Following the Dream

Christian March 17th, 2008

Well we are now in Bolivia.  We spent a couple of days in the capital city of La Paz to get used to the altitude and to book our bus to Uyuni to view to famous salt flats.  Bolivia is very different from Argentina.  The streets are filled with women in traditional outfits (bowling hats, colorful dresses) often with a baby slung over there back wrapped in a blanket.  The streets in La Paz are filled with people, either on thier way somewhere or selling something.  Another thing that is different is the Lustrabotes or shoeshiners.  These are older kids that wear ski masks and are everywhere vying to shine shoes.  They only charge a boliviano or two, unless you are foriegn, which I later found out.  We were excited to book our bus out of the city to the smaller town of Uyuni.

The bus to Uyuni was pretty nice.  We went with a company named Todo Turismo.  They fed us and showed us a movie on the way.  It was nice until at around 2 AM when we hit the unpaved part of the trip.  The bus violently shaked for the rest of the ride, another 5 and a half hours.  As soon as our bus arrived you could tell that this town existed for one reason, trips to the salt flats.  We were hounded by tons of people trying to sell us tours into the salt flats.  This one lady offered to take us to the tourist office if we would come back to hear her speech.  The tourist office ended up being her office.  We listened to her sales pitch which was filled with lies.  At least she pointed us to a decent hotel that was relatively cheap.

After dropping our bags, we headed out to find a tour operator.  We ended up going with a small company called La Isla Tours.  The owner spoke english well and gave us a good price for the 3 day tour.  He also said that the jeeps are all 94 or newer, that we would be with English speaking people and would get to see the sunrise and sunset over the salt flats.  So we headed back to our hotel to get everything ready for three days in the back of a 4X4.  We packed all of the things we would not use into one bag and the rest into mine to take with us, since the travel agent said that we could leave everything at the office in a locked room.  We locked everything up really well just to make sure.  We then watched some quality TV and fell asleep.

 The next day we arrived at the travel agency at 10 am like we were told.  We waited around for a while.  The 4×4s showed up. There were going to be three in our group.  Two were really old and the other one was mid 90s.  The travel agent split up everyone.  At first we did not get the newer Land Cruiser.  He was about to put us in one of the older ones with all spanish speakers who did not speak English.  While the other 3 English speakers and 2 German girls who did not speak much English were put into the newer SUV.  We quickly reminded him that we were promised to be with English speakers and he then moved the German girls who spoke better Spanish than English into the other jeep.  We finally set off at around 11.  This was only to stop in town for a few random stops, one at a store and the other at our cook´s house. 

Our first stop in the salt flats was to see the salt mining town.  There was no sight of salt mining.  All that there was in the town was tourist souvenirs.  Although, there were a couple of random piles of salt.  This must be what qualified this town as a salt mining town for tourists to visit.  We then went on to the salt flats.  We stopped at the beginning of them where there was actually people mining the salt.  It was nice to finally see them.  You could see white until the horizon.  There was a little water where they were working and we were really hoping that there would be more water at some point.

The next stop was at an old salt hotel.  This hotel is made completely out of salt.  It was okay.  Apparently it was shut down due to improper waste management.  Since then, they have built two other hotels on the edge of the salt flats, where they are legal.  We would be staying in one our first night.  After stopping at the first salt hotel, we all cramed back into the Toyota and set off for Fish Island and lunch.  It was weird to see a land mass right in the middle of pure white landscape.  All of us jumped out of the 4×4 to start taking the classic Salt Flat photos (jumping out of pringle can, etc.).  After having some fun with the camera, we ate some lunch.  It was llama steak with some tradional bolivian sides.  After lunch we explored the island.  It was filled with huge cacti.  You could see 4×4s making their way to the island while on the top.  They were tiny, smaller than a matchbox car in the vast expanse of the salt flat.  The sun was soo strong, all of us starting to burn within the hour we were there.  After climbing to the top and back down, we piled in the jeep once again.

