Potosi Mines, Salar de Uyuni & Southern Bolivia
First stop, Coca Leaves, can`t hit the mines without these babies.
Apparently the chewing of coca leaves helps you acclimitise to high altitude quickly along with keeping your mouth and throat moist which quickly becomes dry 50 meters underground.
The mines were a big eye opener, these people work in some really poor conditions, sometimes up to 20 hours a day for 6 days straight, without hardly any electrical help between the 8000 workers. The tunnels are small at least the Bolivians aren`t tall, these mines have however killed anywhere between 8-10 million people over the years, that`s the current population of Bolivia!
Hopefully the prayer that the miners say to Tio Jorge (Uncle George - otherwise known as Satan, the keeper of the mines)
every Friday to keep them safe actually starts to work. The best part of the tour was letting off the dynamite which you can buy on the streets, no liscence or age minnimum required.
Headed of for the afternoon to the hot springs, which were more like giant cement baths with water so hot that we only lasted half an hour, before heading back to town where we, still aclimitising to the altitude, took it very easy wandering the streets of the markets where you can buy just about anything.
Our bus for Uyuni was an interesting journey with my day pack disappearing half way. We seriously left the bus for 5 minutes for a bathroom stop and when we got back on the bus there was only a space left where my bag had once been. I searched the bus without any luck amd seeing as the bus driver and his amigo weren`t interested in helping out, there wasn`t anything left to do but wait and see if it showed up at the end of the bus journey. At 4 when we arrived (supposedly our arrival time was going to be 1), I checked things out a little more clearly. Still backpackless we headed for the hotel to get some much needed sleep so we could start our tour in the morning of Southern Bolivia, atleat there was nothing too valuable in the bag, the shitty thing is the souvenirs that I lost from Brasil, my diary and my Spanish dictionary.
The next morning we were off on our tour to the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Lake) & South Western Bolivia..........
Salar de Uyuni was absolutely spectacular, because we are in the wet season the Salt Lake was covered by between 10 to 50 cm of rain (usually completely dry) and the reflection off the water was amazing!
After lunch we continued our journey south passing through the Valley of Rocks
before our car started having a few issues. Get the petrol filter going again and we continue off on our journey spending the first night in a small town called Vila Alora or something of the sorts, where accomodation was basic but comfy enough. The following day was not such an early start departing just after breakfast further south. We checked out a few flamingo filled lakes on the way, enjoying the scenery and taking plenty of photos. Before we reached Lake Colorado, got up close and personal with some Llamas and waited around whilst our driver went to find another Land Cruiser (trust me not very hard on this route) with whom we could exchange batteries as for some reason ours had decided to stop charging.
Once we had reached our humble abode for the evening, a little more basic but still comfy, Adam a gringo companion and I decided to head out for a walk to see if we could check out the sunset. 4500 meters sure takes a toll on the body, it got cold very quickly, the sun disapeared behind the mountains with little sunset affect and the small exercise that we did acomplish resulted in a heavy lack of breath. The following morning we off again at 4:30am, well we were in the car about this time but just as we were ready to take off our battery decided to die again and considering that our tour guide wasn't able to ship one down from Uyuni, he had to frantically run around waking other tour guides up so we could swap batteries again. About 5 we were finally off, driving through some crazy 4wd tracks with the lights off to save battery, freaky stuff.
About 6 we arrived at the Geysers, 5000m above sea level and minus 7 degrees, we only hung around long enough to take a few snapshots, watch the sun rise and take off again headed for the thermal pools. After a quick dip, breakfast was served before our final leg south to Lagoa Verde, a trully remarkable, pituresque, beautiful place.
time to head home, checking out the Salvador Dahli Desert on the way where he was inspired by some of the rock formations. A battery change with our guides amigo on the half way home who had been following us with his own group so we could change batteries back and forth. Another hour into the trip and our battery gave up. Since we had only just changed, our amigo couldn´t help us so we were left to wait on the road for yet another LC to change batteries with. 1 final change and we were finally on our way, once again avoiding the use of headlights to try and save juice.
last night saw the group out for pizza and beer, which 3 of us (including Lilla and myself) couldn´t eat much of due to exhaustion and perhaps a small dose of the old dehydration. We were supposed to train it out of here (Uyuni) last night which we were actually looking forward to, but for some reason the trains, just like LAB had pulled a no go. That leaves us here, hoping on another overnighter on our way to La Paz in an hour. Looking forward to spending a few days in the 1 place for a few days just chilling out!
