Salt and High Altitude!
Hola!
Well we are now in La Paz, got here at 5.30am this morning (2 hours early!!), after a bumpy overnight bus journey from Potosi.
So last time we posted we were awaiting our train to Uyuni from Villazon. What an AWESOME journey, 9 hours of stunning scenery through tiny villages, farmland, huge red cliffs and canyons and desert. Uyuni is a cold desert town, bit scruffy, but interesting, most travellers are just passing through on their way to or from seeing the salt plains. We took a one day tour of the salt plains, which turned out to be a very surreal day of sightseeing. Our guide spoke no English, but he was great at speaking Spanish veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly so we got the jist of most of what he was saying! First stop was a train cemetery on the outskirts of Uyuni, full of old British built steam trains. We then drove across the salt plain, the Salar de Uyuni, so white and huge, 12,000km square, thats a lot of salt! There is no perspective so you can get some crazy pictues. Saw the locals mining the salt and a hotel made out of salt. We had lunch in the shadows of a dormant volcano, whilst watching flamingos and llamas (our driver cooked us steak over a gas BBQ!). Then we drove across more salt and visited fish island. Crazy island in the middle of the salt plain which has giant cactuses and rabbit like creatures with long tails! And James got some quality sunburn, resulting in very immpresive sunglasses marks on his face!
From Uyuni we caught a bus to Potosi, the highest city in the world, 4070m above sea level. The bus journey there was interesting......no bitumen at all (only 10%of roads in Bolivia have bitumen) and winding through mountains, with some very steep drops off the edge!!!!! Think of the bumpyest road you´ve been on and times it by 10!!!!! The bus also got a puncture at one point on two tyres!!!!! So we all had to get off the bus in the middle of nowhere while they fixed it, the tyres that they replaced the punctured ones with weren´t much better, they had no tred at all and bits of rubber missing! LLamas kept being getting on the road infront of the bus too, so the driver was constantly beeping his horn (something they are very fond of doing in Bolivia). But we made it. However the scenery on the drive was stunning, lots of huge red and green cliffs.
Potosi turned out to be quite a cool city, with a huge mountain called the Cerra Rico overlooking it and some great colonial buildings. The mountain used to be massive silver mine, and now looks as if it belongs on Mars after 100´s of years of mining. It is still a mine today but on a much smaller scale. Its very dangerous too, the life expectancy of people who work in there is 10 years after they have started mining because of the bad ventilation. Over 8 million people died in the mine over 300 years in its heyday,which was from1500-1800´s!!!!! Despite the altitude it wasn´t too cold, very sunny during the day. And we´ve both got used to the altitude now so no sickness :) While we were there we met up with a English couple, Emma and Rob, who we met in Chile, which was great fun. Just stayed there for one night, then lastnight caught the bus to La Paz. That bus journey wasn´t as bad, still quite bumpy though and we did have two comedy old Bolivian ladies in traditional dress sleeping in the aisle. We are staying here for 3 days, and then moving on to Copacabana............
Very behind on the piccies am afraid, hopefully we´ll find a reasonably fast interent place soon so I can upload them...........
Lots of love to everyone
J&J xxxxx
Well we are now in La Paz, got here at 5.30am this morning (2 hours early!!), after a bumpy overnight bus journey from Potosi.
So last time we posted we were awaiting our train to Uyuni from Villazon. What an AWESOME journey, 9 hours of stunning scenery through tiny villages, farmland, huge red cliffs and canyons and desert. Uyuni is a cold desert town, bit scruffy, but interesting, most travellers are just passing through on their way to or from seeing the salt plains. We took a one day tour of the salt plains, which turned out to be a very surreal day of sightseeing. Our guide spoke no English, but he was great at speaking Spanish veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly so we got the jist of most of what he was saying! First stop was a train cemetery on the outskirts of Uyuni, full of old British built steam trains. We then drove across the salt plain, the Salar de Uyuni, so white and huge, 12,000km square, thats a lot of salt! There is no perspective so you can get some crazy pictues. Saw the locals mining the salt and a hotel made out of salt. We had lunch in the shadows of a dormant volcano, whilst watching flamingos and llamas (our driver cooked us steak over a gas BBQ!). Then we drove across more salt and visited fish island. Crazy island in the middle of the salt plain which has giant cactuses and rabbit like creatures with long tails! And James got some quality sunburn, resulting in very immpresive sunglasses marks on his face!
From Uyuni we caught a bus to Potosi, the highest city in the world, 4070m above sea level. The bus journey there was interesting......no bitumen at all (only 10%of roads in Bolivia have bitumen) and winding through mountains, with some very steep drops off the edge!!!!! Think of the bumpyest road you´ve been on and times it by 10!!!!! The bus also got a puncture at one point on two tyres!!!!! So we all had to get off the bus in the middle of nowhere while they fixed it, the tyres that they replaced the punctured ones with weren´t much better, they had no tred at all and bits of rubber missing! LLamas kept being getting on the road infront of the bus too, so the driver was constantly beeping his horn (something they are very fond of doing in Bolivia). But we made it. However the scenery on the drive was stunning, lots of huge red and green cliffs.
Potosi turned out to be quite a cool city, with a huge mountain called the Cerra Rico overlooking it and some great colonial buildings. The mountain used to be massive silver mine, and now looks as if it belongs on Mars after 100´s of years of mining. It is still a mine today but on a much smaller scale. Its very dangerous too, the life expectancy of people who work in there is 10 years after they have started mining because of the bad ventilation. Over 8 million people died in the mine over 300 years in its heyday,which was from1500-1800´s!!!!! Despite the altitude it wasn´t too cold, very sunny during the day. And we´ve both got used to the altitude now so no sickness :) While we were there we met up with a English couple, Emma and Rob, who we met in Chile, which was great fun. Just stayed there for one night, then lastnight caught the bus to La Paz. That bus journey wasn´t as bad, still quite bumpy though and we did have two comedy old Bolivian ladies in traditional dress sleeping in the aisle. We are staying here for 3 days, and then moving on to Copacabana............
Very behind on the piccies am afraid, hopefully we´ll find a reasonably fast interent place soon so I can upload them...........
Lots of love to everyone
J&J xxxxx
posted by Jude and Jimmyg @ 11:41 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home