Bolivian Wonderland

4/23/10: Southwest Circuit, Bolivia

I’m back! You didn’t think I could post about the Salar without showing our array of crazy depth perception shots, did you? For those of you who don’t know much about the Salar (pretty much all of you I’m guessing since it’s never in the news), the thing to do there is take a bunch of props and go nuts distorting the size of things through photographs. For example – a Browns fan would take the team’s wins and put them real close to the camera so they seemed a lot more impressive. Just kidding, the Salar can’t do everything.

Sigh…

Anyway, have a look at our attempts to be unique and original today. We’ll start slow and get to the good stuff towards the end.

Our first photo of the day – no one was around to take the picture so this was as creative as we could be.

No wonder our jeep broke down so often...

When you don't have props, you steal things from the jeep.

I would have shown this later in the post, but we couldn't get it quite right.

Blllllrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhh.

Taken with my camera.

Taken with Zhou's. I'm amazed at how different they look.

We call these next two, “Exchanging of the Significant Others.”

“It's an awfully long way to the pocket.”

“I really shouldn't be doing this...”

“Geronimo!”

“It was definitely worth the risk.”

Wait a minute... the Salar isn't magical, is it?

Unfortunately Kevin was too many letters to stack on top of each other.

But this picture of Zhou is awesome!

Meet our group: Jesus, Sam, Maxima, Zhou, Kevin and Matt.

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Ohio Picture: One of the only times where Zhou will ever stand taller than me.

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Picture of the Day: Even the ostrich-like thing posed for a depth perception shot.

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Take This Opinion with a Trillion Grains of Salt

4/23/10: Southwest Circuit, Bolivia

The sun hadn’t come up yet and we were cruising along at over 60 mph. Jesus flicked off his headlights and just drove. We couldn’t see a thing in front of us, but it didn’t matter – we were traveling over 4,600 square miles of nothing but flat salt. There wasn’t a car, or anything else for that matter, for as far as the eye could see (please forgive this cliché, especially since it was dark at the time and the eye couldn’t see all that far).

When the sun finally rose in the horizon, here’s what we saw:

Salar de Uyuni.

Believe it or not, this is tiny Zhou's shadow stretched over the Salar.

Long legs Zhou and small dot Kevin.

What's a tree doing in the salt flats? Fooled ya! It's the four of us.

We didn't think we had enough limbs to spell “Zhou.”

A crooked attempt at “Kev.”

Behind the scenes of the spelling sea.

I love the pentagons and hexagons in the salt.

I was actually hoping that we would camp out in that exact spot for the entire day, but unfortunately breakfast called. We sped over the endless sea of salt until we approached a somewhat large brown island that wouldn’t have seemed more out of place if it were situated in the middle of a New York City street. “How many minutes do you think it will take to get there?” I asked Zhou. She guessed five, even though it appeared that I could throw salt over my left shoulder and hit the island. But the lack of depth perception here (for everyone, not just us one-eyed folk) can really play games with you – it took us 12 minutes.

Scattered about this giant plain of salt are over 30 islands, Incahuasi (pictured) being the most famous. The small piece of land is covered in thousands of cacti, as well as a tiny village which includes a hotel. I suppose I’ve seen more random things in my life (Leon Lett sliding out of nowhere to touch Miami’s missed field goal 17 years ago), but definitely not many.

We don't know where this ostrich-like bird came from, but he seemed to enjoy cereal and hot chocolate.

As Zhou put it, this looks a bit like the bars in a Verizon Wireless commercial.

Some of the cacti are quite large.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the salt flats, including punching our fists in soft spots in the salt to find deep holes of water and crystals underneath. It amazed us that you could drive a car over these holes without any problem, but then we heard a rumor that a few years ago an Argentine family’s car fell right through.

Jesus dropped the car keys in the hole (just kidding).

Without a doubt, the Salar de Uyuni will go down as one of my favorite stops on our trip. It is so unlike anything I’ve ever seen even though it’s made up of things I see and eat every day. Come to think of it, the only thing that may be able to top it would be a chili dog flat, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.

A pedestal of flags: we assume the American flag was in tatters from the wind, not other angry tourists.

