Bolivia

Bit of a break since the last entry. It's hard to get time on the laptop to write. After San Pedro we spent a few days in Salta walking around the city and doing a mountain bike trip and then one night in Tilcara on the way to Tupiza in Bolivia. This entry will be about Bolivia and everything we've done here in the last two weeks.

In Tupiza we went for a walk into the local countryside (very dry) following the map given to us by our hotel which had some trails roughly marked. We aimed to walk to the Puerto del Diablo but managed to miss a turning and ended up at the El Duende Canyon instead. According to the map this was actually much further than we thought we had walked and it was well worth it. We walked up the dry riverbed for a way as the canyon was very pretty before going back to the road we came along and turning back toward Tupiza. On the way back we saw a horse track to the side of the road and decided to follow it as it was more interesting. It led us to the Puerto del Diablo which we'd been trying to find earlier. From there it was only a few km back to town. It was a good 4 hour walk at altitude and in dry dusty conditions but was worth it.

The next 4 days we spent on a tour of the altiplano and salt flats finishing in Uyuni. This is a standard 4 day jeep tour with a driver and cook one of which is also a guide. There were 4 in our jeep, us and a Dutch couple who spoke enough Spanish to translate most of what the guide said for us. The tour involves long hours in the jeep, cold nights in very basic hostels and fantastic food and views. There are lakes of every colour, thermal ponds, strange rock formations caused by ancient volcanism and geysers. We also saw lots of vicunas and llamas and flamingoes.

The Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt lake in the world, was partially flooded so we couldn't see all of the interesting features. We did see one of the salt hotels and had lots of time on the salt lake to compose pictures using the strange lack of perspective. We did the tour with La Torre tours in Tupiza and would recommend them.

From Uyuni we took a bus to Potosi, about 4 1/2 hours to see this old colonial city. In the 17th century Potosi was the richest city in the world and bigger than London, New York and Paris were at that time. This was because of the large mountain that stands over the city and has been mined for silver, tin, zinc and other minerals for nearly 500 years. Potosi was the centre of the silver industry until the 19th century. The mines still exist but now produce a lot less than they used to and are very dangerous places to work. We did a mine tour and spent about 1 1/2 hours in the dusty cramped and poisonous conditions. Miners can expect to work there for only 10-15 years before getting silicosis so bad they can't mine anymore. The tour was very interesting and guided by an ex-miner who spoke very good English. We did the tour with Koala Tours. We also visited the Casa de la Moneda (The Mint) which was also very interesting. It houses a unique example of 3 huge mule powered silver rolling mills which are very impressive.

From Potosi we caught the overnight bus to La Paz where we stayed in the Estrella Andina hotel which has beautiful murals all over the walls and serves a very good breakfast in its rooftop bar. From La Paz we did the World's Most Dangerous Road bike ride, a downhill mountain bike ride on the old road to the jungle. It is downhill from 4700 m to about 1000m and about 63km. We did it with Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking who were very well organised and worth paying extra for. At the end we had lunch in La Sende Verde, an animal rescue centre, which has lots of animals and is very relaxing. You can also spend the night there or volunteer with them. I also did the zipline after the bike ride which was excellent. It was in three sections across the valleys and an amazing thrill with great views.

We also did a 3 day/ 2 night Pampas tour with Bala Tours. This involved flying from La Paz to Rurrenabaque and a 3 hour jeep ride to the Yacuma river. Both our flights were delayed which is common. The flight there took off on time but when we arrived the pilot couldn't see the runway through the fog so turned around and went back to La Paz. The flight took off again 1 1/2 hours later. The return flight was delayed 2 hours because the previous days flights hadn't been able to make it. The lodge we stayed in was lovely and relaxing and it would've been nice to spend more time there. We had two boat trips down the river, a walk, swam with pink river dolphins and fished for piranha. We saw capybara, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys and capuchin monkeys, caiman amd lots of birds of many species. Swimming with the dolphins was a highlight. They were amazing and came up really close and brushed against you and we stroked them gently. They were amazing! I also caught six small piranha and threw them back which was quite fun. Another highlight was getting really close to very curious squirrel monkeys at the end of a long (and chilly) boat ride. We had to spend one night in Rurre after the tour as the flights do not go late enough to avoid this.

