Bolivia

To La Paz

We cruised over to Bolivia on Hydrofoil and stopped off at Sun Island, spiritual home of the Incas. All potential Inca kings had to spend 3 weeks here being prepared for leadership and examined by the high priests that used to live on the island. If the priests thought the future king unfit, then he would be killed and sacrificed. If passed OK, the king would be crowned and would return to Cusco to rule.

Our guide told us that immigration into Bolivia used to be a real hassle as the officials always wanted money. Eventually, the travel agency gave in and agreed to pay them. So now we get 5 star service. 2 officials came up to us during lunch and politely asked for our passports and then retuned them 10 minutes later duly stamped. Now that’s service. I think we’d all pay a little extra for that.

We cruised over to the mainland for a 90 minute drive to La Paz over similar terrain to the high plateau that we crossed on our train journey to Cusco. Our guide, Raul, had great fun terrorising us with tales of revolution. The locals don’t really recognise the government. Every time they find something not to their liking they take the law into their own hands and start to blockade the roads. On one occasion, his driver was whipped for trying to break a blockage to get a guest to the airport in time for his plane.

We approached La Paz from high on the plateau, and the first view of the city as it nestles in a canyon below is very impressive. It has an amazing location, with the ever present Illampu Mountain standing proudly over the city guarding its people. There’s 9 million people in Bolivia and most of them live in La Paz or its neighbouring overspill city El Alta, where most of the workers live. Countless minibuses deliver the people into La Paz each morning.

Next day, we embarked on the obligatory city tour. There’s not much to see in the way of architecture. The Spanish seem to have been particularly uninspired here. Still, there’s a really nice atmosphere, the residents managing to be frantic and laid back at the same time.

La Paz is consumed by a gigantic market that takes over half the city. You can buy anything here as long as it’s counterfeit. From CDs, designer wear and watches to Inca relics. All ridiculously cheap. I bought a copy of windows XP for less than 1$, hoping to use it to revive my ailing laptop. With all Nike, Reebok, Adidas and co gear now being made in China, I don’t think there’s any difference in quality between the copies and the real thing.

Something went badly wrong with our agency booking as, having just spent a day cruising lake Titicaca on our private hydrofoil, we found ourselves travelling from La Paz to Uyini by public bus and train. PUBLIC TRANSPORT. IN BOLIVIA. ARE YOU SERIOUS? Actually, it wasn’t too bad. The 3 and a half hour bus journey took us to Oruro without breaking down, where we boarded a super slow train for 7 hours and finally arrived in Uyini at 2:20 a.m. On the train I had what must be the worst meal of the trip (please), Spaghetti Bolognese. Imagine a tin of Heinz Spaghetti heated up with diced beef checked in, served with a side dish of soap shavings pretending to be Parmesan.

Uyini is home to the largest salt lake in the world. One of two facts that Bolivia is famous for; that and for having more presidents than anyone else in the last hundred years. How did all this salt get here, I hear you ask. Well, it wasn’t an EU salt mountain that was dumped in South America to placate Saxa. No, it was formed by minerals washed there from the surrounding mountains. The rain water has nowhere to go and is evaporated by the strong sun leaving a massive plateau of almost pure salt.

We paid a short visit to a salt factory. These are all small family run businesses. The salt is cut from the lake in blocks, smashed up, and then ‘cooked’ over an open fire to remove the impurities. The salt crackles as it cooks sounding like popcorn. It’s then ground and bagged by children – 2000 bags a day. All of Bolivia’s table salt is produced like this, costing 1 Boliviano a bag – about 6p

The lake really is large, like a skating ring for giants, an enormous latte (Imagine a size up from Venti), Pete Docherty’s cocaine stash, Mama Cass’ bed sheets. OK, it’s big and white. It’s fringed by mountains and volcanoes on all sides giving an otherworldly feel. Those mountains again – we must be in the Andes. The reflected glare from the sun is extremely powerful and ‘snow’ blindness is a real possibility here. Sun glasses are an absolute must, preferably two pairs together. I had to adjust the camera to reduce the exposure as otherwise all the photographs came out as white. The salt dries in hexagonal plates; something to do with the molecular shape of sodium chloride, so the guide told us, but that could have been made up on the spot.

Nothing can live in this environment. No vegetation, no animals, birds or insects – nothing, nada - absolute desert. It’s not a great environment for vehicles either as the salt rots them petty rapidly. I imagined our land cruiser dissolving in front of our eyes leaving us sitting in the middle of the lake with nothing left but the rubber wheels. 4 wheel drive is mandatory here as Bolivia only has 6 roads and they’re all in or into La Paz.

In the middle of the lake is a rocky atoll called Fish Island, named due to its appearance from a distance. Unbelievably, this is covered by giant cactus, up to 10 metres tall, with rabbits , mice and birds all somehow scraping by.

We stayed near the lake in a salt hotel built of, yes you guessed it, salt. This is obviously a bit of a tourist gimmick, but the salt blocks used are surprisingly durable, having similar characteristics to concrete blocks, and a similar appearance too, except white of course.

As usual we were the only guests. This was typical of our stay in the Bolivian desert. We felt more like travel ambassadors than tourists. Hotel managers were weeping when we left, not knowing when their next guests might arrive.

This part of Bolivia is a truly wild, desolate, remote and staggeringly beautiful place. We left the salt lake in our 4 wheel drive which finally gave way to scrub, a barren, rocky landscape punctuated by a few grassy stubs and yellow, green short bushes supporting the occasional Vicuña that peered at us inquisitively as we drove past in a cloud of dust. We were heading to a series of about a dozen mineral lakes clustered together, each with different colours caused by the predominant mineral deposited in the water. There’s red lakes, green, blue, pink – most are populated by thousands of pink Flamingos that somehow find something to eat in the heavy, acrid waters.

The most astonishing lagoon is Lake Colorado which manages to be blue, green, red and white all at once; a photographers’ wet dream. This really does look like another planet, with no sign of vegetation here, just dazzling colours reflecting the stark, lifeless mountains. And of course, just us. I’ll put some pictures on the blog and I promise that I haven’t doctored them. It really does look like this.

We finally took leave of this awesome landscape and swapped transport and took the road to Chile. We were soon back in the first world, and we both cheered as we came to a real, metal road after about 5 kilometres. This is the main haulage route in the north between Chile and Argentina, where the three countries meet. There’s a forlorn looking signpost for Bolivia pointing to the dirt track that we had just traveled, like an after thought as if the Chileans can’t understand why anyone would want to go there. After all, they couldn’t be bothered to invade past this point.

The road plummets alarmingly downwards from over 4000 metres to our destination 45 minutes away at Atacama at 2400 metres. The road is littered with car and lorry wreckage accompanied by roadsides shrines to lost loved ones, but we managed to navigate it safely enough.

Overall Boliva Ratings

People 8
Landscape 10
Food 5
Coffee 0
Roads Not Applicable