Bolivia: Short 'n' Salty

Our stay in Bolivia was short and sweet. But it was also very salty. Lots of salt. A HUGE amount of salt. Over 4000 sq miles of it, to exact. Need more salt with your dinner? Just lick the table, son (all will become clear later.)

La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, is loud, bustling, congested and cheery. It looks similar to Quito but with a much more positive vibe and chirpier people. It's in a valley, so the main road runs through the city at the bottom and all the other buildings are built up on the hillsides. This means it's tiring walking around here on all the uphill streets but at night, when everything is lit up, the place looks quite pretty with twinkling lights sloping upwards. The pollution is crazy and every patch of road is chock-a-block, even if this means they have to squeeze three or four cars next to each other on one road. La Paz is certainly full of character, if not charm.

In the community of travellers, we fall into a category known as 'flashpackers.' We're the travellers who stay in hotels instead of hostels; the ones who have a little suitcase as well as a backpack, and who go to visit friends we've made in the bars of their hostels but then leave at the end of the night to go to our comfy, quiet hotel rooms elsewhere. Of COURSE we're flashpackers! There's a reason we decided to go travelling at this age and stage in life, and to stay in hostels with 19-21 year olds as if we're university students again wasn't exactly on our 'must do' list.

Saying that, if you fancy having a tipsy night out, the hostels are the best places to go. You meet loads of people who speak English and it's a much safer environment than a local bar where you attract a lot of attention as a tourist. There were three young lasses from Lancaster in our group when we did the Inca Trail and we all wanted to meet up in La Paz so we had a rather messy night out in a hostel bar. Imran was in his element - boosting his ego every ten minutes by telling people he was a flashpacker because he was 32 years old and enjoying the shocked reactions of: "But you look 22!" Seriously, he is such a big head - someone have a word with him, please! But in his usual drunken way, he thought of every person he met as his best friend and characteristically spent the night with his arm around their shoulders. As we left, we bumped into a guy we'd met very briefly in Nasca and you'd think Imran had found his long-lost brother judging by the bear hug he gave him. He is a very jolly drunk!...

...But a frustrating misery the morning after! He soon realised a hangover at high altitudes is worse than a regular hangover but luckily, once you've seen the artisan markets, women in traditional skirts and cool bowlers hats, and the main church, there's not a lot else to do in La Paz. They have Death Road here - otherwise known as the world's most dangerous road - which sounded like a fun place to cycle but the number of deaths here have been rather excessive over the years so we thought it best to settle for a hot chocolate in a cafe instead. And that's why we're 30-somethings staying in quiet hotels.

So on to Salar de Uyuni, otherwise known as the world's largest Salt Flats in Uyuni, Bolivia. Frickin' incredible. We're talking about an ocean-sized area made up entirely of salt; miles and miles of a pure white landscape which, when the sun beams down and lights it up, is so bright you wonder if this is what the tunnel to heaven looks like. Our visit was not immediately after the rainy season unfortunately - this is when the flats turn into the 'earth's largest mirror.' However, our timing did allow us to see exactly how flat the dry surface was, and it was astounding to see how incapable you are at guaging distance here accurately. (As confirmed by a local family who apparently tried to walk to one of the tiny islands on the flats after their vehicle broke down thinking it was only a few hours away, and froze to death on the way because it just never got any closer.) Luckily, we had a car with a full petrol tank so we could have a bit of fun with the landscape instead. No camera or computer tricks: these photos are all done simply by standing far away from one another!

In the middle of the Salar are a few islands - actually the tops of volcanoes which became submerged eons ago - where you can find rock formations and giant cacti. A local here told us that the flats can be mined for salt forever and will never run out. Hmmm.. I don't think man ever came to any good by thinking natural resources were unlimited. And the brine underneath the salt crust is rich with lithium, meaning the Americans, Koreans and Japanese are trying their best to out-do each other in their wining and dining of the Bolivian powers to get hold of this lithium for missiles. Can't see the salt flats ever retaining the title of infinite if any of them are successful.

We decided to stay in a hotel on the periphery of the flats where everything was made of salt. Naturally, we assumed that 'everything' didn't actually mean EVERYTHING. But no, they do actually mean.. well, everything. The outer bricks, the tables, chairs, pool table, salt shaker (haha!), bed frame.. even the floor was like walking on a beach, except with salt instead of sand. (Douggie, I got you another magnet to add to your collection made entirely from salt!) Our dinner that evening lacked a bit of seasoning. Could we do it - could we really crack the obvious joke? Of course we could! "Not enough salt, love? Why don't you just lick the table?" I didn't think Imran would actually do it. Not a good move when this particular salt hasn't been through any purification process so is definitely not for human consumption!

After our short and salty stop at Uyuni (where we still managed to find fresh juices being made on the streets for 50p - get in!) we road-tripped for two days to the Chilean border. Two days of, we were told, lovely scenery. Lovely scenery, my ass! Calling this scenery lovely is like calling Paris Hilton a 'little bit trying occasionally.' She's a full-on annoying muppet and the scenery between Bolivia and Chile is SENSATIONAL. Driving down long, quiet roads, we passed volcanoes of a myriad of colours thanks to the different minerals in the rocks; rock formations that looked like animals and people; mountains identical to Salvador Dali paintings; quinoa fields; herds of llamas which ran away when we got too close (can't blame them - Imran has been eating their cousins for dinner here); fault lines and small canyons caused by earthquakes; white, red and green lagoons with twenty thousand flamingoes; and geysers (erupting hot springs) with warm steam billowing out of craters full of thick, bubbling sulphuric acid of assorted colours. Bear in mind that we've been talking non-stop on this blog about the stunning views we've seen and it'll tell you a lot when we say the terrain between Bolivia and Chile is amongst the most magnificent so far. It didn't look real. Everything we passed looked like a painting - an artists' imagined composition of natural features so breathtaking that they can't possibly exist in the real world. Well, they do. And we're two bloody lucky devils for getting to see them. Whoever or whatever 'God' is, I've got just one thing to say: "Thanks, dude."

Onwards to Chile!