We drove for quite a while.  We then saw the reflections starting in the salar.  We reached the wet part of the salar.  It was amazing.  As we splashed through the water in the 4×4, you could not tell where the sky ended and land began.  It was amazing.  At first it did not seem like our driver was going to stop, so I asked.  He was just looking for a dry patch.  We stopped and took tons and tons of pictures.  The view was just incredible.  It looked like we were just hanging out in the sky.  After about an hour we headed to the salt hotel.  It was small, had stuffed armadillos, a stuffed flamingo, and had floors of salt.  Overall it wasn’t that bad though.  Once we unloaded our stuff we decided to convince our driver to take us down to the reflection for sunset.  He was full of excuses.  Everytime Tom and I would ask him over and over, it was a new excuse, even though it was supposed to be included.  So we sucked it up and walked.  The driver said it would only be 20 mins.  That 20 mins turned out to be over an hour.  It was worth it though.  We made it just in time.  We watched the sunset over the reflection on the salt flats.  It was so incredible.  The colors were amazing and kept changing.  After the sun tucked away behind the mountain we started our way back to the salt hotel.  On our way back you could see thunderstorms in the distance, with lightning lighting up the sky.  It turned pitch black three quarters of the way back, but luckily we were greeted by a stary night that gave us a little light.  We finally made it back to the salt hotel, only 30 mins late for dinner.  We all agreed on waking up early for the sunrise over the salt falts.  Our driver promised to take us, leaving at 6 on the dot.

We all wake up early and load up our stuff.  It was quarter to 6, and our driver was nowhere to be found.  We finally find him around 6:15 and begin to load up the bags.  By the time we left, it was already 6:30.  The sun had already started to come up.  He pointed to his clock in his car which was conviently 15 minutes slow.  It did not matter though, once we got down to the reflection all of the worries about making it in time dissolved away.  The sunrise was beautiful.  Since the sun rised right over the reflection, it looked like 2 suns were rising.  It was amazing.  We took a ton of photos again.

We then continued in the 4×4 for a long time.  We stopped at a lookout for a volcano.  It was pretty cool, the landscape looked like the moon due to the lava flows that had occured in the past.  Then our driver said that the other 4×4 broke down and he had to go back and help them.  He was insistant that just him and the cook go.  20 minutes was all it was supposed to take.  We were left stranded out in the middle of the desert for an hour in the boiling sun.  Tom and I decided to climb up the one rocky slope to get a better view of the terrain while we waited.  The climb was not too bad and the views were great.  We waited at the top until we could spot the 4×4 in the distance.  After we were all sun burned, we piled back into the jeep to head to a lagoon for lunch.

Most of the day was spent in the 4×4 going to the different lagoons.  Most of them where in the middle of the desert.  The second lagoon that we visited smelled horrible.  The third lagoon we got to get close with Flamigos.  We then were back in the 4×4 to see the famous rock tree.  It is a rock that is in the shape of a tree.  There were also many other odd shaped rocks here.  Apparently this is caused by the heavy winds and stones hitting the rocks, chipping away at them.

After the rock tree, it was a couple more hours in the 4×4 to get to the Laguna Colorado or Red Lagoon.  It was pretty amazing the color red that the algae turns the water.  It was really amazing.  The lagoon had a mix of blues, whites, and the vibrant red.  After spending some time here, we headed to our shit hole of a hotel in the middle of the desert.  At the hotel, there was only power from 6-9.  It was freezing cold.  The beds were made of straw.  It was not a great night’s sleep.  Then our driver said that we had to be up at 4am.

We awoke at 4am to our driver pounding on our door.  We piled in the 4×4 to head to the hot springs and geysers.  We stopped at the geyser at around 4:45.  It was pitch dark and we could not see much.  We got a glimpse of a shot of steam.  It was so cold out (we were at 15000ft), we all rushed back into the 4×4.  We then made our way to the hot spring.  We were told to bring our bathing suits.  It was too damn cold for bathing suits.  It must have been sub freezing temps.  We opted not to get in.  The bathroom at that attraction was an experience though.  You had to pay 3 bolivianos to go in a bathroom that smelled so bad it was tough to hold  back the vomit.  The toilets had no running water and were just a hole in the ground with a training potty on top of it.  It was bad.

After the hot springs we headed to the Green Lagoon.  This lagoon was not very green.  It was decent though.  We then had to drop the one wierd Japanese kid off at the border to Chile.  On the way there he kept talking to him self and making wierd hand gestures.  We dropped him off at the border, only to turn back and drive the 300 km back to Uyuni.  On the way back, Casey and I had the back row to ourselves.  It was nice.  Until our driver decided to pick up some random bolivians and stuff them in the 4×4 to make a few extra bolivianos.  There went his tip.  On the way back we passed the 4×4 in our group that broke down every couple of hours.  Apparently this time it had ran out of gas and the driver had the people in the 4×4 pay someone driving by for some gas.

All in all it was amazing.  By far the best part was the salt flats themselves.  We enjoyed ourselves very much, even if we were crammed in a 4×4 driving on unpaved roads for hours each day.  The landscapes in that region of Bolivia are just incredible.

• Bolivia
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