Day 183: Potosi

I took today pretty slow. This is definitely the highest up I have ever been in person, a little over 13,500ft and I can feel the altitude sickness, a strong headache like a bad hangover.

I had breakfast at the hostel and spent the morning consuming large amounts of water, writing some of my blog, and backing up some of my photos.

That afternoon, I set out to explore the city and had to completely bundle up. When you are in the sun it can get a little warm, but for the majority you are shaded by the buildings, also this town is on the side of a mountain, so it's not flat. With the combination of shade and wind... you might as well be in Antarctica.

 

Once I got to the main center of the town, there were plenty of restaurants to choose from, except none of them were Bolivian, mostly Italian Pizzerias. I could understand if this was a big touristy area, but it's not. It was rare to see tourists out and about. I say a reason could be that it's hard to walk around here. Walking one block up a hill is a struggle in this town because of the altitude. If I was walking and took a sip of water mid stride, I would be panting to catch my breath. It's crazy. When I was walking up some hills, I noticed that all the locals just putter up the hills, shuffling their feet or either waking really slow. At first I was blasting past them wonder what these slow people were doing, after about a block, I was panting and they eventually caught up to me. Got to take things slow in this town. Now I see why they are stereotypically known for being lazy, slow, and their siestas; this altitude is killer.

I found a cafe with some locals in it and figured I could find something there, just sandwiches.. A coke and ham and cheese later, I headed back to my hostel to relax. 

That night, I went back out and walked around a bit. Surprisingly, the town was bumping. Not able to find a real Bolivian place to eat, I ended up sitting down at one of the Italian pizzerias. It wasn't bad. Afterwards, I made my back to the hostel, hung out with some of the people in the lobby by the heater, then headed off to the warmth of my blankets.

Day 182: Potosi

We got up kinda early and headed out to an island in the Salar de Uyuni for some great photos. Today, i am feeling much better. Our driver told us that this used to be one massive body of water; there is a volcano off in the distance and a long time ago it erupted and dried up the lake leaving just the salt; apparently there is a couple feet of salt then there is some water below. Not sure if it is true, regardless, I want to know how all this salt got here.

(This is the volcano.)

(Altitude is in meters)

(One big hunk of salt)

After we walked around the island and took some photos, we went over to another area of the salt flats.

This area of the salt flats is much different. Notice how there are all those geometric shapes on the ground. It was pretty interesting, they were all five or six sided... Why?

After hanging out here for a while, we headed off to the salt museum. It was rather lame, you had to purchase something from the grift shop to go in, and the inside was just poorly made status out of salt; not worth it.

As we made our way to a small town for lunch, we saw where they mined the salt. Apparently, they wait until it rains and they pull the salt into these large mounds, then harvest it when all the water evaporates.

We couldn't have gotten done with lunch any faster because a sand storm was coming in.

(Rasta dog outside where we had lunch.)

We then made our way into Uyuni, which is a somewhat large transit town in Bolivia. While we headed in, the wind was really picking up and the sand was blowing everywhere. Before we got into town, we stopped off at some broken down trains, nothing too impressive.

Our driver then took us into Uyuni and we went straight to the immigration office. Our driver, luckily, still had my passport; now I have to pay a $139US fee that all American citizens have to pay to get in. No problem, just need an ATM. Well, the wind is so bad that none of the city has electricity... Ok, I have some travelers checks; every bank is closed until 2:30pm, it is now noon. So we waited in a cafe in an attempt to escape the wind, not the cold, can't get away from that. Well, the banks don't take travelers checks. So we went to money exchangers, neither do they, even the ones that had signs outside that said, "We cash US travelers checks," didn't. I was getting pretty frustrated. We finally found some guy that said he wouldn't because his phone was about to die. Francisco said something in Spanish and next thing we knew he was on the phone calling in the checks. Thanks goodness. I took the money and got my passport back.

Afterwards we proceeded to the bus station and I got a ticket to Potosi. Potosi, is really known for two things: being the highest city of the world (13,500ft) and the legendary silver mines.

Since we had about 5 hours to wait for our buses, we just hid in another cafe and didn't do much else aside from talk and read. Unable to take it any longer, we left and just walked around. Francisco couldn't have put it any better, "this has to be the most depressing city in the world." We were bundled up to our eye balls, and each road was looking worse and worse.

