A young Canadian travel and customer at Wide World recently send out this email. We love how she captures the excitement of her many adventures in Bolivia and think you will too. Enjoy!
Hola,
Well we have been in Bolivia for about a week now and it just keeps getting better!
We crossed the border from Argentina at 5am and had to wait till 7 for the Bolivia side to open, other than that it was a fairly painless border crossing; especially since I got in for free and the American chicas had to pay $160. From the border we hopped straight on a bus going to Tupiza, a small town we used as a transfer point to Uyuni. In Tupiza we had 9 hours to wait until our 6 hour train ride to Uyuni. We spent most of our waiting time hiding out from the cold in a tourist cafe and also took an afternoon nap in the setting sun in a canyon about a half hour walk away (we were once again suffering from a night-bus sleep). The train to Uyuni was a very nice change, although I was disappointed that it was a night train and so we weren´t able to see any of the scenery.
We arrived in Uyuni at 1:00am just in time to get the last room in the hostel across the street from the train station, 30 bolivianos or 5 Canadian. The next day we organized our 3 day tour of the surrounding Salt Flats and of course stocked up on a few cold weather clothes- my first buy was of course socks made from Alpaca fur with llama designs. The Salt Flat tour was an incredible adventure. It was the three of us girls along with five English guys and our driver, Pedro, who could change a flat tire in minuets, cook delicious meals, and had the best no-teeth smile I have ever seen. For the three day tour we were all packed into what looked like the oldest 4×4 still running and we spent the next 3 days driving south of Uyuni.
Our first stop was through the famous ´Salt Flats´, I believe 14,000 square kilometres of Salt. It is incredible to see as every direction you look is completely flat and white. Highlights from the rest of the trip included lagoons full of flamingos, endless herds of llamas, incredible mountain landscapes, spending enough time with English guys to begin to adopt an English accent, waking up at 4:00am in negative 10 degrees and seeing the sun rise over hot geysers, at 6:00am the same day stripping all our alpaca apparel off and getting into natural hot springs, being in the corner of Bolivia with Argentina and Chile just over the mountains, and of course one flat tire!
On Saturday we bused from Uyuni to Potosi, the highest city of its size in the world- don´t ask me what that means! Potosi is famous for its silver mine, Cerro Rico, and yesterday morning we made the epic trip into the mine. It was an incredible experience; scary, heart wrenching, and mind boggling. Our first stop was to change into our under-ground gear: big rubber boots, jacket and pants, and a helmet with a head lamp. Then it was off to the ´Miner´s Market´ to buy all our gifts for the miners, this included coca leafs, natural cigarettes, alcohol (very strong), gloves, and dynamite (to blow stuff up!). Our tour guide, Jose, made sure we had all the proper tasting experiences; so at 9:30am before we made our way into the dark shaft we all had globs of coca in our cheeks and were buzzing from a small hit of what tasted like rubbing alcohol!
Making our way into the mind a little loopy may have been a good idea as suddenly we were plunged into darkness with only the light of our headlamps to show us the way down the cart tracks. Our first stop was to chat with the men who push the carts filled with rocks up from the depths to the outside. When asked they said their job is the hardest as they suffer from chronic back pain with the endless pushing. Next we met two men who spend their days pulling baskets of rocks up with two levers as their “amigo” down below fills up the baskets, they were especially grateful of the alcohol gift. We made our way past them until we reached a seemingly bottomless pit with three rickety ladders, Jose then instructed us to descend the 15 metres to the next level of the mine. At this point we were all nervous, though some more than others as a German girl on the tour suddenly decided that she would prefer to wait with the lever men while we descended. One down, six remaining, we began the decent.
All went well as the sixth person touched the rock below, though none of us could continue to pretend that we weren´t feeling a big touch of the nerves. Of course the next words out of Jose´s mouth were ¨ok, the next set of ladders is this way¨. None of us could even speak as we leaned over yet another 15 metre hole, the light from our headlamps not reaching the ground below. But, we sucked up our fear with the reality of the worker´s around us making this journey daily. At the bottom level, about 35 metres below, we struggled to breathe in the dusty dank air. We met two more workers, one 20 years old who had been in the mines since he was 17, whose job it is to pick away at the basement walls. When we gave the gift of alcohol at those depths the 20 year old (Richard) immediately insisted on opening it and we were all obliged to do a second set of shots. With our thoughts on fire from the fire water we made our way back up the ladders (wouldn´t recommend being tipsy for those accents) and met back up with our German compatriot.
Our final interaction with the mining crew was to meet the men who get paid the most, the “dynamite dudes”. As we approached we could see three men in masks (the only masks we saw in the mine), their faces and bodies were caked in mud giving them the appearance of ghosts from some level of Dante´s hell. Jose then informed us that we should quickly make our way farther down the tunnel as they were about to set off 15 explosions. We skirted down the tunnel quickly until we were told to stay put and turn off our headlamps (I think for effect). And before any of us could really contemplate the idea of being somewhere inside of a mine waiting for explosions, we were all shaken and deafened to the core for the next 3 minuets as explosion after explosion were going off; during these three minuets I was desperately clinging to Megan and the English guy next to me. Once we knew we were going to be OK we made our way to the last stop, pay homage to the spirit that had kept us from falling down ladders or getting crushed by falling rocks, El Tio. El Tio is set in the far end of one of the tunnels and looks suspiciously similar to a devil. He is sitting surrounded by offerings (coca, alcohol, cigarettes) and seems to be enjoying himself as his giant penis is dramatically displayed. We gave our final gifts to him and then made our way out of the tunnel and into the bright sunshine.
I may have to give this experience a few more days in order to truly asses its definite impact on me, but maybe one of the most surprising things was the voice of the miners themselves who told us repeatedly that it is a hard job, but it is the best paying job in town (between 50 and 80 Bolivianos a day) and for that they are thankful.
We left Potosi after the mine tour on a three hour bus to Sucre, a much bigger colonial town. We will probably spend a day or two here before either heading to Santa Cruz or Cochabamba to do a bit of trekking in the jungle.
So Bolivia continues to amaze us by the day, and it is also having a very positive impact on our budget.
Well this is the excitement of Bolivia, in only one week!
Alia
Tags: bolivia, journal, south america, travel
