The last days in Bolivia!!

After the salt plains, we drove for the next 2 days overland through Los Flamincos National Park. It was long days of driving passing geysers, boiling mud pots, lakes of different colours and natural hot springs. The park gets it name from the flamingo’s that come to visit it every year. Lucky for us they were there and it was breathtaking to see them fly around the lakes. The colours of the lakes varied from red to green to creamy white depending on what minerals were in each one. The Laguna Colorado was our favourite with its bright red due to the algae in the lake and fringed with white minerals. 

Laguna Colorado - Red because of the type of Algae in the Lake 

Laguna Verde - Green because of the Zinc and Magnesium

Laguna Blanco - White because of the Calcium

Tom having fun in the Geysers - the steam was shooting out of this one pretty fast!!

Definitely a pool with a view!!

To have a break from the driving on the second day we stopped for breakfast at a natural hot spring!! Its not every day that you have tea and toast and a dip in a pool overlooking some flamingos in a lake at 5000m above sea level!!! It took a while to talk ourselves into getting our swim stuff on as the temperature outside was about 5oC but once you got into the pool it was gorgeous!! It was ideal as early that morning we had visited the geysers and boiling mud pots so it was nice to clean up and relax in 30oC water watching the flamingo’s fly by.

The Flamingos and Llamas were very cool but it was really hard to get close for a good picture!!

Some weird green moss stuff - cant remember the name!!

Salt Salt and more Salt!!

Next day we headed to Uyuni, which is the gateway to the salt plains. After a nice night chilling in the hotel (which did really good Pizza!) we headed off early to the salt flats with our guide in some 4x4‘s. On the way we stopped to visit the train graveyard, which is where all the trains which used to carry the salt are just left there to rust. They had some cool graffiti on them and made for some nice pics. We also stopped in a small village where they sold items made with salt. I bought a nice shot glass - completely made of salt - to add to my collection which will hopefully be good for tequila shots!!

We then headed into the salt flats which were vast. At the beginning you could see lots of small piles of salt with local people pilling it up…I have no idea how they knew one pile from the other when they came back for it as there were so many piles on such a monotonous landscape...25,000 tonnes of salt are extracted every year from the salt plains which are believed to be made up of 10 Billion tonnes of salt!!!! Under the salt flats is 60% of the worlds Lithium so if Bolivia plays it's cards right it could turn into a very wealthy country in years to come as the demand for lithium batteries continues to increase...at the minute corruption is making everyone fearful of expoliting the resource but watch this space!!

But the main attraction to the salt plains is the vast white flats which allow you to take great perspective pictures!! Well if you have a good camera, A LOT of patience and a bit of imagination!! We had some of each of those things!! So the rest of the post is just our attempts to make some funny pictures but it was very hard and took a lot of time to set up the props and get the people in the right places!!!!



This is supposed to read 'Amber' the name of our truck!!



Potosi - Tom's Explosive Hands and Michaela's fall to Altitude!!!

After spending a lovely Christmas in La Paz it was time to move on to a little town called Potosi. It’s claim to fame is that it’s the worlds highest city at 4070m and you felt every metre of it!!!!! You certainly wouldn’t make a quick dash to the shops without your lungs feeling it! Michaela was suffering from the altitude and had to have a bit of oxygen and some love from her duvet!! So Tom headed off on his own to see what made this town the wealthiest in South America during the Spanish reign - The Silver Mines.

There is still about 2,000 miners working there every day. There is no machinery so it is very hard manual labour and the best they can hope to earn in a day is about 10 US dollars!!!!! It would hardly buy them 2 sticks of dynamite!!! On the way to the mines we stopped at a local market to buy some gifts for the miners, as a group we got some coco leaves, biscuits and glycerine and TNT to make the DYNAMITE!!

It was frightening to see the conditions they had to work in, very cramped spaces, lots of dust and arsenic exposure. Millions of miners have died since it’s first opening. The average life expectancy of a miner is early 40’s. There were big and small mines and the miners had to decide which ones to work in. They could earn more money in the big mines but the risks on their life was much higher. I just can’t imagine how hard that decision must have been for them. The town had little other industry so generation after generation this was the only option for these families.

After the tour we got the chance to get our hands on some explosives!! We used the glycerine, TNT and a fuse to make some Dynamite. We lit it and blew up a small hole in the side of the mountain...unfortuntely no silver was found so the rest of the trip will have to be budgeted tightly - lets get out the excel sheets!!! While we were preparing the explosives the guide admired my 'explosive hands' and offered me a job!!