We came across an Internet cafe that was being run by a small generator and headed in. I just used the time to book a hostel in Uyuni, as I knew I would be getting in late.

Eventually, it was my time to catch the bus. Once again, I waved goodbye to two new good friends and set off too star anew. The weather has already been pretty crappy and I hope it gets a little better; if there's one thing I hate on this planet, it wind, and there is plenty of it in Bolivia!

From what I read, this bus is supposed to take 7-8 hours, landing me in Potosi at 3am. Somehow, the bus ride was barely 4 hours. Fine by me. I got to my hostel, and was welcomed by a little heater in the corner; this might as well have been gold to me! Since I got in late, everyone in my dorm was already in bed. As I was putting my stuff away, one of the girls started to talk to me, asking me where I was from, where was I coming from, etc. Her and her friends were all from Santiago. It turned out that they are following the same path as I, except they are about a day or two ahead of me. Unfortunately, they are going on the silver mine tour early tomorrow and then catching a bus to Sucre. Since the one I was talking to was the only that could speak English, before we went to sleep, I said "Buenos noche chicas, hasta mañana," (goodnight girls, see you tomorrow) and then a buenos noche echoed back to me. A moment in the life of Hugh Hefner.

Chile Wrap Up

Chile was like Argentina in that I didn't really see much of it. Where I was in Santiago was a great, relatively slow, young area. While there wasn't much to do there, it was still cool to take in the vibe. I wish I had gone to one of the wineries, but my original plan was to go straight to Bolivia, I wanted to spend as much time there as I could. 

Chile is also like Argentina in the sense that it has a strong European feel, while it is not as strong, it is still there. Chile is also big into meat and wine. 

Chile does not have trade restrictions in place, so the country is a little more "at ease," but the US dollar is still highly sought after and you can always find a much better exchange rate than what the  bank would offer. I bet that this common all throughout South America. 

There are loads of stray dogs in Chile; granted I can only speak to the two cities I saw, but it was bad. 

Now I am headed to Bolivia via a desert while I am a little sick. I don't know what to expect, the only thing that is clear is that it's much colder in Bolivia and most cities are at very high altitudes, making the weather even worse. 

Can a boy from the South survive the next three weeks living in the freezing cold? Only time will tell and anything is possible. 

Day 181: Salar de Uyuni

Got dressed in my sleeping bag and shuffled my way to breakfast, cold pancakes with butter and hot coffee or tea. I probably had more tea than pancakes.

While the sky was clear today, I really wanted to just ride in the car and see some of the area; we spent more than ten hours in the car and barely saw anything. 

(This was a very lucky shot. Taken from the back seat of the land cruiser, notice the out of focus crack up top, and the car somehow found an un-bumpy spot for the second that I took this photo. Amazing with the volcano in the background.)

Our first stop landed us at this large arrangement of rocks. It doesn't look like time withered these down, I want to know how they were formed!

We climbed up to the top of one of them and got an amazing view of our surroundings.

It's almost like a river carved this out, or maybe runoff from the snow capped mountains?

(Another lagoon we drove past.)

(Notice how we are so high up, the clouds don't just fade off in the distance, the are cut off by the ground. I would see this all the time, it was weird.)

(A herd of llamas running across the desert.)

We then made our way to the Black Lake. It was kinda cool, got to see some more animals and walk around. 

The high altitude really takes it out of me, just making easy climbs over rocks takes my breath away; I feel pathetic, but I'm glad to know its not because I'm outa shape. Luckily, I am feeling better, for now, so it's not a combination of problems.

After driving for a while, we came across a huge patch of llamas. We had our driver pull over so we could walk around with them.

Llamas are pretty weird animals. To me, they seem like a combination between a cow and a horse. Pretty dumb animals that eat all the time, but run around as well. When a llama runs, it's not like a normal animal running. When they run, the front part of em raises up then down while their back side move inversely of the front. So, like a seesaw. It's pretty funny looking!

Unfortunately, after that, we were pretty much done with the day. We arrived at our hostel in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats at 3:30pm. The hostel is pretty cool, it made out of salt; the floor was even made out of salt. I just rested that afternoon, since we were up around 12,000ft, I wasn't feeling too good. 

At dinner, the gave us a free bottle of wine. Perfecto! Wine, llama chops, and mash potatoes, not a bad final meal. Because of the cold, we took the bottle back to the room and and finished some more off before going back to bed.