Uyuni Salt Flats and ensuing adventures

Because I felt like I had done enough work on my BA I decided to get out of La Paz and go see the Salar de Uyuni on a three day trek through the wilderness of southwestern Bolivia. Some years ago when I started talking about studying Bolivia a friend of mine forcibly made me look at pictures from the salt flats and ever since I knew I needed to go. So I packed up my things and boarded a 10 hour-ish overnight bus from La Paz to Uyuni.

After getting very little sleep on the bumpy bus ride I showed up in Uyuni and got on a tour leaving that day. Basically you get put in a Toyota 4Runner with 5 other tourists and a driver who drives you for the following three days. So the first order of business was going to the Salt Flats or Salar de Uyuni (above). In this part there's a small layer of watering covering the ground, which allows it to reflect the sky. 

For a little perspective (or lack thereof) there I am in a drier part of the Salar. The sky was amazingly large throughout the entire trip, which felt wonderful after being cooped up in a city for so many months. The people in my car were great and we had a great time chatting throughout the whole adventure.

Here you can get a better sense of just how reflective it was, as Fabian goes to get out of the car. 

I took this picture from atop this isolated mountain in the middle of the Salar just to get an idea of how expansive it all was. The "road" you can see is actually just a track in the sand created by cars driving there. 

We spent the night in a salt hotel, which was a structure built completely out of blocks of salt. The floor is also just loose salt. While a novel concept for a building, it was not the most enjoyable place to stay. The table and stools are also notably blocks of salt. The tour company organized all of our meals over the days and that night we had this delicious chicken that had ham stuffed inside of it. A wonderful way to end a very long day that had begun on a bus careening down a bumpy dirt road in the middle of the night. 

The next day our first stop was this super fun set of rock formations that sat in between great views of some dormant volcanoes. I had a great time climbing around with the two british girls in my group who it turned out had met in a climbing club during college. 

Then we stopped at a lagoon and saw flamingos!

What was really crazy is that the green mountains that followed the salt flats gave way to this sandy desert. We stopped at a series of rock formation where I climbed up to get a good view of this radically new biome. That night we stopped at another small hostel (this time not made out of salt). This place was way deep out in the middle of nowhere so that night I went out and the clear night sky was full of more stars than I had ever seen. It was absolutely wonderful and I just spent a good deal of time staring up and smiling before heading into bed because we were waking up at 5 a.m. the next morning. 

The first stop of the day were these awesome geysers that you could just walk right up to (no fences like national parks in the US). It was loud, sulfurous, and beautiful.

Then we drove to a hot springs where everyone hopped in for a dip to get clean since the hostel the night before lacked a shower. It felt great to soak in the nice warm water. Just next to the hot spring there was a herd of llamas wandering out into the lagoon. 

Our last stop of the trip was this city of rocks, which made for great climbing. After messing around there for a while we began the long drive back to the frontier town of Uyuni. From Uyuni I boarded yet another 10 hour long night bus ride. Not particularly enjoyable transit but it got me back to La Paz where I need to be to catch my flight. 

It's the little things

The little things are what define your experience in a city. It's not so much the fact of where you are as it is the twenty different street vendors I pass in the first block as I walk south along Avenida Montes from my hostel. It's the men yelling out of the open doors of minibuses and people talking into what look like landline payphones at newspaper stands. These are the things that define the everyday in La Paz.

La Paz is a place of many marches, many protests, and many traditionally dressed indigenous women. I have not the slightest clue what this march was about but traffic was blocked off so they could amble down the main avenue. 

After three or four passes by I'm pretty sure this is a feminist collective/radio station/cafe. Whatever it is, it's quite the building. It says "virgin of the desires" on the side so make of that what you will. This is on the way to Sopocachi, which is the bougie-er neighborhood where the NGO offices I've visited for my research are located. 

I also found this fellow on a wall as I walking around Sopocachi awkwardly killing time so I didn't show up to early for an appointment. I still showed up early but it was ok because a nice lady gave me two coffees and a newspaper in the intervening time. 

