Oh La Paz is so cheap...

Our trip from Uyuni to La Paz began with a 2:00am train ride from Uyuni to Oruro.  Early in the day all five in our group sat in line and debated which class on the train we wanted.  Our choices basically came down to either first class (for 86 bolivianos=$12.50) or second class (for 40 bolivianos $5.75).  Well our decision became easier when we got to the front of the line and they told us only second class (or ´popular´ class which we chose not to find out what it was because it was something like 20 bolivianos) was available.  So after spending a few hours in the train station our train finally pulled in.  We had to wait a bit because our car was being added on to the train.  After we finally boarded we were pretty glad that someone along the way had told us to make sure to bring every layer of long clothing and our sleeping bags on to the train, because even though they told us the car was heated I personally never felt a drop of heat from the heater all night.  When we finally got in to Oruro around 9:00am we quickly hopped in a cab with our Portuguese friend (the Australian couple had forgotten something in our jeep when we arrived in Uyuni and never boarded the train because they wanted to go back to the tour agency and get it the next morning, which we later found out the succesfully recovered it).  We hopped on to the next bus to La Paz and finally arrived in to La Paz in the early afternoon.  After checking in to the hostel (which was much more like a hotel), which is in an area known as Mercado de Brujas (the Witch´s Market) we decided to walk around the main market area (which is generally reffered to as Mercado Negro, or Black Market).  The first day because we were kind of tired we just explored a small fraction of the market area but some of our highlights included buying a huge 2L mug of fresh fruit juice for cheap and walking through hundreds (and I´m serious about the number here) of shoe stalls looking for sandles to replace Emily´s chocos.

 The Witch´s Market (right near our hostel), it is mainly filled with really touristy shops

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San Fransico Cathedral

The next day we went to the US Embassy so Emily could get more pages added in to her passport (I had to do a similar thing a year ago in Israel, and yes we travel that much).  After we dropped off her passport we decided to do a walking tour recommended in Lonely Planet.  As we started to walk we got side tracked by the Black Market and our need to replace all of Emily´s lost goods.  NOTE: In the next post we will play a game we like to call Price is Right: Bolivian Style, where we will let you take a crack at how much we spent on Emily´s new stuff.  We proceeded to walk around the market for several hours purchasing: a backpack, sandles, headphone splitter, baseball cap (a nice blue Mets one!), winter hat and gloves, sunscreen and hand santizer, head lamp, rechargeable batteries, a new journal, and some more smaller things.  Lets just say we for sure didn´t bust our budget and we were in the right place if we needed to buy/replace stuff that had been stolen. We spent the majority of the day just wondering around the markets checking out everything: key makers (who still use filing instruments and foot pedal things), yarn, traditional Bolivian dresses, fruit shake vendors (which we stopped at quite often), and pretty much anything else you wanted you could find for cheap.  After replacing mostly everything, we headed down to Plaza de San Fransico (the main plaza in La Paz).  In part of the square we half accidently walked through these 3 large  markets which had a dozen or so food stalls.  The food stalls was basically one lady/cook and about 4-6 seats.  Each lady had her own specialities (fried fish, llama dishes, soups, and other regional cusine) that ranged in price from 5-15 Bolivianos.  We decided to sit down at one lady´s bench who was serving assorted fried fish.  We both ordered trout with some fried sardines on top...for $2 it was amazing!  We chowed it down.  After finishing up and paying we went back to the US Embassy to pick up Emily´s passport and started walking back to the center of town.  During the evening we booked a downhill bike tour the next morning and on our way to dinner we decided to try Quinoa Juice, which was surprisingly warm and delicious.  We stopped by a local semi-gringo pizza place (it was in a gringo hostel neighborhood, but compared to the other pizza places in the gringo area it was much cheaper.)  We could tell the place was kind of geared towards Israelis as they had Hebrew everywhere, pictures of holiday dinners at the resturant, and also on the menu instead of an area entitled ¨Vegetarian Pizzas¨ there was a section entitled ¨Kosher Pizzas.¨  As we were the last people in the pizzeria for the night I struck up a conversation with the owner who happens to be Jewish, from Bolivia, and made aliyah many years back and then returned to Bolivia (¿random?).

 A shop with traditional Bolivian Dresses

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Look Mom all the Yarn you could want...

A Shot of the Black Market

The infamous really super cheap food stalls

Yep Emily and I devoured our fish...YUMMY!

