Bolivia

Uyuni Salt Flats, Day Two

Posted by Jim St. George on April 12, 2016

Posted in: Bolivia. Leave a Comment

A morning hike around this lagoon introduced us to fighting giant coots

On our second day out of San Pedro we continued to work our way north along the southwestern edge of Bolivia. The roads were still rutted and rocky and there was too much driving relative to too little hiking, but the scenery was great, too.

A close-up of the “giant” coots out on their floating nests. Don’t mess with ’em!

Enroute we happened across a couple rheas, large ostrich-like flightless birds that run around this part of Bolivia. We never got any decent pictures, but they’re a fun bird to watch. And to read about. They’re polygamous, with males courting up to a dozen female birds. Even more interesting, though, is that it’s the males, not the females, who protect the nest, incubate the eggs, and even tend the chicks. And then on one lagoon we hiked around we watched Giant Coots – another bird that, while relatively big is “giant” only in the context of other coots – fighting over territory. Our guide Danilo told how once he absentmindedly got too close to a giant coot nest and the birds went straight at him. Ain’t nature interesting?

At the same time, the human life could be confusing. We went into one tiny little village; just tiny, maybe a few dozen people living there. The Bolivian government had recently invested in building some new housing in this remote, isolated location and you could only wonder what life must be like in such a tiny, remote, isolated location.

The day included another great lunch out in the middle of nowhere. This was on a tiny lagoon with a big rock that bore a striking resemblance to Margaret Thatcher. Weird.

We’re here in what is supposed to be the end of the rainy season, but the rains failed pretty significantly. One result is that some of the quinoa fields are just devastated. From afar, quinoa fields in this part of Bolivia can be beautiful, big red squares in an otherwise colorless region. Without water, though, there were some really sad-looking plots. You can only imagine the impact it must have on local farmers who are already poor beyond most anything I can imagine.

A very sad quinoa field, devastated by the failure of rainy season rains

What else was interesting about Day Two? We walked the last mile or two to our lodgings, mostly just because walking is more interesting than bumping along the gravel roads. While we were walking you could hear big thunder rumbling across the landscape. Ultimately there was no rain, but the thunder was impressive.

And speaking of impressive, we went out after dinner that night to view the stars. Danilo had a laser pointer to show us some of the constellations, after which for the first time I could easily identify the Southern Cross, the southern hemisphere’s answer to the Big Dipper and North Star. Orion, Castor & Pollux, Jupiter – we saw them all, along with billions and billions of other stars.

The trip brought us right to the very edge of the Uyuni Salt Flats; tomorrow we cross in for two days. I’ll just add in anticipation that the experience was amazing.

A great little hike around this high plane lagoon

Mark on said hike

We even saw a lion on the hike, or at least a striking resemblance to the Ritz-Carlton lion logo

During our time in Chile & this area of Bolivia we’ve seen a bunch of these great green plants that cling to rocks. They take many, many years to grow to this size and are now protected in both countries.

Our guide Danilo taking a break, with a great view across Bolivia

I got pretty high, too

Another little hike took us through some Scotland-esque bogs. Or at least what I’m guessing were Scotland-esque, as I’ve never actually been there. Oh, and the good news about these hikes? The extra little pressure from my knapsack seems to have completely cured the back & shoulder pain I’d been experiencing ever since Nasca, back in late February. Yay!

Not all quinoa fields were wiped out by the failure of the rainy season. These sheaths of quinoa had been harvested and were tied up waiting … for something. The colors give you a sense of what a ripe, healthy quinoa field looks like from a distance.

No more shipping containers, for now, at least. Our lodging for Night Two was this old rehabilitated traditional structure made of local rocks with some cactus wood as framing.

Our isolated lodging for Night Two

Sunset out on the edge of the Uyuni Salt Flats. Later that night we’d get a great tour of the clear southern night sky.