Our truck ran out of gas, so a bunch of us had to ride on the roof of another.

When you stick a Scrabble board in front of it, the Salar looks pretty much like a snowy field.

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Ohio Picture: Zhou and I are very uncomfortable making the O’s, but the cacti just wouldn’t agree to do anything but the H and the I.

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Pictures of the Day: You’d think touring the Salar would take all day, but no – there was still time to clown around in the train cemetery!

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The Tears of My Loneliness Produced This Salt

4/22/10: Southwest Circuit, Bolivia

I’m typing this while sitting on a bench made of salt. The floor is covered in salt and there is a salt flamingo on the wall opposite me. There is a salt chandelier on the ceiling. All the other trucks that had been hanging out with us along our stops today are nowhere to be found. The six of us are the only ones at this hotel.

We arrived here about an hour and a half ago with a stern warning from Maxima, “Si problema esta noche, nos vamos!” The four of us had all nodded solemnly at this statement. But Maxima – what problema?

Sam and Matt are teaching Jesus how to play blackjack. I think he’s winning. Kevin is taking a hot shower for 10 Bolivianos. Maxima is somehow cooking up yet another fabulous dinner with just one gas burner and two pots.

Me? I have no idea what is going on. All day today Maxima has been trying to explain something to us (hence the problema) – we think something having to do with a blockade that might prevent us from getting to Salar de Uyuni tomorrow morning. From what the four of us have pieced together, some villagers are protesting tour trucks from Tupiza driving through their village by forming a blockade along the road, forcing you to go around the long way rather than through their village. From what I imagined, we would be confronted by an angry mob of pitchfork-wielding locals, who would shout angry (and unintelligible) things at us in Spanish and then climb onto our Toyota and jump up and down on it until the roof split. Maybe that’s what Maxima meant by “una problema.” Or maybe she was referring to man-eating spiders. Really, we have no clue. All we know is that the last two nights we had the company of ten other tour trucks and tonight we’re alone with “una problema” hanging ominously over our heads.

Anyway, since we don’t really know what’s going on – whether it’s angry locals or angry spiders, we can’t really be bothered to worry too much about it. So instead of sitting here wondering what might or might not happen tonight and tomorrow, let’s just go through some pictures from today instead, shall we?

We were the first group to get to Laguna Colorada this morning, so we had it all to ourselves for a little while.

Kevin's first task of the day was to accidentally scare all the flamingos away. “I did it so you could get a picture of the flamingos flying away!”

Matt and Sam studying what they thought was a puma print.

The famous “Stone Tree” sits behind barbed wire.

Have you ever seen four better jumpers? Nope, me neither.

A picture of a picture.

A Kevin head.

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Puzzles for Postcards

Lots of Fish to Fry Up High Anagram

Take Cat Cilia
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Picture of the Day: How we fill our Land Cruiser with gas.

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Even Einstein Didn’t Complete School

4/21/10: Southwest Circuit, Bolivia

Whoever invented Bolivia must have failed out of Countries 101 in elementary school.

“Class, making countries is so easy a caveman could do it. This is especially good for you all considering you are cavemen. There is a simple checklist to follow:

• Lakes must be blue
• Mountains must be gray
• Rocks must be bottom-heavy
• Bridges shall be used to cross rivers
• People must live near sea level

That’s it. Now go get ‘er done.”

Look at what little Billy Bolivia did.

This lake definitely isn't blue.

Neither is this one.

The mountains are so beautiful and colorful.

Shhh, don't tell Zhou – I stole this from tomorrow's post.

I wish I would have kept track of how many rivers we waded through.

This is what you get when you put four wimps way up high in the mountains.

Now I’m all for unique colors, cool-looking rocks and driving through water, but the last one is a bit hard to get used to. Yesterday morning as we embarked on our tour, we discovered that we’d be sleeping at 4,200 meters above sea level for the night. By my calculations, that was over 1,200 meters above the night before and almost 4,000 meters above our accommodation from just a few short days ago. Eight months ago I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but now I’ve been to Nepal.

Ahhh, Nepal.