I quite like this lovely Bolivian hybrid truck/motorcycle that I saw roaming the streets. Things aren't often the same "correct" way you might find them in the United Stats but people find a way to get done what needs to be done. Commerce finds a way, whether it be this motorcycle-truck or the woman selling bread out of baskets on the corner. 

There were a lot of colors in this flower market and it reminded me a lot of the flower markets in London. This is also a great example of an indigenous woman wearing the classic bowler hat. They don't actually pin these on (from what I'm told) they just balance them on their heads. 

I don't like to post pictures of food. I think it's annoying. But the Bolivian exchange rate did a kind thing for me and allowed me to enjoy the kind of fine dining I would never be able to afford in the states. This restaurant Gustu, was opened by one of the chef's from Noma, a restaurant in Copenhagen that some list or ranking says is number two in the world. The restaurant only uses Bolivian ingredients and I had an amazing (albeit lonely) meal. The thing on the left was rabbit, the middle had sorbet from this fruit called tumbo, and then a cucumber and rose foam sangani (bolivian alcohol of some type) cocktail. It was awesome. 

Then Bolivia always meets you with some hilarious moemnts. Like the Jackie Chan Chinese restaurant or Micro Market Shalom. There's strange new things around every corner and I've really enjoyed spending a few hours every day just walking around and becoming acquainted with the city. 

Continuing my acquaintance with La Paz

I've continued to explore in and around La Paz as best I can (while attempting to do some work on my BA research) and I took some time yesterday to see some museums and walk around some more. 

I took a tour so I got to go on top of la Iglesia San Francisco, which had these wonderful tiles. 

This is Calle Jaen, a street which is home to many museums and a lovely array of wall colors. Sadly I was there on a monday when all the museums were closed. Hopefully I'll make it back before I leave

This painting by Marcelo Bascope was on display at the Bolivian Museum of Contemporary Art, which was a private museum housed in the beautiful 18th century mansion. I really like how the artist incorporated the Andean weavings as the foreground of the painting.

If you can't tell the majority of these books are different legal codes and related texts. I've seen a number of these vendors selling thing related to the penal code or other laws. I guess this is just what's considered casual reading in Bolivia?

After my wandering I got motivated and decided I wanted to go on a real adventure so I booked a spot on a mini bus going to the top of Chacaltaya (a mountain) and the Valle de la Luna. So the next morning said minibus showed up at my hostel and I jumped in with a group of other tourists. 

As we began to climb up the mountain I thought to myself "I've been on worse roads." Over time I appended this thought. But eventually after driving far to close to the edge of a cliff for a long time we arrived at the parking lot of a defunct ski lodge that had vanished due to climate change. 

That beast over on the right is what got us up there (we only had to get out of the car so it could make it up a hill once). You can't see much but we're high up in the Andes in the midst of a snow storm so there wasn't much of a panoramic view but it was still interesting to see the mountains, the llamas, and the electric lines that zig zagged up the mountain and connected to every single small concrete shack/dwelling. 

Even though it was snowing in the middle of the Bolivian summer and there was so much static electricity stinging me from what I assume was some sort of lighting cloud nearby, I made it to the top. At 17,685 feet above sea level it's the highest I've ever been  though not especially high for the Andes. My ears were really cold but in the end it was certainly worth it.

Club Andino Boliviano was the highest ski resort in the world until global warming destroyed the glacier it was on. Behind there is the last bit of the mountain we climbed. It didn't seem like much of a distance until you factored in how hard it was to breath, much less hike, at the altitude. 

This trip was yet another time it was a great idea to have brought tupperware along. This ham sandwich was awesome after my long morning. 

After telling the german man behind me on the bus all about Montana, which he was interested in because of the film The Horse Whisperer (which I of course informed him was about Monty Roberts who had been a student of my grandfathers) we continued back down the mountain to the Valle de la Luna. 

The valle de la luna is like the badlands in South Dakote but with crazier spires and holes and things. It was formed by the wind and volcanic sediment and maybe there was an ancient lake involved? I'm still unclear the tour was being conducted in Spanish and I just don't care about geology enough to pay attention. But it looked cool. 

Tomorrow I have an interview with an NGO person about my thesis! Hopefully I get good data so I can stop worrying and go on more adventures. 

