Salar Saga-Part 4

Hi everyone!

Here is the long awaited final chapter of my trip to Salar de Uyuni!

Sunday, July 4th:

We were originally going to get our wake up call at 7:00 am, but because we'd been slow the previous morning Carmelo told us he'd wake us up at 6:45 am instead.

Our first stop was the arbol de piedra (tree of rock). We were in the dessert and we pulled up to several huge rocks randomly chillin' in the sand. They had all been shaped by years of wind erosion and had odd forms. The arbol de piedra stands tall and is wider at the top than at the bottom. I'm fairly certain that these rocks, as with the rocks we'd seen in the Dalí Desert the previous day, are petrified lava.

If you can't read that sign below the tree rock from here, this is what it says:

"NO CLIMBINS MAI FALL" which I believe means "No climbing, may fall"

We spent the rest of the day visiting the 5 lagos pequeños (5 little lakes) which were more beautifully colored natural chemical lakes. This day we saw a higher number of tour jeeps at each of our stops than either of the previous two days on the tour. We stopped at the last lake to walk around and then eat lunch. If you recall, earlier on the tour we'd scared off the few flamingos we'd seen, but at this lake we were fortunate enough to see tons! Carmelo told us it is rare for so many flamingos to be at this last lake.

Oh, at some point during the day we took this awesome picture of Carmelo and Olga!

Most of the day on Sunday was spent driving. Although the weather outside was cold, the sun was so strong that during mid-day on this tour while we were in the car we were all burning up. I would strip down to a t-shirt and put sun screen on my arms because I could feel how strong the sun shone through the window. Needless to say we were very relieved when we arrived at the "Salt Hotel" around 4pm. The salt hotel had hot showers (8 min of hot water per person at 10 bolivianos). Since Carmelo loves getting everywhere before all of the other groups, we were able to get the first showers of the evening! The shower was amazing, and after we cleaned up we had some tea and crackers from Olga. Across from us sat the French men and we spent a while chatting with them as they waited for their tea and crackers. There were many more tour groups at the salt hotel than had been at either one of our previous abodes. I think this is because you can start at Uyuni (where our tour ended) to see just the salt flats, then go right back to Uyuni as a sort of one night trip. The Salt Hotel was a lot of fun and as fate would have it, there was a stuffed Flamingo fixed to the ceiling right above our table. After all, we were the flamingos! Flacas y fuertas.

These 2 pictures below are of the salt hotel. Everything in the salt hotel is made of salt. Our beds were on platforms of salt bricks, the walls were made of bricks of salt, and even the floors were salt gravel. The stuff between the bricks of salt on the wall keeping everything together is made of salt. The hanging things from the ceiling are also made of salt. The chairs to the tables made of salt are also made of salt. You get the idea.

Yes. That is a stuffed flamingo above my head.

We went to bed around 9:30 pm because we'd be getting up 5:30 am to leave to see the sunrise at the salt flats. Carmelo told us the salt hotel would be so warm that we wouldn't even need our sleeping bags. That was a ton of B.S. but it was definitely our most comfortable night on the tour because we were clean, we were at less than 4,000 meters, and we didn't need to sleep in hats.

Sunday:

At this point in the tour Nina was feeling pretty ill. The mood in the car at 6:00 am on the way to see the sunrise was what you would expect from 4 exhausted and chilled girls. At one point Carmelo turned off his lights and started zig-zagging across the salt. It was pitch black out, and while I saw that the mountains were far away, it still didn't seem like the best idea and we weren't really in the mood. Nina got him to turn his headlights back on, despite his argument that it was more "fantastico" with them off. We stopped to see bricks of salt being cut and Carmelo and Olga put about 5 very large bricks of salt into the back of the Land Cruiser. (Still don't know why). It was freezing and thus I wasn't too thrilled about seeing the salt bricks. A short while later we stopped and waited for the sunrise. Claire and Laura got out to wait for it, and I joined them as soon as I felt prepared to face the cold. The sunrise was beautiful, it was more than worth standing out in the cold. It's impossible to explain in words how amazing this sunrise was, so I'll try to use both words and pictures.