Uyuni Salt Flats, Day 1

Posted by Jim St. George on April 11, 2016

Posted in: Bolivia. Leave a Comment

Traveloholics at a geyser field in Bolivia on our journey up to the world’s biggest salt flats

After a couple days hiking around San Pedro de Atacama our big adventure for the region is a five-day journey with car and guide up into the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia. The map here shows our route, starting from San Pedro at the bottom in Chile, going north into Bolivia, and then west to Iquique. It’ll take us a couple days to get up to the salt flats themselves, but in the meanwhile we’ll spend our days in some of the most remote regions I’ve ever been in; no wifi, no Internet, no electricity, and, for the most part, no people. The company we’re doing it with, though, does provide food and shelter so we’re not completely destitute.

Immigration at the Bolivian border. Does that just scream “Isolated!”?

Day One was a long day on terrible roads. Hours and hours on crazy, rocky, rutted gravel roads. It took a couple hours to get to the Bolivian border at one of the most remote border crossings you’ll ever see. The most amazing sight during that long ride was the bikers, a couple here, a few there, maybe half a dozen altogether. Intrepid and adventurous travelers riding bicycles, not motorcycles, with all their camping gear at 14,000 feet on those roads that were so brutal in a car. Mark thought they were crazy; I was jealous.

Unfortunately the day was a lot more about covering ground in the car than hiking. We stopped at a Bolivian geyser field where it would have been easy – and deadly – to fall in, and had a great lunch – a salmon salad, lettuce salad, good wine – our guide whipped up when we stopped at a flamingo-settled lagoon in the middle of nowhere.

This was our lunch break on Day One. The lagoon below has just thousands of Pink Flamingoes – real ones, not plastic. A pretty fabulous place to stop for lunch.

Flamingoes. Lots and lots of flamingoes.

The middle of nowhere. This certainly feels as isolated a place as you can imagine. Just miles and miles of high plains, mountains, and flamingoes. Lots of flamingoes. And here we’re going to be with no Internet for days while the Wisconsin primary plays out. We won’t know anything until days after the results are in!

We were curious what the sleeping arrangements would be. There are no settlements of any size at all up here and certainly no hotels. The company we organized the tour with said they use “shipping containers” for sleeping and eating, and sure enough when we pulled in toward the evening there they were: old shipping containers retrofitted as little cabins. Cots with great sleeping bags for the cold nights. Separate kitchen and bathroom shipping containers, all out in what is just the middle of nothing. Pretty cool, really.

After a long day in the car getting here, I hiked up above our “lodge” for a view of the area. Those are our shipping-containers-turned-accomodations. I loved being out there in the middle of just really nothing. If you look at the map below, this is the first star north of San Pedro.

Without Internet or even electricity there was no opportunity to load pictures or write this blog, so I’m doing it all now that we’re back in civilization. I’ll add more on our subsequent days over the next day or two, but there are a lot of pictures to load so it’ll take a while. For now, though, here are the rest of our pictures from Day One.

Here’s our route from San Pedro down near the bottom, over to the Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve in Bolivia and then north for three stops (two nights in the northernmost spot in Bolivia when we’re actually in the salt flats) then over into Chile before ending in Iquique

An early stop at a Bolivian geyser field was a welcome break from bouncing along on crazy unpaved roads

The bubbling mass of goo that would make a real mess of things if you fell in

Another view of our lunch stop

Flamingoes

Thousands of flamingoes

They get their color from eating untold numbers of little shrimp in the lagoon. Our guide explained that they spend pretty much the entire day, from morning to night, eating thousands and thousands of tiny pink shrimp. Strange way to live.

There are no trees at this altitude so this tree-shaped rock is a real destination

And then there are the strange signs. This seems to say … what? No birds? All those flamingoes out there seem to be ignoring the sign.

This was my favorite, though. I understand, they don’t want you pissing in the lake and fouling the natural environment. The two pictures at the top make that pretty clear.

Sucre

Posted by Jim St. George on March 31, 2016

Posted in: Bolivia, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Leave a Comment

Bolivia’s Declaration of Independence, signed here in Sucre in 1825

We were excited about going to Sucre, the “constitutional” capital of Bolivia. To be clear, the seat of government – Congress, the Presidential Palace, the various departments – is in La Paz, but the constitution declares Sucre the national capital, with the judiciary still headquartered here. Sucre has a great reputation as a place to go, great climate, colonial architecture, the heart and soul of the Bolivian independence movement, the country’s most beautiful city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Sounds pretty great.

