Hola!
Since I last wrote I have had the lowest and possibly the highest points of the trip so far in a very short period of time. I'm now in Chile in a charming town called San Pedro De Atacama but my last week in Bolivia is one I'll never forget.
Marjolein and I arrived in Sucre, the previous capital of Bolivia, after a very stressful experience of getting on the wrong bus at La Paz although, as always happens when you travel, things worked out in the end. Our first day in the city was a very relaxed one as we tried to recover from the night bus and we explored some of the area near our hostel. The city is known as the white city as a lot of the buildings bear the signature white exteriors of Spanish colonial architecture, making it a very beautiful place.
The next morning we signed up for the walking tour and learned about the rich history of Sucre, which was where the first rebellion against the Spanish in South America began, where the national courts of Bolivia are held and where the richest man in Bolivia once built a park complete with Parisian statues and a miniature eiffel tower just to propose to his wife.
That afternoon I had heard of a dinosaur museum in the town which had hundreds of dinosaur footprints in situ so we jumped on a (very slow) local bus to visit it. When we arrived we were disappointed to find that the only times they do tours to the footprints was at 12 or 1pm, which we had missed. Instead of paying the entrance fee we stood outside where we could get a view of the footprints from a distance, well at least we can say we saw them.
The next day I woke up feeling really ill, I must have picked up a stomach bug somewhere because even getting out of bed was a struggle. This was esepcially disappointing because Marjolein, another dutch girl called Erna and I had decided to take the night bus to Tupiza in the south of the country that evening. As the day went on I realised that there was no way getting a bus was a good idea so I booked another two nights to rest at the hostel. Luckily, as Marjolein left, Sara (the other girl I had been to the amazon with) arrived and we spent the day doing nothing, which is always better to do with some company. The following day I woke up feeling somewhat better and decided to try and eat and do something besides lying horizontally. That afternoon, we took the bus to a castle on the outskirts of the city which the same man who had built the park had built for his beloved wife and their 200 adopted children. The special thing about this castle is that it is nearly completely pink, so we spent some time exploring its halls pretending to be princesses (because who wouldn't want a pink castle).
That evening I felt well enough to get the bus to Tupiza, and arrived very early the next morning. After a nap I went and booked to go horse riding in the area around the town which is famous for being where Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid apparently met their grisly end. The horse riding was amazing, I really felt like I was in a cowboy film, riding through the dramatic orange rocky landscape.
The next day I set off, with Torre Tours, on what is considered the highlight of any trip to Bolivia, a four day jeep tour, ending at the world famous salt flats of Uyuni, which are the largest on earth. My jeep was made up of a Swiss couple called Marc and Sarah, a woman from Denmark called Mette and our tour guide Pancheato and his wife Philamena, our cook. Pancheato was a tiny, big-hearted, and excitable indigenous man and although Philamena started off being quite shy, she ended up being very outgoing and funny. As everyone spoke some level of Spanglish we managed to understand each other most of the time and Pancheato was great at telling us all about the incredible nature we saw along the way. On the first day we visited a huge sand rock structure that looked like a natural cathedral, the ruins of a Spanish colonial town and saw countless beautiful views from the car.
On day two we visited a huge white lake, which we had completely to ourselves. We then stopped in a mini salt flat where Pancheato explained how the mineral borax formed under the layer of sodium.
We then drove to the green lake, where you could see a huge volcano in the background.
Just before lunch we had a dip in the natural hot springs with views of a lake full of flamingos and then in the afternoon we got to visit a thermal area, where there was a geyser producing huge plumes of smoke and lots of bubbling and spitting hot pools.
The final activity of the day was to see the red lake, where we were able to get closer to the flamingos and appreciate the vivid colours of the lake.
Day three was a day full of amazing rock formations. We started at a huge rock that looked like the world cup trophy, then one which looked like a giant camel. Pancheato took us to a really impressive rocky valley where we all climbed to the top to get a breathtaking panoramic view. We were quite surprised when we saw Philamena climbing up too, in her ballet pumps and traditional layered skirt, but she did it like a pro and sang us a song at the top.
Our next stop was a serene lake, where we sat for a while in silence enjoying the sounds of ducks and watching the occasional llama grazing in the nearby marshy fields.
Next we stopped at a viewpoint where you could gaze down on the 'anaconda' river far below before we having a picnic lunch in an incredibly peaceful valley, which once again we had to ourselves (apart from the numerous sheep and their old Bolivian shepard).
That evening we stayed in a hotel just on the outskirts of the salt flats which was built entirely of salt. We got our first experience of the salt flats that night when we drove onto it to watch the sunset.
We woke up at 4:30am the following day and drove once again onto the salt flats to watch the sun rising from one of the 32 islands that can be found there. This island is made partially of coral which formed when the slat flats were a huge lake hundreds of thousands of years ago. The coral was the perfect host for cacti and so the island was completely covered in these HUGE plants.
After some breakfast at the island we set off across the impossibly vast salt flats and and found a perfect place to take the obligatory salt flat optical illusion pictures (see below).
We then continued to drive across the flats and briefly visited the now illegal salt hotel on the flats themselves before heading off the salt and into Uyuni the nearest town. Uyuni itself is a very ugly and dirty town with nothing much to do and I was very glad I had decided to start my tour from Tupiza rather than Uyuni like many tourists do. After visiting the overly touristy 'train cemetery' we stopped for our final meal together before bidding a very very fond farewell to Pancheato and Philamena and killing some time in Uyuni before boarding a bus to Chile.
The border crossing to Chile was very intense, with drug dogs, top to bottom searches of the coach and a full check of the contents of everyones bags but eventually we got through and made it to San Pedro De Atacama.
And so that is Bolivia finished. I highly recommend a trip here to anyone who loves outstanding nature and a healthy dose of adventure (on an amazingly small budget)!
Thanks for reading :)
Emma x
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