Our 4 day trip across the high desert and salt flats in Bolivia was amazing but exhausting! The desert is beautiful and the mountains are al kinds of collies, with flamingoes, borax lakes, yellow, pink and green lakes, and lots of guanacos and llamas! Our first night we stayed at someone's house in a small village around 4200m. The man that owned the house was very sweet, and the beds were quite an experience! Our door didn't close and it gets very cold at night, so not many people got much sleep. We had to get up at 4:30 to get on the road so this didn't matter much anyways. Over the next few days we continued to climb to around 5000m, where there are lots of gyesers from the volcanoes near the border with chile. Lots of people on our trip got really sick, including sandro, one of the swiss people I have been traveling with. I think Sandro had the Flu but other people seemed to be suffering a lot from the altitude or possibly the food... It's hard to tell what's from what that high up! Our next night was also around 4300m and after more than 24 hours this high up my head was killing me but after taking some drugs and a good night sleep I was feeling great! We saw lots of amazing things again and finished up our day at a train graveyard in uyuni, where I ran into Kathy and mark, some good friends from home.. Small world! Our hostel I. Uyuni was half under construction, and we were lucky to be the first ones to jump in the shower before the water was shut off for the night. Turned out they were having problems and thre was no water or electricity in town the next day! We woke up at 4:30 again to catch to sunrise on the salt flats, which was amazing! The flats are all under water at the moment because it's rainy season, so it was harder to take all the cool perspective pictures that everyone takes. We got some good ones and had breakfast in a hotel made completely of salt. After taking lots of pictures we returned to uyuni and spent the rest of the afternoon at a cute outdoor bar with some other people on our tour. After a really good sleep in we bought tickets for a train north that didn't leave until midnight, so we had a whole day to kill In uyuni! There isn't much to the town, but we found a market and discovered how delicious mangoes are here! So we spent the day hanging out in the park eating mangoes! We also found an Internet cafe., where I ran into Kathy and mark for the second time!
The train ride to oruro overnight was very long.. It was definitely more like sleeping on a trampoline with someone bouncing beside you.. It was hard to stay in your seat let alone sleep! I was sure that the train was going to bounce off the tracks at some points, and of course this is the time that my stomach decides to act up so I'm wobbling down the aisles trying to stay on my feet and make it to the washroom far too often. At least there was a bathroom! :) so we decide to get straight on the bus to la Paz, 3 hours away, the bus was better than what I was picturing from all the horrible stories that I've heard about buses in Bolivia!
La Paz is awesome, we're staying at bacoo hostel which is close to the center and has a big bar with ping pong and pool, comfy beds, and hot water! I really love how the city is set in the mountains, the views are beautiful and the culture in the city is really neat. There are tons of markets with lots of cheap things to buy and some good resturaunts with decent food that is really cheap! Last night our hostel had an eArth hour event with a dinner and no electricity, and live music. It was really cool! We bought a few. Bottles of Bolivian wine (not as good as argentinean, but not bad) listened to the music, and hung out at the bar! At some point they started giving out free shots.. And this is when you learn that alcohol has much stronger effects at altitude! Needless to say today has been a really lazy day for all of us and we're now planning on heading to lake titicaca and copacabana on tuesday morning since we didn't make it to the bus station to get tickets today!
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