Jesus watches over Sucre from the top of one of the big hills overlooking the city. After a long and steep hike up here, imagine my disappointment to discover cars up here with a bunch of people who’d driven up.

Quick history. Known in colonial times as La Plata, the city was the capital of a region that includes much of today’s Bolivia and Paraguay along with parts of Chile, Peru, and Argentina; proximity to the mines of Potosí but at a lower altitude with access to the broader region was its forté. It was and remains the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Bolivia and it’s university, founded in 1624, is older than Harvard. It was here in a former Jesuit chapel that Bolivia’s declaration of independence was signed in 1825 and in 1839 the city was renamed for the revolutionary general Antonio José de Sucre. This was the heart and soul of early Bolivia. Only when Potosí’s silver mining start to flag and economic stagnation set into the region was the seat of government (though not the official designation of national capital) moved to La Paz in 1898.

So there’s a lot to take in here. Unfortunately our experience wasn’t so great. I’m sure part of it is that we were here over Easter weekend which just meant that a lot of the city was closed up. We were both amazed when we walked out of the hotel after breakfast Monday morning at how lively things were: people on the streets, markets open, everything abuzz. That’s not what we saw in our first three days in Sucre. In fact, as I review the pictures we took I find myself thinking, “Hey, that was a really pretty city.” It’s just that at the time it seemed so lifeless and dull.

These guys, celebrating Easter up at an old convent overlooking the city, were seriously drunk. Staggeringly, slurringly drunk. That bottle the guy in the middle is holding is pure alcohol, not beer.

Then next day the convent plaza was completely cleaned up and beautiful, but it was an unbelievable mess on Sunday morning

The one memory for me that’s most vivid was climbing up a steep hill toward an old convent on Easter morning that was supposed to have great views of the city. While climbing, the stench of urine was unmistakable and overwhelming. As I got to the old convent at the top of the street I saw that there was a huge market/party going on, with lots of heavy drinking. Heavy. And countless men were relieving themselves on the wall along the street, creating quite literally a stream of piss going down the hill. Not exactly the Easter Sunday memory I was anticipating – or wanting.

And then there’s the food situation. As we traveled across Peru we were routinely surprised by how great the food was. We haven’t had that experience in Bolivia and in Sucre in particular we were quickly bored with the options. There was one good place for lunch, but after four days that was really old. Otherwise it was just a question of least objectionable options.

There were some highlights. Our hotel, the Hotel de Su Merced, was one of great values we’ve had in our travels. Beautiful interior courtyard with tiles and flowers, nice views, good service, lovely breakfast, all at under $70 a night. The central square was big and leafy and a pleasant place to while away the hours. I like hiking outside a city, and there were two big hills overlooking Sucre, both of which I managed to scale for some remote reading time.

We’d scheduled five nights in Sucre but after three we were pretty much ready to leave. So we rebooked some hotel and flight reservations (all at no cost; gotta love traveling in places where you can change your flight with no penalty!) to leave a day early. We flew back to La Paz for just one night – where we had dinner at an amazingly good French restaurant – and then it’s off to northern Chile for a little time in the Atacama Desert. We’re coming back into Bolivia briefly en route to Paraguay, but for now we’re off on a little side trip into Chile.

Sucre at sunset. No question, at times it was a beautiful city.

There was an old church across the street from our hotel with great views from the rooftop

Mark up on the church roof. He’s actually standing on the dome that’s over the main alter.

I was up there, too, representing the Minnesota Twins

Our lovely hotel, the Hotel de Su Merced, with a couple of Sucre’s big hills looming in the clouds

One of my “if you follow a trail it must take you somewhere” hikes outside of Sucre took me to this spot. A fine place to read a history of England, I thought.

A view of Sucre from another trail that took me high above the city

And finally, a view of Sucre, set in its valley, as I was coming back into the city

MarkandJim.com

Traveloholics. On a binge.

Bolivia

Uyuni Salt Flats, Day Two

Uyuni Salt Flats, Day 1

Sucre

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