Back in La Paz we discovered that the roadblocks at the Peruvian border were still in place and probably will be until after the Peruvian elections on June 7th. The protests have turned quite violent with buses and ferries being stoned and customs and immigrations being burnt down. Also Puno now has riots in the streets. Astonishly tour operators in La Paz still seem to be selling through tickets to Peru! The reputable tour agnecies we spoke to said there's no way through and the only way to Peru is to fly to Cusco or Lima so we've paid $340 US each for tickets to fly to Cusco tomorrow (Sunday). This means we won't see Lake Titicaca but we don't really fancy getting stones thrown at us.

On our last day in La Paz we walked up to the Killi-Killi viewpoint to look out over the city and to Calle Jean which has lots of colonial buildings and museums. The precious metal museum was most interesting. I also did an open top bus tour of the South area of La Paz and the Valle de la Luna. This was well worth it and allowed for a 1/2 hour guided stop of the Valle de la Luna. We have also eaten well in La Paz, I would recommend the Star of India, a British run curry house that was fantastic, Sol y Luna (Dutch owned), La Cueva (Mexican) and Olivers Travels, a friendly 'fake' Bristish pub!

Overall Bolivia has been much easier to travel in than I expected. It is still cheap and there is lots of interesting things to see. We could've have spent much more time here.

Northern Chile - Art, Pisco and Desert

We finished the Dragoman section of our South American travel at the beginning of May in Santiago so are now travelling on our 'tod'. Slightly more stressfulk in some ways and less in other ways and generally a little more comfortable than travelling on 'Cindy' and camping. The route we took through Chile was from Santiago to the coastal town of Valparaiso, then north to the seaside resort of La Serena at the eend of the Elqui Valley, then further north and inland to San Pedro de Atacama in the Atacama desert and finally we left Chile (for the last time) by bus over the Jama Pass to Salta in Argentina.

In Santiago, we spent our day there mostly on the Cerro San Cristobal with many Santiagan runners, walkers and cyclists. It was Sunday and a bank holiday weekend so the city itself was completely dead - even the museums were closed - and everybody seemed to be making the most of the unseasonable weather. More details here.

We got the bus to Valparaiso on the coast on Monday morning and stayed in the beautiful old Cerro Allegre area. The city is made up of the flat business district by the ocean and surrounded by many steep hills that contain the residential areas. It is small enough to walk around most of the city but some roads are very steep. We visited the open air art gallery which is a few streets of murals on the walls of buildings in Cerro Conception, the house of Pablo Neruda - a famous poet and walked around a self guided tour of Cerro Conception and Cerro Allegre. The houses are all very colourfully painted and on a sunny day the city is very pretty.

After a few days in Valparaiso we took a bus up the coast to La Serena. This is a seaside resort and town at the mouth of the Elqui Valley. This part of Chile is semi desert and the Elqui Valley is one of several fertile corridors used for agriculture. We did an Elqui Valley day trip bus tour that took us to a papaya farm, the Poclaro dam, a pisco distillery, a couple of nice villages and lunch in a solar oven restaurant. In the lower parts of the valley many fruits and vegetables are grown while at higher altitudes the crops are mostly grapes (wine, table or pisco) and some avocado. This is the only place in the world that can produce Pisco and call it Pisco. This is because even though the Peruvians first made the spirit, the Chileans patented it!