La Paz day 2

Most of my morning was spent writing my paper for Spanish 204 because I left for Bolivia during finals week. So after I finally finished drafting that I went out to find myself some lunch. I ended up in the lovely little spot below called Restaurante Lanza where I had a delicious Milanesa de Pollo, which is basically one giant delicious chicken nugget over some rice (for all of $2 US)

After that I once again began wandering around. It's sort of weird to encounter the fact that Christmas is a summer holiday here (that giant green thing is ostensibly a christmas tree)

I walked a lot in search of a Sim card to put in my cellphone, which I did eventually find and cut down to size with scissors in order to shove it into my iphone so I can have data and phone service. But in my travels I also found some more great murals!

I believe that they sell these dead llamas/llama fetuses so people can buy them and bury them under their house for good luck when they build it. Regardless I was not particularly pleased to see these all while I wandered the Mercado Negro. 

The market was a seemingly endless series of cart lined streets selling everything from sweaters to electrical equipment to toilet paper and cornflakes. 

I also learned that around the world people just really love to play DDR. 

I really want to know more about this "Martin Luther King group" that put up this sign that was outside what seemed to be a school. 

While walking around I eventually entered a large park that had a christmas fair going on it. At the top was a carnival. While it had normal carnival games, it had an overwhelming number of foosball tables that people were enthusiastically playing at. 

Another great site from the christmas fair was this bike rink (seemingly this is what you do if you can't ice skate at christmas)

Then I walked along a skyway to get this great view overlooking the mountains to the south of La Paz. 

I liked this mural of an indigenous woman. There are a lot of indigenous women all over the city that dress in this traditional way with the multi-colored blanket cape and the bowler hat. What was interesting though was to see their children with them, some of whom had very modern western clothes. Globalism strikes again. Now with a working cell phone hopefully I can actually begin doing some of the BA research I came here to do. 

I'm in Bolivia!

After eight or so hours of flying with a layover in Bogota, Colombia I finally arrived in La Paz Bolivia at around 3 a.m. I had spent the week preceding this trip freaking out thinking that for some reason I wouldn't make it past the Bolivian immigration authorities (for no particular reason). But when I arrived at the little desk all I had to do was hand a nice man $135 dollars and he gave me a sticker and I was good to go. So after getting through that affair and exchanging my money (however they would only take bills that were in really nice condition for some reason so I still have $90 in manky US dollars) I took a cab down from the airport to my hostel.

The airport for La Paz is actually in El Alto, which is a separate city that sits on the ridge-line above La Paz. So the drive down is a perilous winding road descending thousands of feet down the mountainside. While the drive was quite harrowing I was just happy to make it to my hostel (at 4 a.m.) and not get kidnapped or robbed.

But my adventures did not end there. I then came to realize I should have probably booked a room for that previous night so I'd have somewhere to sleep when I arrived in the wee hours of the morning. Instead I slept on the floor in the lobby until my room was ready at 9 a.m. Then I immediately proceeded to return to sleep until 1 p.m.

After that I got up and began exploring La Paz in search of a Sim Card to put in my iphone so I could use it in Bolivia. However, this proved harder than expected because I realized I need a micro sim card and those aren't particularly available. The other part of the problem is that cellphone companies don't really have stores here. Instead they contract out the cellphone business to basically anyone who wants to get in on it. After a series of failed attempts at this I gave up and began walking around.

This is the presidential palace that sits on Plaza de Murillo. While it is beautiful and gleaming, I think what is more important to take into account is how ramshackle the building adjoining it is. Development and progress is often, and especially in Bolivia, quite uneven. 

This is the front of Church San Franciso in central La Paz. It was built by the Spanish during the colonial era. I eventually walked pretty far south in the city to a bougie neighborhood with a good supermarket where I got some groceries to bring back to the hostel. 

In my many and long wanderings I cam upon this mural which I really liked. There was a lot of graffiti in La Paz, much of it very political, but there were also these wonderful murals on many public spaces. It really brightened up a city that is seems caught between western modernity and unfinished buildings. 

Ché makes a lot of appearances in the public art around La Paz. I thought this one was pretty great. 

Hopefully tomorrow my cell phone quest is more successful and I can actually eat some Bolivian food.