Imagine you're in a field of fresh snow that you can see for miles around you anywhere you look. On your right and left off into the distance are small mountain ranges. Also to your left and right are a few other jeeps with other Gringos standing in front of them waiting for the sun. These jeeps are so far away that the people look like ants, and in this way they don't ruin your view. In front of you might as well be the end of the earth because all you see is snow. Ok, now replace the snow with salt crystals and you've got it! Here are a few pictures. (If you have the Circle of Life Lion King song available for retrieval in your head, please play it from memory now).

After we saw the sunrise we got in the car and visited the Isla del Pescado (Island of Fish). It's called an island because it's an island of land in the middle of the salt. I don't know why the fish get to be included in the title. This island was covered with cacti and we were instructed to walk around it while Olga prepared breakfast. Now, let me back up. This was the only morning on the tour in which we weren't given any breakfast or food of any kind before we left for the day. I don't know how many of you have seen me when I haven't eaten soon after I've gotten up, but if you have, think of that time now. Basically, we'd been awake for a few hours at this point, and we were now being asked to hike up and around this steep island as the sun was getting higher in the sky, with no food in our stomachs. Nina was sick and I was...me with no food in my stomach.. and the other two girls were hungry as well, so we took a shortcut and hiked back down as fast as we could to get to breakfast. Olga obviously hadn't been expecting us back so soon, but she quickly finished setting up breakfast and we ate next to the French guys again. At this point we realized that the French guys' tour guide was playing match-maker and was strategically planning to bump into us as often as possible.

After we ate we went to the bathroom and ran into our "yale" friends (the two Americans, the British girl, and the Belgian guy in the jeep with a yale sticker). They told us they were able to get ahold of one firework and had lit it the previous night at their salt hotel (different from ours, Carmelo told us our salt hotel was the best) to celebrate the 4th of July. We had tried to celebrate but at our hotel we were the only Americans. We soon left the island and spent the next half an hour taking those awesome pictures you've all seen on my facebook. Those are optical illusion pictures that are only possible because there is no point of reference in the middle of the salt flats, only even ground for as far as the eye can see.

At lunch time we arrived at our last stop. This stop was a very small town just outside the salt that seemed to function only to sell artesenia objects for tourists. This was the most crowded place on the entire tour. I don't know where all these tour groups came from but it was quite funny to see. As we ate lunch we asked a group of nice looking americans about tipping our driver and our cook, and they told us they were splitting a 10% tip between their guide and cook. We were glad we'd asked because that was way more than what we'd been planning to give them. We weren't even sure if we should tip at all because we didn't know if it was customary.

These are all the Land Cruisers parked along this road lined with artesenia objects that basically made up this town.

After eating lunch and then being dropped off at a cheap hotel across from the train station in Uyuni, we said goodbye to Carmelo and Olga, and they drove back south to Tupiza, which in a straight shot only takes 6 hours. As we walked towards the hotel a group of Israeli travelers stopped us to ask if we had just finished a Salar tour. We said yes, and a man in his 20's asked us how much it cost to see the flamingos. We looked at each other and told him the flamingos aren't paid for but you do have to pay to get into the nature park. He then asked how many flamingos we saw. At this point I felt it my duty to explain to him that we saw a few flamingos, yes, but if that's all he wanted to see then he really shouldn't go on a 4 day tour. We quickly explained what the other 98% of our trip included and they looked alarmed and sighed and thanked us.

Our train didn't leave until 1:30 am, so we booked a room for four at that hotel so we could have a place to put our bags and nap (25 Bs a person per night!). Outside of our room's door there was a very large second floor hallway that functioned as a balcony since the hotel was roofless. Inside our room was freezing, so we decided to relocate to this balcony to rest. In a matter of minutes, our "yale" friends showed up and dropped their things off in the two rooms next to ours! A half an hour later, one of the men from the American group who gave us tipping advice showed up, having had rented a room for the night, and joined our circle. After a couple hours of chatting and trading advice/suggestions for traveling around South America, we split up to go find somewhere to eat. We ended up at this Pizza place "Minutemen Pizza" recommended by the Lonely Planet book. It's owned by an American who lives in Boston. Of all places to open a pizza place, I'm not sure what possessed this man (who still lives in Boston) to choose Uyuni, Bolivia. However, I'm glad he did because this was by far the best meal I'd had in Bolivia thus far. The cheese in Bolivia is sub-par at best, but this restaurant actually imports cheeses from abroad. Not long after we ordered our pizza the French guys came into the restaurant and took the table next to us. They'd seen the recommendation in the Lonely Planet book as well! By the way, this restaurant was so green they didn't allow you to take glass or plastic bottles out of the restaurant because they use them to serve lemonade and other drinks in. It surpassed any "green" restaurant I've seen in the states, and is, up til now, the only attempt at being green I've seen in Bolivia. After we ate our pizza we ordered some tea. At this point the American who gave us tipping advice and is staying in our hotel walked in and got a table. Not long after that the "yale" group walked in and ordered food. Do you remember the hipster and wannabe british hipsters we'd seen along our tour? They both showed up too! Apparently everyone reads Lonely Planet Bolivia, and they all follow it. The French guys told us they were off to Lake Titicaca in a couple of weeks, and as a matter of fact, Claire and I are planning to go this weekend! We told them we might see them there, and one of them said; "just follow the book and you'll be sure to find us! Live by the book!"