We did the tour with Elqui Valley Tours booked through the El Punto hostel. We wanted to do this tour joint with the evening Mamalluca observatory tour and were expecting to be dropped off in Vicuna village with time to get dinner and then be picked up and taken to the observatory later. However, at about 5pm our guide told us that there was noone else who wanted to do the observatory tour so he had to take us all the way back to La Serena. This was quite annoying as if we had known this we would have stayed the night in Vicuna instead of La Serena so we could organise the transport to the nearly observatory ourselves. Luckily we did make it back to La Serena with enough time to find and book private transport up to the observatory. We did end up spending oover 2 hours extra on the same road though. The observatory is specifically for tourists and has a 14 inch Meade telescope in a dome and a smaller telescope outside. It is a good introduction to the Southern night sky and we saw Saturn, the Orion nebula and the tarantula nebula amongst other things. The group size was only 9 when we went which was nice and small. The night sky is this part of Chile is the clearest in the world because of the climate, low population density and altitude. Many of the world's largest telescopes are located here.

From La Serena we took a 16 hour overnight TurBus to San Pedro de Atacama in the middle of the Atacama Desert, the driest place on Earth. This is a dusty tourist focussed village dominated by hostels and tour companies. It is hot and sunny in the daytime and freezing at night. We did three tours in the day and half we spent here, the Valle de la Luna, El Tatio geysers and the SPACE (San Pedro de Atacama Celestial Expeditions) tour. The first two are the dominant tours. The Valle de la Luna goes to several places with interesting rock formations formed by the wind and ancient water flow and salt formations and then you climb up a giant sand dune (on a rocky path to the side) to watch the sunset. We chose Desert Adventures as our tour company. The tour was good but the group size was rather large at 27 people. The views and rock formations are stunning and the salt canyons very interesting.

The El Tatio tour starts at 4 am (however we weren't picked up until after 4:30) for a drive up to over 4200m to see the geysers and thermal pools on the sides of the volcanoes. The geysers are at their best just before sunrise hence the early start. Breakfast is included in the tour and we had warm chocolate milk and hard boiled eggs which we think were heated in the geysers! On the way down the tour makes several stops to look at wildlife (vicunas, viscachas and waterbirds on a surprising wetland area) and see an indigenous village, Machuca.

In the evening we did the SPACE tour. This is run by a French astronomer who has a great setup of 10 telescopes all focussed on different night sky items for use on the tour and also has a few domed telescopes we didn't see. He is very enthusiatic and funny and again this was a good introduction to the night sky. We also we able to see the moon and he helped everyone who wanted to get a photo through the telscope. Unfortunately the group size was rather large for this type of tour, about 30 people, which made it hard to use the telescopes as much as I would've liked.

We left San Pedro the next morning on the Pullman bus to Salta. Pullman don't have an office in San Pedro and you can't buy a online ticket for this route so we just waited by the side of the road and hoped the the bus would actually turn up and have enough seats for us and the other couple waiting! It did and we headed out of Chile for the last time. This bus journey is amazing. It goes up to nearly 5000m through the Jama Pass into Argentina. It crosses salt flats goes close to 6000m volcanoes and though gorges and past brightly coloured rocks and cliffs. It takes nearly 11 hours including the time spent at the border crossings but is well worth doing.

Villarrica Volcano

We spent a few days in Pucon at the end of the Dragoman tour and had the opportunity to trek up the Villarrica Volcano. Again we were lucky with the weather, the day before we arrived had been wet and foggy and it was not possible to do the volcano. But our day was warm and sunny with little wind so was perfect.

The trek itself is guided and you are given lots of specialist gear. It starts with a chairlift up the first 400m to get over the loose volcanic gravel section and then there is about 1 hour walking up rockier paths. After this it's crampons on and a slow slog up the ice and snow to the top. At the top you can feel the sulphur in your throat which makes it hard to get a good look at the crater the the smoke that continuously flows out of it.

Next is the fun bit! Sliding down :-) You have a strange nappy type pad to strap to your bottom and also a small plastic sledge for the slower sections and basically you just sit and slide down the snow and ice. This was done in short sections of maybe a few hundred metres down each. The top two were very steep and it was incredibly difficult to maintain control using the ice pick dug in to the slope along your side. A couple of members of our group failed entirely causing one of them to be dubbbed "the human cannonball" after he rolled down the mountain for the second time taking out 2 other people and requiring the guide flinging himself on top of him to stop! It was awesome fun and wish I could do it again.

For more details of the walk up see Nick's running blog.