We left for Bolivia a couple of weeks back with one goal: to see Salar de Uyuni in southern Bolivia. We made a few stops along the way including Copacabana, La Paz, Oruro and the small town of Uyuni itself. In total, we spent almost 2 weeks in Bolivia exploring the streets and travelling from city to city.
Copacabana is a small town on the shores of Lake Titicaca - the highest altitude lake in the world. The lake looked more like a small ocean with islands throughout. We arrived by bus and quickly found our hostel which had a great location and even a private bathroom for a low cost. Our 4 days in Copacabana were spent playing cards in the sun, drinking a few cold beers (Huari was our favorite), and visiting Isla del Sol.
Our visit to Isla del Sol included the boat to and from the island, approximately 3 hours each way, and costed only 2 USD. We now know that going the cheapest way to an island via boat may not be the safest way, which, in hindsight, we should have already known. On the way out to the island, we were all cold as it started to rain. Not only did it rain and get a bit choppy, but our boat actually started to leak! If that wasn´t alarming enough, it was increased when the captain´s son ran to the front to grab himself a life jacket! We wanted off the boat, but knew that we had a couple more hours to go and had to stick it out. Thankfully, we made it to the island and spent the afternoon walking around and eating a delicious steak and egg sandwich on the shore.
We spent quite a bit of time in Copacabana steaking out the best trucha aka trout in town for Mark to enjoy. We found it on the last day in the local food court where all the locals went for fried trucha, rice, potatoes and salad. Mark really enjoyed it while I had a bite just to try it out! Best trout yet...
All in all, Copacabana was simple and relaxing. We ate local popcorn that they sell by the bag with a light sugar coating on it. We spent hours playing Spite and Malice and drinking beers by the water. We had the best burritos in town. And to top it off, we had a great view of the lake from our hostel. Each night, we fell asleep to rain pouring down and woke up to beautiful blue skies.
Eventually, we felt that it was time to move on to the next big thing: La Paz. We hopped onto a local bus and for a few USD made our way to the capital. Arriving in late afternoon and a bit overwhelmed by the hustle and chaos of this city, we took a taxi directly to our hostel, the Adventure Brew Hostel located by the bus terminal.
Fortunately and unfortunately, the hostel is located by the bus terminal. As we all know, that is usually not the best part of town and that was the case in La Paz. We were across the street from a gas station and located in a dodgy area (or so it seemed). Exhausted from a sinus infection, I was not up for much during those few days. Mark explored the nearby areas and reported nothing too positive, so we decided to catch the next bus to Oruro where we could take a train to Uyuni. Talking to others, there´s plenty to do in La Paz, but it just wasn´t in the cards for us this time around.
We arrived in Oruro and immediately felt better about the situation. Oruro is known for being an industrial city and where the train tracks start in Bolivia. We wandered the streets for a bit looking for a hostel. We found one and are pretty sure that we were the only guests! Rooms were simple with HBO which turned out to be a life saver as the city seemed to close down early. Our time spent in Oruro consisted of a chicken for lunch, train tickets bought to Uyuni, and a few good movies on HBO.
Taking the train to Uyuni was a good experience - we saw the desert landscape throughout the country and, again, watched some movies. We aren´t sure why, but they decided to play 3 American action movies: Top Gun, Air Force One, and Casualties of War. The last one was horrible with way too much gore, but the first two weren´t so bad! Mark, in particular, enjoyed them.
Uyuni is a small town with one main street which is also the plaza. We spent our first night at Hotel Julia - overpriced and they didn´t even provide toilet paper! Thankfully, we had been collecting toilet paper throughout Bolivia for just this reason. We switched over to Hostel Cactu, with parrots and dogs in the courtyard and simple, but clean, rooms. We had a great time walking around the city, which has a lot of street vendors and small shops. We bought our tour group tickets to Salar de Uyuni, which included a 3 day, 2 night tour of the salt flats and nearby volcanoes, lagoons and mountains.
Salar de Uyuni was absolutely breathtaking and a must-see for anyone visting Bolivia! We lucked out with a great group of 14 people and 2 excellent drivers. The salt flats are still mined for salt daily - our tour guide told us that the workers receive only 30 Bolivianos per day for an entire truck full of salt. When you think about it, that is less than 5 USD per day. Pretty shocking.
