Mines, Salt Flats and Moonscapes

Day 42 - 16th January
Today we got a bus to Potosi, which, at 4090m is the world's highest city (another UNESCO site).  Potosi sits beneath the Cerro Rico mountian, a rich source of silver and was founded by the Spanish as a mining town.  In colonial times it was one of the richest cities in South America and was the site of Spain's colonial mint.  The silver mine is still working, under a cooperative system, whereby each member is entitled to work his own section of the mine and the minerals are sold through the cooperative.  Although there is not much silver left, the mine is rich in other minerals and is very busy.  Working conditions are tough, although now much better than in colonial times when miners would spend up to 6 months living underground, working long days powered by coca leaves.  Millions of miners died in the colonial era.  Today the mine has electric light but most of the work is still done by hand, including setting dynamite, carving the rock and hauling tons of material to the surface by hand.  We took a very interesting tour of the mine in the afternoon, complete with full miners gear.  The mine was quiet as there had been a wedding the day before and most men were sleeping off hangovers, still our guide took us deep inside the mine to see some men at work.  It was hot, dusty, wet and smelly, and the work seems unimaginably hard.  We met one miner, Jorge, who was 15 years old and had already been working for 2 years.  The trip was fascinating, and not nearly as scary as the Lonely Planet makes out! 

Tio Jorge, the Devil-God

Happy miners

Jorge makes dynamite

On the trip we met an American called Ben, who was planning on heading to Uyuni the next day, the same as us, so we decided to team up and travel together for a few days.  After getting out of the mine we relaxed over beers and some local food.

Day 43 - 17th January
Today we took the bus to Uyuni, gateway to the salt flats.  The bus took 6 hours and we arrived mid-afternoon.  There isn't much to recommend Uyuni town as a place to visit - it is thoroughly in the middle of nowhere, strewn with rubbish and has a deserted wild-west town feel to it.  We did, however, find our cheapest accommodation of the trip so far - £3.50 each for a 3-bed dorm.  After trawling the tourist agencies in town we finally booked a 3-day trip of the nearby salt flats (the reason for going to Uyuni) for the bargain price of £68 each.  As far as we could tell, all the tours do the same thing and go to the same places, staying in the same hostels, so there seemed to be no sense in paying twice as much.




Day 44 - 18th January
After the world's most disorganised breakfast we started our 3-day salt flat tour.  There were 6 of us in our jeep, Jon, Ben and me, a Kiwi called Steve, a German called Nils and an Argentinian called Rudolfo, not to mention our driver-cum-guide Javier.  As Ben spoke reasonable Spanish we had decided not to pay the extra 600 Pesos for an English guide, especially as there isn't really too much guiding involved in looking at spectacular landscapes.  That turned out to be an excellent decision as Javier did, indeed, do much more driving than guiding and the sites mostly spoke for themselves.  We met a group who had paid 1200 Pesos for a 'premium' trip with an English guide and they ended up doing exactly the same as us, including the same basic lodgings and food.


Our first stop was the small town of Colchani, where the salt collected from the Salar is processed. We didn't actually see any of the processing, it was really a tourist tat market, although there was a salt museum that was built of salt bricks and housed large salt sculptures, including an armadillo and a giant llama.

Salt llama

After that we visited the salt flats (Salar de Uyuni), which cover an area of over 12000 sq km, nearly twice the size of Lake Titicaca.  This has to be one of the most unusual and spectacular landscapes on the planet.  The white salt stretches as far as the eye can see, obscuring the horizon until you feel like the land goes on forever.  In the wet season the salt is covered with a shallow layer of water, perfectly reflecting the blue, cloud-studded sky in places.  Further in towards the centre, the water dries up leaving just the salt, which is blindingly white.  We took the obligatory silly photos, taking advantage of the lack of perspective in the landscape and spent a good amount of time wandering around and marvelling at the strange wonder of the place.  It is impossible to describe what it looks and feels like, and photos could never do it justice - everyone will just have to visit the Salar to see for themselves!

Jumping for joy in the Salar

Obligatory silly photo

The endless Salar reflecting she sky

After a picnic lunch sitting outside a hotel constructed entirely of salt, we drove on to every boy's dream - a 'cemetery' of rusting trains!  We had plenty of time to play around on the trains, climbing into boiler rooms and funnels, re-enacting film chases running along the tops of carriages. Some had been turned into playground equipment, with swings and see-saws made out of train parts - it was a lot of fun!

Jon plays engine driver

Train cemetery

We then began a long journey in the jeep to our first night's accommodation.  The roads were made of dirt and sand, with steep ditches on either side and the dust from other vehicles and glare from the sun made it nearly impossible for Javier to see the road.  At one point we had a very near miss when the jeep left the road, plunged into the road-side ditch and felt like it nearly rolled over.  We were all thrown from our comfortable seats but Javier did a fantastic job of keeping the jeep upright and we eventually came to a gentle stop at the side of the road with only a few bruises between us!  After that it was easy driving to our first hospedaje (basic hostel) in the small town of Alota.  We had a dorm room for all 6 of us with the creakiest beds in the world, but dinner was tasty and there was a shop selling beer so a good time was had by all.




Day 45 - 19th January
We got up at quite a civilised hour for breakfast and then set off again in the jeep.  Our first stop was a huge boulder field in the shadow of snow-capped volcanoes.  It was quite a sight - boulders big and small as far as the eye could see, and we wasted a happy hour or so scrambling and climbing amongst them.

Boulder field

Grupo Javier with our trusty jeep

We spent the rest of the morning driving through spectacular desert lakes.  I hadn't expected the Bolivian scenery to be so spectacular but with each turn of the road we were transported to amazing landscape after amazing landscape.  Sometimes we were in sandy desert, other times boulder fields or mountain lakes filled with pink flamingos, and at times we appeared to have left the Earth far behind as the landscape resembled the moon or Mars.  Our last stop was at the Laguna Colorado, a lake turned bright red by microorganisms - amazing!

Where we stopped for lunch

Laguna Colorado

Tonight we stayed at our highest hospedaje yet - 4900m.  Again we had a large shared room but the beds were comfy and, again, the food was good.  We also celebrated the last night of the trip with a few bottles of Bolivian wine - not the greatest, but needs must!




Day 46 - 20th January
Today we were up brutally early, at 4am, to head out into the desert to see the sunrise over the geysers.  Having never seen a geyser before I was very excited, and this was a whole field of bubbling pools and shooting plumes of steam.  This being Bolivia there were no safety precautions and we were able to walk among the geysers, standing right on the edge (apparently they lost a Japanese tourist a few years ago!)  The desert was freezing at that time of the morning but being amongst the steam helped take the edge off.

Geysers

After the geysers it was time to warm up, so we headed to some thermal pools for a pre-breakfast dip in the early dawn - magical.  After a hearty breakfast we travelled to the last stop on our trip - Laguna Verde, close to the Chilean border.  Apparently the lake is only green when the wind blows, which fortunately it wasn't when we were there.  After spending some time marvelling at the spectacular scenery of southwest Bolivia we bid goodbye to our fellow travellers (who were heading back to Uyuni) and crossed the border into Chile.  Exiting Bolivia was as easy as entering - a few minutes and a stamp in your passport - but when we got to San Pedro de Atacama to enter Chile it was a different story.  We spent nearly two hours waiting in a queue in the baking sun before getting to the immigration desk.  Once there it was a very quick stamp, so I'm not quite sure how it took them so long!  Now safely in Chile we found a lovely hostel and set about planning the next stage of our journey.

Thermal pools

Laguna Verde

Bolivian desert