La Paz

      

Fascinating to just take it easy and people-watch for a bit here in La Paz.  The combination of cold still air and bright sunshine somehow makes for a very comfortable environment in the bottom of the gorge that holds the city centre.  Apparently all the nicer addresses are "down" in this valley at 3700m altitude.  Up on the rim of the gorge at over 4000m, it's just as cold and windy as anywhere else on the Altiplano, and not surprisingly that's where the sprawling poorer districts are found.

The airport is also up in "El Alto" - as well as a pretty well stocked graveyard of old planes and the Bolivian Air Force's active fleet of 1940s era T33 jets!

Nevertheless, just as we're getting well acclimatised to the altitude and enjoying the rare mountain air sans headaches.. it's time to head to down to sea level again.  A slightly bitter-sweet thought, as this time in the Andes has been awesome.  But the thought of heading to a tropical island in the Indian Ocean is definitely more sweet than bitter!

Having journeyed through the night on a rickety, old and very cold bus (it was sold as having heating!), we arrived in La Paz. It felt good to be at a lower altitude, even though we were still at 3700 metres! La Paz is a great city especially for people watching. The cholitas have a fantastic combination of bowler hat, hundreds of layers of petticoats and pretty shawls. All of these layers are definitely needed here, especially during the night when it gets incredibly cold. I enjoyed hanging out in the central plaza watching the world go by and eating a cup of jelly topped with lime flavoured whipped cream. 

Salar de Uyuni and the Altiplano

                                

I didn't exactly expect to be waking up to my 40th birthday at 0500 in a freezing shed at 15000' in the middle of nowhere high in the Andes Mountains.  But it was awesome.  Especially as by 9AM we were smugly simmering away in a thermal bath up in the clean mountain air... Bring it on!

One of the main reasons for visiting Bolivia was to get to Salar de Uyuni. The biggest salt flats in the world located high in the Altiplano of the Andes at exactly 3656m altitude. I had read numerous stories about tour drivers being reckless and often drunk in their vehicles and had no idea which tour operator to choose. In the end we decided on the gamble of rock up in the morning an hour before you are about to leave and book on! With 4 other friendly punters- we were on our way. The first day consisted of a short trip to the train graveyard, followed by mounds of salt, a llama lunch, Isla Inchuasi (an island in the salt flat full of cacti up to a 1000 years old) and then finished with silly forced-perspective photos. The white hexagonal tiles of salt glistened in the sun and there was not a cloud in the bright blue sky- it was beautiful. The final stop was a salt hotel which was pretty cosy, basic but quite chic. That night we stargazed in the clear Antiplano sky and woke early the next morning to see the sun rise.

On the second day we saw various different coloured lakes in the Eduardo Avoroa National Reserve which is on the border between Bolivia and Chile and home to beautiful flamingos.The landscape was quite arid and dusty here and non active and active volcanoes were the backdrop. Each day our journey was accompanied by our driver Rudy's huge collection of Latin and western music. Some of his selection was better than others. We particularly enjoyed the 'Eye of the Tiger' and music from Rocky which had most of us air boxing. The final night was in a n extremely basic hotel where we all slept in the same room. The temperature was around -10 indoors and I felt pretty smug that we had brought sleeping bags as there was no heating or hot water! Snug as a bug. 

The final day was a 5 AM wakeup and Ty's birthday!After grabbing some lukewarm tea and a cold pancake we jumped into our vehicle. Luckily for him we saw the sun rising as we drove over the beautiful landscape to some steaming geysers. It was absolutely freezing and we reached a height of nearly 5000 metres here, the highest I had ever been. A great antidote to this was the natural thermal baths that we visited after. Some people stayed in the bath for over 2 hours. This was too much for me and I felt pretty light headed after 30 minutes, but it was blissful! finally we drove through verdant landscape with creeks and lots of llamas to make our way back to the town of Uyuni. What an awesome experience!

Potosí - In the Silver Mines

                       


It's amazing how Potosi, at over 4000m out in the middle of the altiplano was one of the richest and largest cities in the world several hundred years ago.  Why?  The big hill behind the town, the Cerro Rica (Rich Hill) was the source for the bulk of the silver production in the Spanish empire from the mid 1500s on.  The hill is completely perforated with mazes of interconnected mine tunnels and shafts, and is even a few hundred metres shorter than it initially was, for all the ore extracted!

The mining continues today not too differently to how it was done for the last 400 years - it's all manual work.  Health and safety is pretty much absent, and miners seldom live past their forties for all the toxic environments and accidents.  They go in with picks and shovels and the odd stick of dynamite - and come out with bags full of rocks.  Some more successful miners from the cooperatives have wheelbarrows - or even Indiana Jones style wagons that roll at shocking speeds silently through the tunnels.  Watch out!

It was an excellent opportunity to get to go into the mines, first seeing the processing plants then plunging into the mountain with just a head torch and wellies.

The tunnels themselves are tiny, crumbling, wet and of course completely dark.  Too often the wooden supports would fail - and at one point we had to negotiate our way around the rubble of a partial collapse.  The air was both thin (at 4400 metres) and rancid - with the weird chemical stench constricting ones lungs even more.  The miner guide assured us that we'd not suffocate from Carbon Monoxide - but that it was just the smell of the Arsenic and Cyanide. Great.

Fascinating bursts of intricately shapes minerals would appear in seams, as well as odd goopy-looking stalagmites of slime.  I didn't touch anything!  It really felt a bit like a dungeons and dragons dungeon (It was on my mind seeing as I'd just finished Ultima IV on an Apple //e emulator - 29 years after I started!) especially as out of nowhere miners would appear and gruffly shuffle past.  It was an amazing experience - but it wiped me out!

Later that night I got slammed with altitude sickness - all that exertion at 4400m was no good at all for my body.  I felt like hell laying in bed, but a couple of kittens came up out of nowhere to keep me company - which helped immediately.

I didn't know how I felt about going into the mines at first. I was interested in finding out about the mining and especially the working conditions of the miners. However, I didn't want to expose myself to the dire conditions, especially the noxious fumes, and I did think that the tour would be a bit voyeuristic. In the end I am glad I went on the tour. I think it is important to see exactly where our minerals come from and the conditions that people go through to get them.  It was also fascinating to see El Tio- the devil of the mines, who brings the workers more minerals and protects them and who they offer 96% sugar cane alcohol, coca leaves and cigarettes to. I was also glad when it was over and I was out into the light. Being inside a mine at 4400m when you have not fully acclimatised to the altitude is hard going and altitude sickness is no fun at all.