North to Bolivia

Uyuni, Bolivia
We´ve continued to travel with Michelle and Nick since our last post stopping first in the little town of Cafayate, Argentina. The road to Cafayate was memorable for two reasons. The first was the fully reclining seats known as cama-suites on a 10 hour ride to Tucuman. The only place I´ve seen anything like this is in the deluxe first class on airlines like air Singapore. There are little half walls between the rows of seats so you don´t slide off your completely horizontal seat, only 3 seats wide accross the bus with curtains between the neighboring seats. The second reason it was memorable was because the second leg of the journey from Tucuman to Cafayate involved a nauseating amount of switchbacks through an incredibly lush and beautiful mountain valley (no vomiting occurred but it was close). We followed a friendly tout from the bus station in Cafayate to a beautiful and inexpensive hostel. It was great to spend time in the relative peace and quiet of a small town after spending the last few weeks in big cities. We spent two days there trying out the local sorbets, visiting a few wineries, wandering around in the surrounding desert and reading in the beautiful, sunny town plaza.

After Cafayate we travelled north to Bolivia where we joined a 4 day jeep tour throughout southwestern Bolivia. We have many pictures from this tour through a very remote part of Bolivia. Our Toyota Landcruiser arrived fully equiped with a driver/guide and cook for the adventure that was to follow. We were forewarned that the accomodations for the first 2 nights were ´muy basico´ or very basic. That basically translates into straw matresses, toilets that flush only once filled with water from a rain barrel and electricity that cuts out at 8:30pm. Forget about showers, running water or heat. Coupled with acute altitude sickness (symptoms include headache, shortness of breath, dizziness, and insomnia) we all had a rough first two nights. Our third night was spent in a salt hotel, where the blocks for the walls were made of salt blocks, and the beds on salt bases, and salt tables and chairs all from the salt flats just outside the door.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni

The lack of sleep was made up for in the amazing scenery and landscapes we saw each day. The first day had us climbing to 4200meters (in the jeep of course) overlooking the Andes and flocks (herds?) of llamas. We appreciated having only a group of four in addition to the staff as we passed several other jeeps that had groups of six in addition to their guides. Tight squeeze. The second day we saw several coloured lakes some with flamingoes, bathed in a natural hotspring and watched geysers and boiling mud from a too short distance. The third day we saw more lakes, rock formations that inspired Dali´s paintings,vicuña (animals sort of like deer but with long necks that made them look like small giraffes), more flamingoes and an Andean fox. The final day brought us to the pure white salt flats for sunrise. It was like being on a snow covered frozen lake, except there is no snow, all salt as far as we could see. We also had a little tour of a salt processing ´plant´. The salt is basically scraped from the flats, dried, iodized, crushed and packaged. This process happens in the equivalent of a shed, and 50 kg of salt sells for $1 in Bolivia.

After raving about the food in Argentina I (Steve) have to mention that the menu on our tour was good for the most part with wholesome soups, sandwiches, spaghetti with meat sauce and spicy llama filled tamales. There were a couple of meals that didn´t quite measure up. A stir-fry of french fries, hotdog chunks, tomatoes and onions and Spam sandwiches are the two that stick out. In any case, something I ate didn´t agree with me, leading to a few days of intestinal distress that led to frequent debate on whether or not we were better off with the windows open (dust and wind) or closed.

Other notable memories of the tour:
-our coca-leaf chewing guide could drive for hours and hours and hours,
-we don´t want to hear any of their 4 CDs again in our lives (we spent between 5 and 12 hours a day in the jeep with those 4 CDs...thanks to Nick we were able to increase it to 8CDs)
-baby llamas look like snobs

Immediate plans are to have a good nights sleep, eat food that we choose, and then head to the capital city and arrange our next adventures.