Typical looking La Paz bus, they also had ones in shades of green

Sheishbeish and Fresh fruit smoothies (that cost all of 3 bolivianos)

I put this photo up more just to see traditional Bolivian women dressing.  However this picture was taken outside the Education Ministry during a protest

The next morning we woke up bright and early to do the major tourist activity for backpackers traveling through La Paz (and no I´m not talking about doing hard drugs for a cheap price), The Death Road!  Now a little bit of history about the road.  The road descends from 4,700m to 1200m in about 63km.  The road starts in the colder mountain top area and descends all the way into rainforest.  At several points through the whole bike ride there are major cliffs that go up to the side of the road ranging in depth from 100 to 1000m.  The majority of the route is along a dirt road which is for the most part only passable in one direction.  Until about 3 years ago regular traffic (in both directions) was allowed on the road, until a new road was built that bypasses the gravel road.  Evidently since they began doing bike tours on this road over 15 years ago, 18+ people have died, the majority from losing control of the bikes on the gravel and going over large cliffs.  That being said...We were picked up early in the morning by our company, The Radical Rides (we highly recommend them), and headed out a hour or so from La Paz to the begininning of the route.  The top of the route is pretty cold as it was the morning and 4700m high.  As we began to descend the temp warmed up and once we got in to the jungle area the weather was pretty humid and warm.  The entire time riding took probably around 3 hours.  I had a few close encounters of losing control of my bike going downhill, but never fell over and for sure never near an edge (should have mentioned this before, but there are no guard rails at all).  We stopped a few times for snacks or to take pictures at cool points.  Our guide also pointed out some interesting stuff to us like why along the jungle area there are large parts of vegetation in streaks that looks much newer.  Any guesses???  It is where trucks or busses lost control and fell down the cliffs before the road was closed to actual traffic.  It was a pretty great ride and we saw some amazing views.  All of our hands hurt pretty badly afterwards (even with two good suspensions, your hands grasping the handle bars on pretty rocky gravel for 3 hours straight is painful).  After th bike ride the company brought us to a swimming pool, showers, and buffet lunch before heading back 3 hours (along the new road) back to La Paz.

The following pics are a random selection from our Downhill Biking Trek on the ¨World´s Deadlist Road¨

Our group at the top of the route haviung breakfast

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 A view from the top

First stop

 Hi Em

Brett going down the mountain

Emily far behind...

 Emily going through the fog

 Us heading down the mountain

The next day we were planning on heading to Copacabana, Bolivia on Lake Titikaka.  As it was only a 2 hour ride and several companies went there throughout the day we decided to take our time.  We headed back down to the food stalls for lunch and this time went to another lady´s ¨cubicle.¨  For 5 Bolivianos (75 cents) I enjoyed a piece of fried Guinea Pig with a side salad and potatoes and rice and Emiy had the same but a veggie pattie instead.  We then headed to the bus station and began our trip to Lake Titikaka.

 Llama fetuses...evidently you are suppose to bury them under your porch for good luck

Bad afternoon in Uyuni and "The Price is Right, Bolivian Edition"

Here is the story of my crappy afternoon in Uyuni. Fortunately, like all bad days, it eventually ended and the next day was much better.

When we arrived in Uyuni off of the salt flats tour, I went to an office to get my visa to be in Bolivia. Basically, Bolivia has a bad grudge against the United States (drug war and all that), so they make life difficult for American citizens looking to enter the country. Unlike any other nationality, I had to get a visa that cost 135 USD. Thats right, USD - they wont even accept the fee in their own currency and I am expected to have brought with me enough American money to pay the fee. Fortunately, I knew about this in advance and had pleanty of crisp, clean US bills with me. They requested the $135 and when I paid it, a guy stood there slowly inspecting each bill. He ran his finger along each edge and looked very carefuly over every bit of each bill to make sure it was perfect and not a fake, rejecting bills he found a problem with. In total he ended up rejecting well over $100 in bills. I had about $250 on me and by the time he was done rejecting bills, I thought that I wasn't going to have enough money to pay for the visa, since he had rejected so many of my bills. The bills that I had given him were good clean bills and he was rejecting them because of the smallest little tears along the edges. After this ordeal, the people on our trip enjoyed playing "where's Waldo" and searching the rejected bills for the flaws. I even made him show me where each flaw on the bills were and he would search again for a few minutes before finding the flaws (Brett suspects that the guy tore some of the bills himself, just to be a jerk). In the end, we thought that we would have to pay with $1 bills, but he wouldn't accept those and made us take it to an exchange house, where they demanded 6 $1 bills in exchange for 1 $5 bill. At the last minute Brett found a few fives in his wallet and fortunately one of them passed the inspection. It was such an infuriorating and insulting experience to watch this arrogant jerk rejecting perfectly good currency. I was so furious by the end of it, although insulting him in English was somewhat satisfying, since he only spoke Spanish. Turning up his nose at my money was just so rude and obnoxious. Ugh! At least I will never have to deal with this again and the visa is good for 5 years, plus it is pretty and colorful.

