Day two and a stupidly early start after a bottle of red wine and some star gazing last night. First time I’ve seen dawn since Quito
Llamas are everywhere of course but, as I’m sure all the very best wildlife photographers will say, getting that ultimate Llama shot is much more illusive. I do believe I’ve got it though…. 
This was the longest day. 12 hours of driving (stopping for pictures and amazing lunch of course). Along the way we saw… Flamingos
and our first salty lake! Kath and Tam went for a dip in the hot springs there. I got blinded by my first experience of walking on salt here… 
After this we headed off to the Dali Desert. Not the most impressive part of the trip and Dali has never been here and never knew about it. Tomorrow we’re going to see the “Stone Tree”, much more Dali like maybe. Our last sight of the day were some pretty stinky sulphorous geysers. Great stuff.
After some lovely din dins and some amazing star gazing (during which I finally figured out how to do a long exposure on me camera) in the most freezing place ever we headed off to bed.
Got the star gazing bug now!
Day 1 of our Bolivian salt flat trip. People have said this is has been the highlight of their whole South American trips, so we should be in for a treat.
We got our four day trip from Tupiza, slightly bucking the trend to start from Uyuni. We started here because 1. Apparently you see more varied things starting from Tupiza and 2. We have had our first change of plans and are now going to cross over into Argentina and go overland to Chile. The trip is a huge 1200Km so not for the faint hearted but Tupiza is just 3 hours from the border. We’ve cancelled our La Paz-Santiago flight and are now really looking forward to our trip down the wine growing region of Argentina. Sorry Eial, Pablo and co, we’re still not able to go near Buenes Aires. No time!
Off on our trip, this appeared to be the park entrance ticket office
and straight away, the scenery definitely didn’t disappoint
I’m writing this in a tiny Andean village, so photogenic it’s ridiculous. Today we were mostly travelling into the salt flat area so no salt yet, but we’re optimistic, having booked ourselves into the Salt Hotel on the 3rd night!
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We’re in Bolivia… we’ve got to go on the world’s most dangerous bike ride on the worlds most dangerous road. And we need a t-shirt saying so too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road
Lots of companies offer this trip and we had been recommend “Gravity” a load of times. I’d recommend them too. We bumped (not literally fortunately) into loads of different groups on the road and none of them seemed to be as professional as our Gravity group. There is real danger involved and even though a new road has now been built to take the traffic off this original road the official death count so far this year is 43. Unofficially it’s much higher. Two of these were cyclists.
(pic from http://www.gravitybolivia.com )
(pic from http://journals.worldnomads.com/mcgurk77/post/1518.aspx originally from http://www.gravitybolivia.com I believe)
Taking pictures yourself is pretty tricky but I do have some. I’ll upload when I can. Gravity take loads for you but the CD is being delivered to the UK.
The road is 64km long, the drops are 600m down, you start from an altitude just shy of Europe’s highest mountain – Mont Blanc at 4700m and drop from pretty cold mountain down to hot jungle via dusty, slippery road under the odd waterfall and through some amazing scenery if you can take your eyes off the road! You pass a huge number of crosses and shrines and if you take a peek down you’ll surely find the mangled reason why.
Our guide had recently introduced a “no punching the guide in the face” rule and we could see why. We also definitely appreciated his strict no nonsense approach as the day went on. Although I didn’t think the road was that scary you can’t be mucking about and one little easy mistake could send you over the edge. Fortunately the only accident I saw was into the cliff on the side of the road that didn’t plunge into the valley below!
I got a blue t-shirt.
Just been to the mines at Patosi, Bolivia and am back at the hostel watching a DVD called The Devils Miner all about it. Quite a sobering experience after our fairly light hearted trip this morning.
Over 8 million people have died in the mines. Children of 12 and younger frequently work for 24 hours. Quite often it’s a family affair, with brothers and fathers and women working underground. They’re looking for the very last remnants of silver, tin and zinc left after the boom years that made this town extremely wealthy during the Spanish years. The silver steams being worked now contain just 4-5% metal compared to 95% back then. With the price of these metals crashing recently, a bag of ore has gone from 200 Bolivianos (£20) to 20 (£2). With the introduction of compressed air into the tunnels life expectancy has risen from just 10 years, and miners can now expect to leave after 30 years still alive. As long as they aren’t crushed or lost. We met a miner just about to retire after 29 years who I assume must have been in his forties but looked about 70.
On our little trip we experienced a little of the horrendous conditions, walking into what can only be described as air impossible to breathe at one place were material was being hoisted up vertical shafts. You walk by a couple of these and I have no idea how deep they can be.
The guide books describe the mines as harrowing experiences never forgotten. Not for the feint harted. I think that would be the case if you watched this movie then went in. This morning, without any of this knowledge, we jollily went about our way, buying bits and bobs for the miners at the miners market; some coca leaves, soft drinks and dynamite (The dynamite was just for us really!). Getting kitted up in overalls, helmets and head torches, we made our offerings of 95% alcohol to a statue of Patchamama just inside the entrance and bumped and bashed and splashed down into the mountain.
Avoiding fast moving carts of extracted minerals being pushed by the miner helpers along makeshift rails was the biggest danger. Unless you count the squeezing through tiny tunnels barely big enough to fit in, the cracked beams holding up nothing less than a whole mountain, the odd occasion you had to walk a plank over a bottomless chasm and the dust and water.
I think we saw a fairly safe and well traveled part. With over 400 separate mines in the mountain and after watching this film there must be some places no better than hell itself.
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Arriving after our rather very easy Peru to Boliva border crossing we are meeting our friend Tam (of Galapagos fame) from Brighton again to travel around Bolivia. We were dropped off at Hostal Republica, a very slightly grand and charmingly decrepid place by our Peru-Boliva bus. Tam was already there and had booked us a tripple room. We attempted a very poor knock and run and there was much rejoicing.
We’ve got three nights here, no one is particularly liking La Paz at the moment. But it’s easrly days!
Here we are in Puno after our first real go at travel on local busses. We got dropped off at Patahuasi in the middle of nowhere. We were told there were busses passing by every 30 mins that could take us to Puno. That wasn’t quite correct though. After contemplating getting the sleeping bags out and finding some slightly less wind swept doorway and just before the daylight faded and the temperature plummeted, a bus stopped for us. We were SO happy!
Puno is our last stop in Peru and despite all the advice not to go to Lake Titikaka we’re off there tomorrow. Really, for each person saying don’t go, we’ve had one saying we MUST go so we’ll see what happens!