 

La Paz por Feliz Navidad

On the 23^rd December we headed off on the truck again towards La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The crew had decorated Amber with Christmas stockings for everyone and some tinsel and bobbles but to be honest although it started to at least feel a bit more Christmassy the only place we wanted to be was home :o( When we arrived we had a tour of the city including the valley of the moon from a local guide called Julio. He showed us around the city - which is massive and jammed full of people, cars, animals and market stalls - and gave us a very honest picture of how it is to live in Bolivia. He talked a lot about the corruption and illegal drug trading in the country and the stories he told were unbelievable!! The country is South Americas poorest but yet it is the richest in terms of natural resources. He said that the average wage was around $100 a month per family and it was clear that many people were living on this small amount. However, there was clearly another section of the population in La Paz living on well over $100 a month!! He pointed out penthouse apartments in the centre that sold for $1million - $4million and he mentioned the high ownership of Porsche Cayman cars - apparently this is the only super car that can survive in the high altitudes of Bolivia!! These people are making huge amounts of money from the illegal trading of Cocaine or from corrupt political deals but their earnings are obviously not included in the development statistics for the country!! So on first glance I think Bolivia seems a lot more developed than you would think being the poorest country in SA. He told one story about a past president . He was given a multi billion pounds budget to reform the transport links but decided that he would rather keep it for himself. And fled in an army helicopter to North America but not before landing on the roof of a local bank to steal $8 million in cash to pay the people he had bribed to get him out of the country!!! There is a famous jail in the middle of the city where, at the weekend, you can see lots of fancy cars pulling up to collect the inmates who are mostly corrupt politicians and as long as they have enough money they can buy a pass to get out for the weekend!! Apparently the ‘cells’ also vary depending on how much money you can pay - you can have satellite tv, nice furnishings even a Jacuzzi in some cells!! Julio was also very open about his dislike for the current president Evo Morales who won his election with a land slide majority and actually Julio did vote for him because he was the best of a bad bunch, He is the first indigenous president and has implemented many new laws granting more rights for the indigenous people and coca growers (he used to be one!) which has made the rich middle class very unhappy!

Getting to La Paz was an interesting trip...we all took a ferry (well small tug boat crammed with locals!!) and Amber the truck had to take a wee ferry of her own...

 

  

Okay so enough politics and on to more important matters!! It was Christmas and although we had decorated our truck we were all feeling very unChristmassy!!! We hadn’t done any rushed Christmas shopping, we hadn’t heard any Christmas songs blaring constantly, none of us had been to a Christmas work do and to be honest we were all missing home :o( On the truck on the way into La Paz we started to discuss having Secret Santa so we would at least all have one present to open on Christmas day and I suggested that it might be nice to get together some money and buy some presents for kids in a local orphanage if we could find one. Everyone seemed really enthusiastic about the idea and I couldn’t wait to start buying toys!!! Luckily Niks one of the Dragoman leaders had been to La Paz 7yrs ago to do some volunteer work in a local orphanage and so she contacted them and arranged for us to visit on Christmas Eve!! We collected over 2000 Bolivianos and split into 3 groups for our Christmas shopping spree!! One group bought a new pair of pants and socks for each of the 54 kids in the orphanage, one group bought lots of sweets, cakes and fizzy drinks for the party and our group bought a hair band for each of the girls and a toy car for each of the boys and skipping ropes, balls, tennis rackets, lego bricks and an electric keyboard for them all to share!! The next day 15 of us headed down to the orphanage in santa hats with bags full of stuff!! We attracted lots of attention on the streets, all the kids were looking at us and lots of locals shouted Feliz Navidad. We stopped in a coffee shop on the way and the cakes in there were YUM!! We were all finally starting to feel Christmassy and you know what im like - I was sooooooooooooooo excited!!

We arrived in the orphanage while the kids were doing some art in another room. We set up the party in their dinner hall and put a present and lots of sweets and cake on each of their tables. We then lined up at the door and made a big tunnel for them to run through while we sang Christmas songs!! They were all so cute. They had a uniform/tracksuit so all the girls were in baby pink and the boys in baby blue and they were between 4-14yrs old. They all looked very excited about their new toys and we hadn’t even shown the big sack of things to share!!! We couldn’t take any pictures for child protection reasons but I don’t think I will ever forget their wee faces anyway!! We also had a few extra pants, socks and toy cars and gave them to some of the ladies running the orphanage for their sons. I have never seen anyone look so grateful over something so small. I have to say its probably the most enjoyable day of the trip so far for me and it really felt to me what Christmas is all about. When we were talking to the lady that runs the orphanage we asked her what happens to the kids when they turn 14yrs and apparently there is another orphanage in the city for boys that are 14-18yrs old but there is no equivalent for girls and so if they are lucky they will find a rich family who will take her on as a maid otherwise she is out on the street to fend for herself!! Its just heart breaking to hear and its so difficult to help them in any kind of long term way as there is so much corruption but it was nice to at least go in for the day to put smiles on their faces and hopefully the toys will last a while :o)