Monday:

We took a nap at 9:00 pm and set our alarms for 12:45 am. When we got up Claire was feeling feverish and awful, and Nina was still under the weather. We helped Claire carry her things, and we got everyone onto the train to Oruro with the tickets that the tour company had helped us to get a few days previously. We spent the next several hours sleeping and got off the train (after watching more Just for Laughs skits as we had on the way up) at 8:50 am. At this point we were all ready to be home so we grabbed the very first bus to Cochabamba.

When we got on the bus at 9:40 am (scheduled to depart at 10:00 am), a man walked down the aisle and told Laura that she needed to put her bag (which was sitting on her seat at this point) up above her head in the space provided, not below her seat. Now, I'm not saying much for Bolivian uniforms, but this guy did not look like he worked on this bus, or any bus. He looked filthy and I could see that his eyes were bloodshot. He walked back towards the front of the bus and we all decided to ignore him and do with our bags what we wanted. Especially because we'd all been on Bolivian buses before and at no point has anyone told us we couldn't put something below our seat. A couple of minutes later, as we debated going back into the terminal to use the bathroom, the man returned. He was carrying a can of coins and he deliberately bumped into Laura (who was standing in between her seat and the seat in front of her while her bag rested on her seat). As he bumped into her he dropped his coins and asked Laura to pick them up for him. She, being an intelligent girl, declined, and this guy and his buddy started haphazardly bumping into her, picking up her change, all the while trying to thrust their hands into her backpack. Claire (sitting next to her) reached over and put her hand on the backpack, and Laura stood her ground. The two men finally left after picking up all of their change, without successfully taking anything from her bag. The whole act was really shoddily put together and it was entirely obvious what they were doing, but it still outraged us that A) this happened and no one around us did anything, B) they targeted us, the whitest people on the bus and no one else, and C) that he put his hands on her side to try to fluster her into letting go of her bag. I mean, stuff like this happens in Bolivia and everywhere in the world, and I realize we were lucky that we still had enough wits about us to shake these losers off. I just can't help being disappointed and frustrated. Laura and I left to run to the bathroom while Claire and Nina hugged all of our possessions with steel grips. As we got off the bus I recognized the bloodshot-eye guy standing by the drivers seat about to get off the bus, so I gave him an extra hard shove as I squeezed past (it was a crowded aisle and everyone was shoving to get to their seats so it wasn't completely out of nowhere). He and his buddy weren't on the bus when we left the terminal. They were just lucky that I didn't grab the mace that was in my duffel bag under my seat.

Are you wondering what movie we watched on the bus? If you've been reading my blog you should assume that it involved lots of car crashes or bus accidents. You're right! We watched the Book of Eli which included several car crashes and car bombs. On our ride back to Cocha we saw a semi overturned on the side of the road.

4 and a half hours later I was walking back into my house in Cochabamba. I was tired, sweaty, and ready for a nap. As I walked through our living room, I noticed that Steph (my housemate) was sitting next to a guy.

