Bolivia crammed into a post
For more pictures of Bolivia: go here.
Warning! On the second photo page there are some disturbing mummy/skeleton pictures. Happy early Halloweeeeeen! I’m not joking, they’re creepy. And I felt bad taking pictures because it seemed very disrespectful, but at the same time….how could I not (you’ll see).
After leaving Puno, we crossed the border into Bolivia by land. I guess different borders are handled different ways. Basically, between Bolivia and Peru there is a very short bridge that spans a shallow, dirty river, and this bridge is “guarded†by maybe one Peruvian border guard and maybe one Bolivian border guard. And by guard I mean more of a people-watcher. If Em and I had wanted to, we could have just strolled on in like the hoards of other people crossing the bridge. But small, innocent mistakes like illegally entering a country have been known to cause trouble later down the road and besides it would have been one less stamp on our passport, and what good is a passport if you don’t get it stamped!…so…we did things officially.
After that, it was on to La Paz and Sucre. We basically only had one night in La Paz and the next evening we were headed off to Sucre. However, we were in La Paz long enough to leave two impressions with me. China Town and dried llama fetuses. La Paz doesn’t have a Chinese district that I know of, but the way the signs and streets and everything are in the tourist district reminded us very much of good old China Town in San Francisco. But yes, the whole China Town similarity is the not so interesting part….llama fetuses, now that is not something you run across every day. There are these vendors, called yatiris (medicine women)….and they sell these mystical items like soaps and beads, herbs, statues and small dried llamas. I really wish I had taken a picture for show and tell, but it would have been rude without buying something and I can’t think of one good use for a llama fetus. I thought about getting some for all my friends and family but they’re just a little too large for stocking stuffers…. It would make a good Nightmare Before Christmas moment, anyway. The actual intended use for these forlorn llamas is as offerings to Paccha Mama (Mother Earth).
I remember most of Bolivia as a big blur……………laPazSucrePotosiUyuniSaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrandthentheBorder. We basically blasted through the country in less than two weeks. We were lucky to be able to move so quickly. Our first few days in Bolivia we saw on the news that some miners had begun protesting and blockading the roads to the north. As we moved our way south we kept running into travelers that had been delayed by road blocks. Basically as we moved down through the country, all the roads were shutting behind us. Bolivia is the poorest South American country and has continual unrest, so sadly the whole blockade thing is business as usual. Before all the protesting started, we were in La Paz talking to a travel agent about a tour and she was saying that this week was a good one to go because there were no blockades going on!
We visited Sucre briefly. It was one of the cities on our list as possible places to stay. But no real job opportunities presented themselves for Emily, so we just did the tourist thing for two days. It is a pretty city (called the White City because most of the buildings are, well, white) and has one of the most fascinating cemeteries I have ever seen. In this cemetery all the dead are ‘buried’ above ground in these tombs that range from an ornate slot in a wall to giant buildings, depending on the money and influence the family has. You should check out the pictures.
Next was Potosi, where we just stayed the night, enjoyed the breathlessness that comes with being in the highest city in the world, had a MISERABLE shower, almost got robbed the next morning and then it was off to Uyuni. Yes we are left with fond memories of Potosi. About the whole robbing thing. Em and I had all of our stuff and were headed towards the bus station to take off. We hailed a sketchily marked taxi. One block later a guy jumps in and says he’s going to the station too. Em had done some reading and sharing taxis was generally not a good idea. But before we really had time to react, he was in and we were nervously heading to the bus station. That is, until the plain clothes immigration authority stopped us. There was a lot of chatter between the taxi driver and the guy in the seat next to us and the immigration officer about who everyone was, where we were going, blah, blah, blah and then the officer hops in and says please let us go down to the immigration office. At that point Em and I said no way (plain clothes police are forbidden contact with tourists), we jumped out and were yelling “Abre, Abre, Abre!” To the taxi driver to open the trunk (we couldn’t remember the dang word for trunk). Amazingly, he popped the trunk and we took off. Close one.
Our reflexes have changed during the course of the trip. At the beginning, we might have walked right into that situation blindly or not had the presence of mind to react as we did. In the states we practically never had to even pay the slightest attention to our surroundings. Maybe occasionaly late, late at night or in very crowded city situations. Besides having very safe streets, we also had a car which is like another security layer that we never even thought about. Here, there is always the vague threat of petty theft, so our stuff is always in contact with our bodies and never out of our sight. I usually have my hand in the pocket that has my valuables.
We were pretty shaken after that scare with the taxi, but very relieved to be able to board the bus with all of our things with us. As Potosi slipped away, we passed a bus that had stopped on its route toward Potosi and wouldn’t go further. Another road blockaded behind us.
Before us now lay the Salar de Uyuni.
The tours into the Salar consist of a guide/driver, a cook and six merry adventurers crammed into a rangerover or other four wheel drive vehicle that can acommodate (or is forced to accommodate) eight passengers. Then it is off into the wild wilderness of the high desert for three days over mostly dirt roads and some places where the four wheel drive was definately necessary. We were able to hit the road in the dry season. Apparently in the wet season, break downs are a given and tours can go well beyond the intended three days. We only experienced a 10 minute breakdown. It was some rough road but very much worth it. It is hours of driving through landscapes that boggle the mind. The first stage is traveling across the salt flats (Salar) of Uyuni. They go on forever. At points all you can see is white spreading all the way to the mountains in the distance. One of the stops is an island that trully is a freak of nature. Before the Andes formed, the land was submerged underneath the ocean. Plates collided, the Andes popped up, trapped a bunch of water and then formed the salt flats over time. In the middle of the flats is this island that is covered in coral. Now, growing among the coral is a forest of cacti, some of them older than a thousand years old. The combination could not be more strange….an island of coral, thousands of meters in altitude completely surrounded by salt…..replete with cacti. Go figure.
While there was nothing else quite so bizarre as the cactus island, we passed through landscapes of Dr. Seuss and Dahli proportions. It was beautiful and humbling. The sheer power, wildness and desolation imprinted itself within us as we pressed on through deserts that stretched on as far as the eye could see, past volcanoes, lava flows, geysers, fields of boulders spewn by erruptions and carved by wind. I saw and felt the sheer, raw nature of the changing world like I never have before.