We spent the first day on the salt flats driving throughout and having lunch at a salt hotel, which is no longer used as a hotel due to the negative impact that it had on the salt flats. There, we spent almost an hour taking fun pictures on the flats. We took one picture where a Snickers bar was in the foreground and it looked as though we were sitting on it. It sounds completely ridiculous, but the pictures were pretty awesome! We wish we could share them here, but unfortunately our camera was lost during a horseback ride in Chile - more on that to come!
We shared the SUV with some people from Switzerland and Germany, while the other car was mostly couples from England, France and the Netherlands. It was a great group! Our first night was spent just outside of Salar de Uyuni in a hotel made purely of salt. The ground was even some type of mineral and you could literally taste the salt while breathing. We had an interesting dinner that night; it was some type of casserole made with french fries, hot dogs, onions, beef and hard-boiled eggs. It literally looked like they took whatever they could find and threw it all into a pan! We ate it anyway and had some good laughs over dinner.
I failed to mention earlier that our guide literally left us on the first day and returned to Uyuni. He said that our new guide would be meeting us at the island in the middle of the salt flats, which turned out to be completely false. He tried to hand us over to a guide that he never met before - the other group had paid quite a bit more and were not about to share their guide with us. We spent the next 2 days without a guide and were left with our 2 drivers, which at least knew where they were going! However, we didn´t learn much about the lagoons, flamingos, volcanoes, etc. that we saw.
A highlight of the trip was the thermal springs that we visited on the 3rd day. That morning had been brutally cold at -15 degrees celcius, but we braved the cold and got into our swimsuits and made the plunge! Well worth it and actually ended up warming us up quite a bit.
That afternoon was enjoyed partly in the hammocks reading books and then later at a restaurant for happy hour with Yohan and Jessica. We all decided that we should go horseback riding and the next afternoon we did just that.
We booked a guided tour on horseback through a company near our hostel for a 3 hour ride through Death Valley in the Atacama Desert. The ranch was located less than 1 mile from town and had 14 horses. We all were assigned our horses and took off into the desert. My horse was particulary slow, which I didn´t mind, and Mark´s was a beautiful tan horse that seemed to be extremely calm. We crossed a desert and went into a canyon before crossing the road into Death Valley. It was a beautiful sight with tall, rock walls surrounding us gradually opening up into huge sand dunes. We climbed to the top of a sand dune where we rested, took pictures, and then continued back to the ranch. I will forever remember my horse using me as a itching post and rubbing it´s head up and down my leg to get rid of the itch behind his ear!
Heading downhill, there was a rock formation that we crossed over before heading down again. My horse either spooked or was just having fun, and took off into a gallop! I said a few choice words and held on for my life before bringing it to a stop. I swear it was bucking, but Mark insists that it wasn´t. Unfortunately, this is when we think that our camera flew off the horse and into the endless sand! Along with it, all of our pictures from Salar de Uyuni and the horseride as well. What a bummer! Our guide went back to search, but with the desert being so big, was unable to find it. The upside to it is that we have my oldschool camera as a backup and will be using that until we find a reasonably priced camera here in Argentina.
We said goodbye to the beautiful horses and went back to our hostel before all meeting up with Ieuan and Kerry for some dinner and drinks. Later that evening, Yohan and Jessica took off to Peru for their last few weeks of vacation so we had to say goodbye to them as well. There may be a trip to France in the near future!
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| A great night out - San Pedro de Atacama |
We had to wake up early the next day to catch our long bus ride to Salta, Argentina. I was lucky enough to sleep most of the day, but Mark stayed up for most of it watching movies. We went through two immigrations for both Chile and Argentina which took up a great deal of time. We arrived last night around 9:00pm in Salta. With no money or a hostel, it was a bit stressful but we ended up at the Sol Huasi Hostel where we will most likely spend a few days.
Our plan is to meet up with Ieuan and Kerry tomorrow and possibly rent a car to check out the surrounding cities and outdoorsy spots. We are excited to have some freedom apart from the usual bus ride and to spend some time with new friends.
For the next couple of months, we will spend our time in Argentina visiting Iguaza Falls, wine country and down to Patagonia while making a short stop in Uruguay to lounge on the beach. We are looking forward to some hiking, camping and gigantic steaks!
All the best!