Photos are not working so will post later!
Apparently the chewing of coca leaves helps you acclimitise to high altitude quickly along with keeping your mouth and throat moist which quickly becomes dry 50 meters underground.
The mines were a big eye opener, these people work in some really poor conditions, sometimes up to 20 hours a day for 6 days straight, without hardly any electrical help between the 8000 workers. The tunnels are small at least the Bolivians aren`t tall, these mines have however killed anywhere between 8-10 million people over the years, that`s the current population of Bolivia!
Hopefully the prayer that the miners say to Tio Jorge (Uncle George - otherwise known as Satan, the keeper of the mines)
every Friday to keep them safe actually starts to work. The best part of the tour was letting off the dynamite which you can buy on the streets, no liscence or age minnimum required.
Headed of for the afternoon to the hot springs, which were more like giant cement baths with water so hot that we only lasted half an hour, before heading back to town where we, still aclimitising to the altitude, took it very easy wandering the streets of the markets where you can buy just about anything.
Our bus for Uyuni was an interesting journey with my day pack disappearing half way. We seriously left the bus for 5 minutes for a bathroom stop and when we got back on the bus there was only a space left where my bag had once been. I searched the bus without any luck amd seeing as the bus driver and his amigo weren`t interested in helping out, there wasn`t anything left to do but wait and see if it showed up at the end of the bus journey. At 4 when we arrived (supposedly our arrival time was going to be 1), I checked things out a little more clearly. Still backpackless we headed for the hotel to get some much needed sleep so we could start our tour in the morning of Southern Bolivia, atleat there was nothing too valuable in the bag, the shitty thing is the souvenirs that I lost from Brasil, my diary and my Spanish dictionary.
The next morning we were off on our tour to the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Lake) & South Western Bolivia..........
Salar de Uyuni was absolutely spectacular, because we are in the wet season the Salt Lake was covered by between 10 to 50 cm of rain (usually completely dry) and the reflection off the water was amazing!
After lunch we continued our journey south passing through the Valley of Rocks
before our car started having a few issues. Get the petrol filter going again and we continue off on our journey spending the first night in a small town called Vila Alora or something of the sorts, where accomodation was basic but comfy enough. The following day was not such an early start departing just after breakfast further south. We checked out a few flamingo filled lakes on the way, enjoying the scenery and taking plenty of photos. Before we reached Lake Colorado, got up close and personal with some Llamas and waited around whilst our driver went to find another Land Cruiser (trust me not very hard on this route) with whom we could exchange batteries as for some reason ours had decided to stop charging.
Once we had reached our humble abode for the evening, a little more basic but still comfy, Adam a gringo companion and I decided to head out for a walk to see if we could check out the sunset. 4500 meters sure takes a toll on the body, it got cold very quickly, the sun disapeared behind the mountains with little sunset affect and the small exercise that we did acomplish resulted in a heavy lack of breath. The following morning we off again at 4:30am, well we were in the car about this time but just as we were ready to take off our battery decided to die again and considering that our tour guide wasn't able to ship one down from Uyuni, he had to frantically run around waking other tour guides up so we could swap batteries again. About 5 we were finally off, driving through some crazy 4wd tracks with the lights off to save battery, freaky stuff.
About 6 we arrived at the Geysers, 5000m above sea level and minus 7 degrees, we only hung around long enough to take a few snapshots, watch the sun rise and take off again headed for the thermal pools. After a quick dip, breakfast was served before our final leg south to Lagoa Verde, a trully remarkable, pituresque, beautiful place.
time to head home, checking out the Salvador Dahli Desert on the way where he was inspired by some of the rock formations. A battery change with our guides amigo on the half way home who had been following us with his own group so we could change batteries back and forth. Another hour into the trip and our battery gave up. Since we had only just changed, our amigo couldn´t help us so we were left to wait on the road for yet another LC to change batteries with. 1 final change and we were finally on our way, once again avoiding the use of headlights to try and save juice.
last night saw the group out for pizza and beer, which 3 of us (including Lilla and myself) couldn´t eat much of due to exhaustion and perhaps a small dose of the old dehydration. We were supposed to train it out of here (Uyuni) last night which we were actually looking forward to, but for some reason the trains, just like LAB had pulled a no go. That leaves us here, hoping on another overnighter on our way to La Paz in an hour. Looking forward to spending a few days in the 1 place for a few days just chilling out!
Photos are not working so will post later!
posted by Sanchez at 3:43 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home