Hazel's Travel Blog: The Salt flats, Salar De Uyuni, Bolivia December 2011

We travel by bus from La Paz to the pretty white washed wall town of Sucre. There isn't a whole pile to do here except browse the local markets & chocolate shops. We stay for two days relaxing in a hostel with a gorgeous courtyard. There is very little photograph so I've skipped it in the blog.

We move on to where the most exciting part of Bolivia awaits...

Tupiza! Where the last days of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance were spent before they met their fateful end - the famous scene in the film where they are finally caught happened here and the landscape truely is wild west country! Cacti line the deep ravines on either side of the small village, the earth is a deep and unusual red/orange colour. The town itself is dusty and mostly barron, in-keeping with the wild west theme.

The difficult journey to get here, we decide, has been worth it. Our bus to Tupiza, cram packed with mainly large Bolivian women in traditional dress, is stinky and tight on space. To get on is a task in itself, people are pushing and shoving and demanding their bag of rice be put on first - elbows are key. Manners, we have discovered are hard to come by in Bolivia and if you leave a gap in the queue it will be filled quickly, often by force. I turn on this occasion to express my displease to find a short, hefty and dangerously unchallengable Bolivian woman at the other end. I keep schtum. We watch in amazement at the quantity and strangeness of the items many of the women load on, 40kg sacks of rice/potatoes/polenta, Christmas decorations, trees, all sorts of junk & trinkets for selling, pots, pans, boxes upon boxes of sweets, bags of wool, all of which they have carried in a traditional coloured towel on their back. They all have large quantities of each so it is a long time before we get on board.

Squashed in, bags on lap, we try to get to sleep in the hope that the journey will pass quickly. Bumpy as it is the first few hours aren't so bad and we stop for a break along the way. I try to get off the bus, decidedly later than the others as I realise there is no bano on board. The bus driver has locked me in. I bang on the window and as the minutes pass I am increasingly frustrated as I have convinced myself I am going to die if I don't pee soon. I am eventually spotted & released. Having paid 2 bolivianos to the waitress of a nearby restaurant I am directed to a small wooden door, like that of a wild west bar - it swings both ways & allows small beams of light through the wooden panels. The beams of light scar the soul with a glimpse of the once white walls and toilet which are barely distinguishable from one another in their blackness. The stench of urine would kill a small animal. Had I not paid the 2 bolivianos I'd have gone behind the bus...if it was the last thing I did I was gonna use that goddamn bathroom!

The bus moves off once again and we sleep erratically with the bumps and bruises of the night. Our strange dreams are interrupted with the call for Tupiza, arriving 3hours earlier than expected. Disoriented we grab our bags and prepare ourselves for a nights sleep in the gloomy bus station as we are reluctant to pay for an extra nights accomodation. We sleep with one eye open until 7am and trudge silently to our hostel.

Ravished later that evening we stop into the first restaurant we see, after waiting 10mins or so a waitress brings us a menu. She is heavily pregnant, at least 8months gone and I wonder if she should really be working. We order and continue our conversation. The drinks arrive, and as our impregnated waitress leans over to set our drinks down, a long but childlike leg lands on the table in front of me with a thud. Looking closer I notice the face of a child no less than 5 or 6years old staring silently over the woman's shoulder strapped to her back by traditional cloth. Can't say the Bolivian women aren't hard working!

Well slept and in good spirits we head off the next day on a four day expedition of the Salar De Uyuni or Salt lakes. We are joined in the four wheel drive by an interesting and well traveled dutch couple, Anita and Peter Jan ,along with our driver - Mario & cook - Alicia. Alicia has brought her 2year old daughter Camilla along. We look to one another in disbelief - a four day car journey with a child in tow not appealing to any one of us.

Day one is largely driving, we get out here and there to see Inca settlements - the inca empire for the short 100years it existed, spread from Peru into Bolivia and we pass through ruins of stone villages now occupied by Chinchillas. Weird little creatures somewhere between a hare, kangaroo & a small deer...yes very weird.

Day 2 we are up bright and early and set off for scenery far more beautiful than I could ever have anticipated. Lago Colorado amazes with its burnt Orange/red colour on account of sulphur in its waters, bright pink flamingos line its shores searching the salty lake for shrimp. Lago verde, upon arrival looks like any normal lake, dark blue/black in colour, but wait ten minutes for the wind to pick up and we literally watch the lake change colour before our eyes. The wind rolls in gently, rising slowly the minerals at the bottom of the lake to the surface, changing the lake from dark hue to a luminous turquoise colour. Spectacular.

We pass through Dali desert, where Salvador Dali found inspiration for his infamous melting clock paintings. The scorching yellow sand of the desert contrasts amazingly with a snowcapped mountain in the backdrop on one side, to the other a mountain range with the most amazing red/pink/yellow colours. I am taken by pleasant surprise as I had no idea such a place existed. The desert is vast and hot and I am determined to take a picture of me next to one of the rocks upon which forementioned clocks are melting. We walk and walk staggering through the heat and sandy gravel, the rocks defying us in proximity. After 30mins or so we give in and take a picture from where we are. Dali found the right place to experiment with perspective alright, we walked for what felt like miles and we still couldn't get there! Arbol de Piedra is another highlight, translated directly as 'tree of stone' is exactly what it is, an unusual shaped rock formation and another feature in Dalis work.

Our 2year old passenger at this point has become a welcome addition to our carriage as she charms us with her good humour & singsong. The child has very few if not zero words and jabbers on mostly undecipherable. Two words however, ring clear, 'Mammy' and 'Bitch', we discuss whether this could be a word in Spanish we are misinterpreting but conclude after much repetition that it is indeed the english version. We spend the following days in the car reciting ditch/stitch/pitch as words of encouragement for such entertainment. Four whole days in the car and little Camilla did not cry once, she had us charmed alright!

To be continued...this is a long one! By far the best part of South America in the trip so far...