That guy was none other than: the Idiot. From the La Paz trip. Remember him? This is the Brazilian med student who professed his love to me and then forgot my name. I walked right past him, turned around to be sure of what I'd just seen, and went straight to my room. Apparently he'd been here for a few days already, living in another volunteer house in an empty bed, trying to sort out some visa stuff in Cochabamba. Steph was visibly unhappy to be sitting in the same room as him, which I was surprised to see because she wasn't in La Paz with us to witness his idiocy. I asked her what was up and she said that Idiot was refusing to speak Spanish, only Portuguese. They were watching a world cup game and he would make frequent comments, only in Portuguese. Idiot showed up at my house for a few hours every day to watch the world cup or for various other reasons every day until this past Sunday, when he left for good. Or so I thought. Somebody rang the bell here late last night, and I swear it was him talking to Sarah at the front door. So- I'm still not sure if he's really back in La Paz. I will happily report that for his week here, he seemed less and less interested in me. He did start to refer to me as Hillary Clinton which is a surprisingly common occurrence here.

I'll update soon with a condensed version of what I've been up to for the past week!

Love always,

Hillary

Sick

Hey lovely people,

If you've been wondering why I haven't updated in a few days, it's because I've been a tad under the weather; upset stomach, migraine, diarrhea, sore throat, fatigue. However, I'm on the mend and plan to update with Solar Saga part 4 tomorrow!

Keep on keepin' on!

Love,

Hillary

Salar Saga-Part 3

And the Salar saga continues:

We woke up Saturday morning at 5:00 am to Carmelo knocking on our door; "Chicas!!" We needed to pack up our stuff so Carmelo could secure it to the top of the jeep, then drink the tea and eat the crackers Olga had put out, and be in the car by 6:00 am. We were just congratulating ourselves on how fast we were getting our things together, when Carmelo came in and told us to hurry up. We got in the car and left at 6:02. It was still very dark outside, and the jeep was driving over rushing streams, frozen rivers, and paths covered in large rocks that could hardly be called roads. Eventually we approached some ruins that our driver told us used to be populated by 6,000 people back when the Spanish arrived in South America. These ruins are haunted. As legend goes, the people who lived there back in the day were not very faithful. A woman got pregnant and after 9 months she didn't give birth. Somehow the devil showed up and a man proposed a bet in order to get the devil to leave. The devil won the bet and the woman's belly exploded with 3 devil babies. A bible turned to stone and everyone in the city eventually left. The last person holding out in the ruins left in 1991.

These odd circles of grass were everywhere we went for the first half of the day.

This is a skull that was perched on top of a wall. It might be a llama skull.

There were several abandoned lone shoes sitting around the ruins that looked very old and kind of creepy.

At this point on the journey the last time we'd showered was Thursday night. That's only two days, but we'd been wearing tons of layers at night, then sweating in a tank top in the car during the day, and constantly putting on hats and taking them off. Our hair was not doing too well. Three of us decided to put in french braids while in the car. I did Nina's braids, and let me tell you, this was extreme french braiding.

The terrain we were driving over made for a very bumpy ride and focusing on french braiding made me car sick. Nina offered me some chewy ginger candy that is supposed to help, but it tasted gross (to me) and it made it worse. Just when I was about to ask if we could stop for a second to get some fresh air, we passed by a group of Bolivians whose tire was flat. We stopped, used the baño natural while Carmelo gave them our spare, and had enough time out in the fresh air to mostly settle my stomach. After that we stopped at several small lakes called the 5 little lakes and met up with the Yale car several times.

Throughout the entire tour Carmelo referred to us as flamingos. On day 1 he told us that to do well on this tour all we had to do was to be flamingos: flaca y fuerte (skinny and strong). On Saturday we were told we'd be able to see flamingos at one of the 5 small lakes we'd be visiting that day. We approached this lake and parked on the top of a small hill. We climbed down quietly and saw a few flamingos a short ways away. We approached cautiously so as not to scare them off. Just as we got almost close enough to take a picture, they all flew off. A second later the Yale jeep joined us again. They asked if we'd seen any flamingos and we told them that they flew away, but didn't mention why. Together we climbed up the hill to our respective cars and several of us had to take a break halfway up in order to catch our breath. This hill was so shallow it wouldn't even make a decent sledding hill, but the altitude made it feel like we were climbing Mt. Everest. The english girl lamented: "normally I'm quite fit!" It was funny watching our tour guides laugh at us.