Zhou and I spent ten days getting our bodies prepared to sleep above 4,000 meters and heard countless stories about what happens if you rush things (headaches, vomiting, dizziness, death and beautiful views). The high elevation worried us a bit, but in all the hundreds of tour reviews we read (and by we I mean Zhou) no one mentioned the altitude…

This morning from just after midnight to just after 5am I divided my time equally between the bathroom and the bed, unable to decide if my urge to throw up outweighed my urge to lie down and pacify one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had. I kept thinking about the Nepalese altitude sickness warnings. The headache was there, and by 4:30 so too was the vomiting. I still lacked dizziness, which was good because I was pretty sure that was the only symptom between me and death. The part that worried me the most though was our schedule to drive further up in the mountains to 5,000 meters above sea level.

As it turned out though, everyone but Zhou was also feeling the altitude, so at 5am we zombily asked our guide, Maxima, what to do. And then I realized why no one ever mentions the altitude. Maxima whipped up a cup of the local altitude-remedy tea for each of us, and we headed off up the mountain. By late morning we were all feeling much better, ready to fully enjoy the views again.

First stop: a creepy ghost town.

It was too cold for some of us to get in the hot springs.

The Dali Desert – even the clouds looked surreal.

Little Billy Bolivia, you did quite nicely for yourself. I can’t even remember – was I sick this morning?
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Pictures of the Day: Remember smelly Rotorua, New Zealand? This area of thermal activity was actually much more interesting and perhaps even a bit smellier.

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Sometimes You Just Feel Lucky

4/20/10: Southwest Circuit, Bolivia

We arrived in Tupiza yesterday with one goal: to book a tour to the salt flats. To you this may seem a simple enough task, but I assure you that it wasn’t. The altitude (2,950 meters above sea level) left me wheezing and gasping for air after the tiniest bit of exertion, so it was necessary for us to stop and let me catch my breath every 10 steps we walked or so. During these stops, Kevin stood next to me, kindly offering his moral support by making fun of me. “We’re not even that high! You can’t be feeling the altitude!” He’s a great guy, that Kevin Curry.

The other, and perhaps more problematic, problem was that we had done a ton of research before heading to Tupiza and still hadn’t decided on an agency to go through to book our tour. With all the horror stories we’d read online about drunk drivers and pushy guides, we were definitely unsure about what to do. It just seemed like no matter what we’d have a crap shoot as to whether we’d end up with a good guide and driver. But we had at least narrowed it down to two companies: Tupiza Tours and La Torre Tours, and we decided we would just visit both offices and then make a decision.

As we walked from the bus station to look for a place to stay (I know, we didn’t book ahead! We’re spur-of-the-moment! We’re living on the edge!), we saw a sign for four day tours in front of a place called Valle Hermoso. We stopped in and got a brochure and chatted with the very nice receptionist. Then we headed off to Tupiza Tours to take a look at their brochure. The conversation went something like this:

Z: Hello, we’re interested in a four-day tour leaving tomorrow.
TT: (unsmiling) Yes, we have.
Z: How much is it?
TT: (grunting, still unsmiling) 1200 Bolivianos each for four people, 1000 for six people.
Z: Ok, thanks.
TT: But we don’t like you. Go away!

Ok, that last sentence I made up, but really, they may just as well have said that to us. So we hurried out the door and talked with Matt and Sam, a couple we had met on the bus who we planned on doing the tour with and decided to book through Valle Hermoso and hope for the best. (By the way, when was the last time a group of four people named Matt, Sam, Kevin and Zhou was composed of two girls and two guys? Awesome, isn’t it?)

So this morning the four of us met in front of Valle Hermoso to meet our guide and driver for the trip.

Meet Maxima.

And Jesus.

Or I guess more accurately, Jesus’ shadow.

Even though they couldn’t speak English, Maxima and Jesus both tried to explain things to as much as possible. Between the four of us and our packet of information (in English), we think we were able to figure out pretty much what they were talking about. Most of the time. First impression? Maxima is a great guide and amazing cook, and Jesus is a careful and awesome driver. We got really lucky with them. Oh, and the landscape wasn’t too bad either.

Our Land Cruiser.

Fun with cacti.

Moon Valley.

Llamas.

Eating llama tamales by the grazing llamas while the car blasts Evanescence.

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Picture of the Day: Little cactus fruits.

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