On Christmas day we went to an Irish Bar for traditional Christmas dinner - it claims to be the fifth most popular bar in La Paz (bit of a weird strap line!!) and to be honest it was a bit odd!! The head bar man was clearly coming down of his last high and needed to do another line of Bolivias famous cocaine before his jitters threw our Christmas dinner round us!! The other barman seemed just slightly autistic and got very frustrated if he couldn’t remember exactly which drink was for which person (there was about 20 of us and he could just shout out the drink and someone would claim it!!) Anyway the food was ok but the craic was mighty and Tom was the secret santa giving out the presents. He ended up with a Spiderman cap and a set of pan pipes and I got a lovely scarf, a bottle opener key ring (very handy) and a nice little Bolivian pen. It wasn’t anything like Christmas at home but it took our minds of being away for the day!!  

Adios Peru - Hola Bolivia!!!

After a fine lunch in Puno (most people had fantastic fresh trout) we headed south along Lake Titicaca and got to our first land border crossing into Bolivia. Everything seemed to go quite smoothly so on we went with our 30 day Bolivian visas. Wohooooooo our third South American country stamps!!!

We were heading for Copacabana on the southern shore of lake Titicaca (which you can see just west of La Paz on the map!!) with lots of warnings that we were now in Bolivia (the poorest of the SA countries) and so we should be prepared for standards to drop. In fact, compared to Puno in Peru, Copacabana was a nice little town with a kind of hippy/arty feel. The hotel was nice and had hot running water, a comfortable bed and a tv…ok there was a bit of a smell but we were expecting worse!! When we arrived we climbed a hill on the north of the town which had the stations of the cross built on the way up and had a beautiful view of Lake Titicaca to watch the sunset.

                          
The next morning we headed to Isla del Sol. In Inca mythology it is believed to be the birthplace of the sun. The island had some ruins, which were tiny in comparison to the ruins we had seen over the previous weeks and to be honest we are kind of ‘ruined out’!! But the trek across the ridge of the island, which took a couple of hours, was nice and the views of the lake on either side. The little kids we met on the way were lovely!! We bumped into two kids after our lunch stop and I gave them the remains of my lunch, a couple of pieces of fruit and a cheese sandwich but then they spotted my sweets!! I gave them the rest of my packet of Tangtastic Haribo and you should have seen their faces when they put them in their mouths!!

The floating islands of Puno

After fully recovering in Cusco, it was time to move on again. We headed south to Puno which is a tiny port on Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the world’s largest high altitude lake. The lake was so vast it really felt like you were by the coastline but really you were at 3800m above sea level in land locked Bolivia!!

From Puno we headed out to the floating islands of the Uros people on Lake Titicaca. The floating islands (62 in all) were very unusual. They were built by the Uros people who wanted to escape the Inca/Spanish rules of the mainland. Apparently they are very lazy people and don’t like to be forced to work and it did feel like they did things at their own pace on the island. The islands were built using layers of buoyant totora reeds. The people used the reeds for pretty much everything; building their houses and boats, food, firewood and handicrafts. They were very friendly people and had a great sense of humour. They had a competition with our group to see who could guess the depth of water below their island. The prize was a mini reed boat and Tom came the closest at 15m. We got on one of the reed boats for a quick trip to the next island and 2 of the girls sang us off to row row row your boat!! Very weird in a Peruvian accent!!

Cusco - NO GRACIAS!!

After our long trek in Machu Picchu it was nice to make it back to the city; to the comfort of a hotel room and a hot shower :o) But with the luxury of being in a big city comes the knowledge for locals that the Gringos (tourists) are around!! So from the second you walk out of the hotel door the offers begin and the words ‘No Gracias’ become your friend for the day!!

- Massage - No Gracias
- Magical Musical Instruments, special price - No Gracias!
- Massage - No Gracias!!
- Picture with a Llama - No Gracias!!!
- Massage - No Gracias!!!!
- Manicure, Pedicure - No Gracias!!!!!
- Massage - NO GRACIAS!!!!!!

The local Irish bar - Paddy’s even had their t-shirt for sale with their logo on the back and NO GRACIAS on the front!!!

So when we weren’t being mobbed by locals we managed to celebrate completing the Inca trail, visit a few museums and eat some really nice food…if you’re ever in Cusco your first stop for food has to be Jacks Café. It’s a small café run by Irish/English owners. The food is really good and the strawberry milkshake is divine!! It was really nice to get a taste of home food having been away for 2 months and trekked for 4 days to Machu Picchu :o)