back to the laguna Colorado and then into a wide valley filled with llamas and where we were lucky enough to see a pair of Darwin's Rhea. We drove through open pastures before finally reacing the mining town of San Cristobal. This new boom-town was quite different from Potosi, as the mine here is private and new. The relative wealth of the locals, who can earn up to 10,000 Bs ($1,425) in one two-week shift in the mine, is evident in the well-maintained buidings and houses. We then continued driving until after sunset arriving at under the cover of dark in Uyuni.

Ultimately, this was an amazing experience: our guide Walter, an ex-miner (salt and silver), was outstanding. The scenery was otherworldy. The fauna were abundant.

Tupiza

As we were unable to find three seats in a bus to La Paz, we decided to join the Swiss, with whom we had become friends, south the Tupiza and ultimately the wine-growing region of Tarija. The bus left Uyuni early in the morning, stopping for a few hours in Atocha, a mining town high on the Altiplano. We left from Atocha at 10:00am for Tupiza, where were arrived, after a hot, bumpy and dusty ride a few hours later. There we immediately purchased tickets for the night bus to Tarija.

In Tupiza, we looked around for a hostal where we could keep our things for the afternoon and take showers. After setteling into a place, Eve, Olivia, Christian and I scheduled an after-lunch horseback trip up into the surrounding mountains. There are reminicent of the American Southwest: red in color and similarily eroded. We rode for an hour and a half, past the puerta del diablo, la valle de los machos and finally to el cañon del Inca. To my dismay, in the fading light, good photography was nearly impossible from horseback. Back in Tupiza, we showered and ate dinner before heading to the bus station.

The trip from Tupiza to Tarija was the worst bus ride of our entire time in South America. The bus was uncomfortable in the extreme: bags and bottles rained down on me from the overhead storage bins; the seats were dirty, cramped and broken; the road was impossibly dusty and rough; the driver whipped us around corners at breakneck speed. Needless to say, we arrived in Tarija at 3:00am totally exhausted.

Tarija and la Ruta del Vino

We slept in late our first day in Tarija and only Eve and I made it to breakfast. We hung out in Tarija for the day, recuperating from our restless ride and enjoying the Plaza, the cleanliness and the wealth brought to the city by the combination of booming trade in wine, cocaine and natural gas. It was a welcome change from the grime and poverty of Uyuni and the rest of the altiplano. (Indeed, the stark contrast between the dust and poverty of the altiplano and the relative prosperity of certain cities like Tarija and Sucre is becoming a defining characteristic of my Bolivian experience.)

The next day, we got up late again and then, after breakfast, took a tour of three wineries. We were a little dissapointed to learn that Bolivian winery tours typically do not inculde tastings! This is unfortunate not only for us, but I imagine, the amount of wine that the wineries sell to tourists. Indeed the only winery to offer free tastings had atrocious wine (think "von Stihl" from Wisconsin) but sold loads of the crap to the tour group right before ours. Following our tour, we relaxed more, drinking wine and beer late into the night at a local bar.

This brings me up to date. Today we take the bus back to La Paz, from where we will visit Lake Titicaca, before heading to Cusco, Peru and Machu Pichu. It is hard for me to believe that we have fewer than three weeks before we will be back in the United States. There is so much detail that I have left out of the preceeding account and still so much more to see in all the countries we have visited. And when I look at a map and relalize that we have seen so little of this continent, I know that I will be back, someday, to see more. It is now my only consulation at having experienced so little.