At 12:30 pm we pulled into a hot springs pool. There were about 6 other jeeps there already that had brought other Gringos also on Salar tours. The plan was to change into swimsuits, get into the natural hot mineral pool, then get out and Olga would have lunch ready by then. The hot springs pool was accompanied by a building that held tables and chairs for tour groups to sit and eat. In the back there was a kitchen for all the tour cooks to put together their meals. As I think I mentioned in the first part of this story, I didn't know anything about this tour when I decided to go. I didn't know how much it would cost, I didn't know about the jeep tour, and I didn't know about the hot springs pool. I had to wear my least underwear-looking underwear and a slightly too large sports bra that I borrowed from one of the girls. I almost didn't get in because I was a bit embarrassed and because the air was freezing. But I did it anyway and it ended up being one of the coolest things I have ever done. Imagine a pool about 2.5 feet high and 15-20 feet wide in which there are about 25 people all in swimsuits and knit hats. The bottom of the pool was tiny pebbles and I did my best to give myself a little exfoliating pedicure on the bottom of the pool. It was as hot as a hot tub, so much so that after 15 minutes I felt like I needed to get out. It was awesome. We got out and didn't feel the cold at first because we were so warm. Those 30 seconds gave us enough time to grab our clothes and towels. We went behind the changing shed which was locked and quickly dried off and changed into dry clothes. All around us there were Gringos (totally European except for us) getting out of the pool changing underneath towels, or standing in boxers and long sleeved base layer shirts slowly adding more layers. The pool made us all feel a bit cleaner and we went in at 1:00 pm to eat lunch beside the other Gringos eating their food prepared by their cooks. We surveyed everyone else's food and it seemed similar to ours. We ate llama meat wrapped around a boiled egg, potatoes, macaroni without cheese, beets, green bell peppers, tomatoes, and papaya. We asked Carmelo how it was possible that Olga cooked all of this in under half an hour, and he said she got up at 2:00 am to prepare all of the food for the day.

After the hot pool we visited laguna blanca and laguna verde. All of the lakes we saw on this tour were natural chemical lakes. Most of them contained borax, a couple contained arsenic (around which there was no animal life), there were other chemicals but the spanish names for them went over my head.

We stopped at the Desert de Dalí, a dessert that looks just like a desert Salvador Dalí painted. Apparently he had never been to this region, but because of the similarities, it gained his name. The desert has lots of large rocks strewn about randomly amongst the desert sand. These rocks are petrified lava that came from a nearby volcano thousands of years ago. In the afternoon we also passed by the Andes and the Chilean and Argentine border. Carmelo told us that the mountains that border with Chile contain land mines placed by the Chilean government to keep people from sneaking across.

Our last stop of the day was to see the geysers at 5,000 meters. At one geyser we saw a pool of water that was boiling violently. We asked how hot they get and Carmelo said they are all constantly at 800 degrees celsius.

Around 4:30 pm we arrived at the place where we would be spending the night. It was a slight upgrade from the night before in that we didn't have to go outside to get to our food or to the bathroom. When we pulled in we caught a glimpse of the French guys we'd met on day 1, but we didn't end up sleeping in that area of the "hostel" so we didn't see them again that night. This was the coldest night of the tour. It was also at the highest altitude. It got so bad while we slept that when you tried to turn over in your sleeping bag your pulse starts racing and you start to panic because it doesn't feel like you are getting enough air.

Stay tuned next time for the Salar Saga- Part 4!

Love,

Hillary

Salar Saga-Part 2

Let's see, where was I?

Oh right, so we went to bed early Thursday night and were asked to be at the front desk at 8:30am Friday morning to leave for our tour. I should explain what exactly this "tour" I've been mentioning entailed. We had a guide, a cook, and a jeep. Our guide spoke in spanish, along with our cook. Together we rode all around Southern Bolivia looking at the beautiful topography of the region. We spent each night in a different location and drove all day with frequent stops to get out, take pictures, use the "baño natural" (natural bathroom), and walk around an area.

We got up and ate the complimentary breakfast at our hotel. We had eggs, OJ, tea, bread, fig jam, yogurt, and a granola of puffed rice. I ate seconds of everything because I didn't know when and how much we would eat on this trip. After eating quickly, we went to the front office where we met our Guide; Carmelo. He packed our things on the top of the truck (which was some sort of Toyota Jeep), and we got in the car to leave. We noticed the cook was not in the car, and he said we had to pick her up. 3 blocks down the road we saw a cholita running towards our car with a big smile on her face. He pulled over and she got in- we picked up our cook from the side of the road. Her name was Olga and she was fairly young looking and very beautiful. Carmelo turned 33 on the final day of our tour. He's been doing tours for 5 years and wants to do it for 5 more years. He and Olga both have kids (not together). Olga has been doing tours for 2 years and has always worked with Carmelo. While we drove, Olga spent her time knitting a lime green cover to decorate the dashboard of the truck.

As soon as we left the city of Tupiza, the scenery began to change:

At our first stop we were accompanied by a jeep filled with 5 french men in their 20's, their guide, and their cook. Our guides chatted and we took turns taking pictures for each other. After ten minutes admiring the scenery, we said au revoir to them, figuring we'd run into them again soon along our tour.

In the car for the first two hours we listened to Bolivian music (not the good kind). Let me correct that, we listened to a single Bolivian song on repeat for two hours. Finally, Carmelo showed us he had a cord so we could listen to an iPod if we had one. For the rest of the day we listened to the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Manu Chao, and Rodrigo y Gabriela. All throughout the day we saw lots of llamas, baby llama (which our guide loved to point out), ostrich, picuña, small cows, donkeys, and small bird-like critters our guide called "pollo del campo" (chicken of the country).

We stopped in a few little pueblitos of mud houses and walked around. They were fairly empty because the people who live there travel to the fields during the day. In one little village there was a little girl who timidly and silently followed us around. She didn't say anything to us but we decided she must be the Keeper of the City. During the day we also saw lots of skulls, bones, and llama parts (legs mostly) strewn about the various villages.

Around noon we pulled over on the side of the road where there were bits of what used to be walls half standing in disarray. We were hesitant to use the baño natural here, because we weren't sure if these old walls were actually ruins. We did it anyway and when we returned Olga had lunch laid out in the trunk of the jeep. For lunch we had ham and cheese sandwiches, cucumbers, bananas, onions, tomatoes, and the best part of all: tamales de llama. It was a kind of bread like potato substance shaped like a fist stuffed with spicy llama meat, all inside a tamale peel. It was actually very delicious. There was a grape like thing in with the meat to make it sweet.

At one point an hour later we took a break to take some close up pictures of llamas but they slowly walked away from us. At another more "modern" pueblito we actually peeked into a schoolroom and I found a table of what seem to be chemical elements and their charges.

Around 4pm we pulled into another pueblito and learned that this was where we'd be spending the night. Half an hour later Olga prepared tea and crackers which we warmed our tummies and our hands with, and then we spent the next couple of hours checking out the town and chatting with several other gringos whose tours also had them sleeping there that night. One of the groups, who I will henceforth refer to as the Yale group because their tour jeep had a yale sticker on it, was composed of two American girls, one English girl, and a guy from Belgium. Apparently, they woke up at 5:30am that morning in the back of an empty bus in a dark bus lot. They were locked in and had to bang on the doors until a very alarmed janitor let them out. From there they were able to catch a bus to Tupiza for their tour, but that bus broke down for two hours! We ran into the Yale group several times throughout our tour and they became a friendly face for us. That night we also met some other gringos who we would run into several more times over the next few days. There was an obnoxious Israeli couple who told Claire that Hindi (the language) frightened them. (Every Israeli tourist I've met while in Bolivia has been incredibly rude, there are a surprisingly high number of them). There was also a hipster group. These people were mostly English, 2 guys and 2 girls (hipster, wannabe old hipster, girl who isn't a hipster at all, and hipster girl). They wore very little layers, big baggy sweaters, and the guys had earrings, smoked, and wore leggings- just leggings.

Dinner Friday night began with vegetable and potato soup and was accompanied by bread, mashed potatoes, and ground meat of some sort which we assumed was llama.

Note: the picture below is where we ate, the light is powered by a gas canister that it is attached to.

Our accommodations consisted of one room with 5 beds. We pushed four of the beds together to increase the heat we would have to sleep with. To go to the bathroom required going outside and then going into the indoor bathroom. There was only electricity for a few hours at night, so after the lights went out, and when we were awoken at 5am the next morning by Carmelo, we used headlamps.

That's it for today, tune in next time for Salar Saga- Part 3!

Love,

Hillary

Salar Saga-Part 1

Ahoy folks,

Long time no blog! I just got back from another adventure, this time longer, colder, and incredibly more breathtaking. I'm going to put up the Salar trip saga in parts.

I found out last Sunday that one of my housemates and two other girls I'd gotten to know and like were planning to go to the salar that Wednesday. Since I've been in Bolivia I've learned that there are certain popular excursions that volunteers tend to visit while they are here. La Paz I've already done, Villa Tunari is supposed to be tropical and have lots of monkeys, Tarija is wine country, and the Salar I'd heard of as a far away excursion to salt flats and multi-colored lakes. I asked if I could join their group and off I went on Wednesday!

We had a 12:30pm bus to Oruro due in at 4:30pm and then a 7:00pm train to Tupiza due in at 8:30am. Tupiza is extremely close to the Argentinian border.

Packing:

So I bought a sleeping bag in La Paz to prepare for the cold at the Aymara New Year all night celebration. I was told it would be cold on this trip, and that I would want my sleeping bag with me. If you remember from the La Paz trip, the bag to my sleeping bag is very difficult to work with and ripped a bit as I tried to stuff the sleeping bag inside of it. (This was while the idiot was watching me try and fail). I had to get creative to figure out a way to make it transportable, and I came up with this:

This is everything I brought with me to the Salar. If you can see, my sleeping bag is secured in a roll with a green and yellow jump rope bought at La Cancha (the huge cheap market I'll write about at some point). I knew I'd need a way to carry it on my back, so I looped another jump rope through the rolled up bag and tied it. This way I could carry it over my shoulder onto my back easily. The backpack I'd brought with me to Bolivia was too small for this long of a trip, and too big for a carry on. I went with my duffel and my Bolivia purse from Uncle Winston.

The Bus: (cost 25 b's)

There was a man selling silver necklace chains who got on the bus a few minutes after we'd taken off. It was exactly like an infomercial. He started off saying that he'd charge 25 to 30 b's (b=bolivianos for future reference, that's how people say it here). He explained that he knew how we were probably thinking that the silver was fake, but he rubbed it against his hand to show that there was no residue or tarnish. After about 15 minutes of talking to the entire bus he'd lowered the deal to 10 b's and if you were one of the first 10 people to raise your hand, you got a baby chain and a silver charm of either a cross, a dolphin, or a frog or something. He got off after he'd sold several silver chains. Intermittently while on the bus several individuals came on and walked down the aisle to sell food. We bought from the ice cream guy. They all got off after about 15 minutes on the bus. We assume they got back to the place they started by hopping on a bus going the other direction. The movie was Transporter 3. Based on our first-hand accounts and those of several volunteers at Sustainable Bolivia, we have developed a theory about the movies on buses and trains in Bolivia.

The theory of Bolivian transportation movies: If one is on a train or bus in Bolivia, and that trip involves a movie, the movie will without a doubt include some sort of transportation catastrophe.

Of course in Transporter 3 a train blew up and a car was run over the edge of a cliff.

Oruro:

We had a couple hours to eat. We stopped at a restaurant that another volunteer had recommended; a Hare Krishna vegetarian restaurant. They had samosas!! It was alright. Oh I also got hit by a car kind of. I was getting our stuff out of the back of the cab and a van drove right past us so close that the sleeping bag I'd had over my shoulder was hit by the van and the force of it shoved me over.

The Train: (cost~160 b's)

If you recall, we had first class tickets. It turned out to be more than worth it. The seats on the train reclined almost all the way. We got super huge blankets that were as heavy as lead. This turned out to be our saving grace because the farther south we got, the closer the temperature got to frigid. The train was ice cold and we had on several layers, hats, the blankets, and were still struggling to stay warm. Here we are just after we got on the train (before the temperature drop).

This is Claire (my housemate) in the black, and Laura, another SB volunteer, in the white.

This is me and Nina, another SB volunteer.

We slept on and off once the lights went off around 11pm. The two movies they showed were Assassins (which included several transportation catastrophes), and Legion, which I slept through most of but I did catch an old lady named Gladys tell a woman all babies were going to burn in hell, then she ate a man's neck and crawled on the ceiling before being shot to death. Some French Canadian people got on the bus, along with an English bloke and an Israeli guy. Since we'd gotten on the train at the first stop, and were on the train for 13 hours, we were served breakfast in the dining car.

For breakfast we had crackers, butter, jam, scrambled eggs, one half of a piece of bread, and tea (which we clung to in order to regain feeling in our hands).

After we ate, Just for Laughs was put on the TV. It seemed like a stupid hidden camera show where they don't use audio and there isn't dialogue so there was no need for dubbing or subtitles. As it turned out it was hilarious after a night of interrupted sleep and extreme cold. I couldn't stop giggling at this silly show. The sun was up and we began to realize they hadn't been announcing the various stops on the route throughout the night. They'd been stopping, people would get on and off, and they'd take off again. We didn't know if we'd passed our stop, so we asked the lady behind us. She said we'd passed Tupiza and that the next stop was in 3 hours. The lady behind her said we hadn't passed it yet. We asked the first lady's husband when he returned from the bathroom, and he confirmed that we'd passed it. After a few moments of panick, the train guy came past and announced that it would be ten minutes until the Tupiza stop. PHEW! We'd planned it so that we had all day Thursday to relax, check out the town, and get up early Friday to start our Tour.

We got off the train around 9:00am and tried to buy tickets for the train ride from where our tour ended, back to Oruru on Monday. The man at the train station refused to sell us tickets. He gave a weak explanation saying that he only had a certain number of tickets to sell, and that we could only buy them on Monday in Uyuni after our tour ended. By then we knew the Tuesday 1:00am train would be sold out and the next train wasn't for 2 days. We eventually headed to the hotel that is part of the tour guide company we had reserved. The hotel man said that a group of 30 people were arriving that day and so they had moved us to their second hotel that was connected to the tour guide office. The cost was the same (80 b's for each of us) so we hiked the 2 blocks over and checked into a 4 bedroom at Hotel Mitro.

We asked the tour company if they could see about train tickets, and they phoned the train station. At first they were told they only had second class seats (imagine yellow school bus seats at a 90 degree angle that don't recline, no blankets, and no food). When she called a second time she was told they had 4 seats in first class at half price that didn't recline because it was a last row. We took that deal. I should tell you all that often down here customer service is not existent. Especially for "gringos." (The word "gringo" in Bolivia refers to any foreigner, not just American). This is silly in my opinion. Firstly- why would you make it hard for someone to buy something from you? Secondly- gringos have the money to pay for these services. Anyway, we sat down with a tour guide lady and she went over the costs (1200 b's for the 4 day Jeep tour, 96 b's for the train ticket back to Oruro that they helped us purchase, 150 b's to get into the national park to see the Salar on Sunday and Monday). She also showed us the route we'd be taking and explained that at one stop we'd only have 15 minutes maximum because it was 5,000 meters high (twice the altitude of Cochabamba) and that it was difficult to breathe. I realized I would need more money. We all did. Using our credit card to pay for the tour was going to include a 10% tax. Instead of doing that, we headed over to the bank that we had been told had the lowest tax rate. There they demanded passports and would not accept copies. Being without our passports, we tried the next place. They too denied us service without a physical passport. Our last hope, "Prodem" let us take out money as long as we had our passport number. I remembered my number minus 2 digits, but I didn't think this was an OK time to fake it. I knew mom had a copy of my passport at the house. I called mom- no answer. I called the house- no answer. I called dad and he answered and called Morgan who was in fact home and she found the copy and read me the number.

The rest of the day we spent looking for warm clothes and trying to pick between the 10 (not kidding) pizza shops within a two block radius of our hotel. We ate pizza for lunch, then went back to hotel to nap after catching the end of Bridget Jones Diary on TV. We got up and found another, very touristy, pizza place for dinner. The only other people who came in were gringos. When I tried to order desert, the waiter interrupted me before I said two words and said "no" and made the strike symbol with his hands. After calling him back to ask what he meant, it turns out they didn't have anything to make for dessert, even though there were about 10 dessert things on the menu. We returned to the hotel for showers and early to bed to start our tour for the next day.

After traveling for over a day and having weird stomach issues (which correlated to anytime I had coca tea which is meant to help calm your stomach), I realized I should not have left my travelers diarrhea medication in Cochabamba. I just had to cross my fingers and hope that I would be alright. I bought a gatorade at a tienda in Tupiza just in case I was going to need some electrolytes should I come down with some travelers diarrhea. I did however take the rest of my altitude medication between Wednesday and Friday morning because we were living at a steady 4,000 meters and up for the entire trip.

That's it for now folks!! I'll update soon with Friday and possibly Saturday!

Love,

Hillary