My next bad experience was later in the evening while we were at a bar for travellers killing time before our train came. Five of us were sitting around a table playing cards, with our backpacks leaned against a wall behind me, not too far from the door. When we got up to leave, we discovered that my daypack had been taken. Although I should have been more careful and kept the small bag under my seat instead of by the wall, I had thought it would be ok, since the bar was pretty dead with not many people going in and out. But somehow the bag had been grabbed without anyone noticing it. Fortunately, the super valuable things (passports, camera, bank cards, etc. are always kept in Brett's daypack, which we guard with our lives and always keep under our seats between our feet in such situations). Its still pretty upsetting to have someone rob my bag. The only really important thing that was lost was my journal that I had been keeping for the past 3 months of the trip. I was really upset about losing it, since I liked to write my personal reflections about all of these amaizing experiences and had put a lot of effort into keeping it up to date. However, I have bought a new journal and begun to rewrite as much as I can remember of each day going backwards and am doing quite well so far, although it takes up a lot of time.

I was also upset about losing my nice Choco sandals that I had really loved, my ipod, and Brett's good pocket knife (he does have an extra one). However, except for the journal, everything can be replaced and La Paz turned out to be just the place to shop. So now it is time for "The Price is Right, Bolivian Edition". See if you can guess how much each item cost when we bought it in La Paz. Prices will later be listed in Bolivianos and 7 Bolivianos are worth one USD. There will be a prize for the person with the most corect guesses (Aliza, we already told you some of the answers, so you can't play, sorry).

1. A pair of ugly black sandals made mostly of foamy plastic. They velcro around the foot, kind of like Tevas.
2. A Janssport backpack, possibly a knockoff.
3. A grey knitted Alpaca hat.
4. A pair of brown knitted Alpaca gloves - the kind with the fingers exposed and flaps that go over the fingers to make them into mittens.
5. A Mets ball cap
6. New blank journal
7. Sunscreen
8. A splitter that will allow 2 sets of headphones to be plugged into one ipod (so that Brett and I can listen to music together on bus rides).
9. A headlamp flashlight

Although it sucked having my bag stolen, you wont believe how cheap these items were! The Price is Right answers will be posted in a couple of weeks. Good luck!

-Emily

Salt anyone? I think the Bolivians forgot the pepper.

Before Emily and I even booked our Salt Flats tour and also after we were concerned about the group.  Emily when she did a similar style tour (several days in a jeep) in Australia got a really bad group.  And we didn´t want that to happen to us.  Fortunatley it didn´t!  We had an awesome group of 5 people plus our driver.  Our group was us two, plus a couple one being from Australia and the other although being born in Britain lived his whole life in Zimbabwe (his parents moved to England for 6 months so he could be born there and have a UK passport), and a Porteguese guy who had been living the last few years in Paris and London. 

The begininning of the trip was a short van ride from San Pedro de Atacama to the border with Bolivia.  As Chile has their border control in town we took care of that before heading an hour north to the Bolivian border.  Humerously, the entire ride was paved road until we hit the sign to turn for Bolivian border control.  The ride continued for another 20 minutes on a dirt road kind of heading to the middle of nowhere through the desert.  When we finally hit the border there was a small building (for passport control) and 20+ Jeeps waiting for the different tour busses from San Pedro to get to the border.  Wisely, the jeeps don´t cross in to Chile and pick us up in San Pedro because, unlike Bolivia, Chile has really strict border control, customs, and vehicle requirements which I´m pretty sure most the jeeps would not pass.  We went through Passport Control and as Bolivia decides to charge Americans $135US to enter Bolivia I entered on my Israeli passport.  Emily on the other handed entered on her US Passport and because at the border crossing we were at they don´t collect money they took her passport and stapeled it completely in a piece of paper and told her when we arrived in Uyuni she had to go to the Immigration Offices there and pay the money.  We were pretty confused why they felt the need to completely staple up her passport but they did (Don´t worry when I talk about Uyuni there is a whole other story that needs to be told about Emily having to pay for the entry fee).

 Bolivian Border Crossing

Welcome to Bolivia!  The Ghettoness of the sign says it all

As we left the border and headed off  into the Potosí Desert all 5 of us didn´t know exactly all the beauty we were going to see that day.  Our first stop was for breakfast next too two small lagoons.  Gregory, our driver, (through the translation of our Porteguese jeep-mate) told us the first lagoon was Laguna Blanco, or White Lagoon.  In reality the lagoon wasn´t that impressive.  Yes, it was really white but nothing too special.  The amazingness of the stop was it was our first view of the traditional Bolivian Women´s dress.  Which includes a long skirt (which poofs out), a blouse-like sweater, 2 long pony tails, and a coimically small Bowler Hat (which does very little to block out the sun and some how stays in place all the time).  After our simple breakfast with the overview of Laguna Blanco we headed a few minutes walk over to Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon).  As we checked out the slightly green lake, after about 5 minutes we noticed that a small part of the lagoon was changing to a more turquise color.  We noticed this one spot kept getting larger.  We weren´t sure if it was the way the sun was hitting the water or something else.  A few minutes later we realized it was the wind, and as the wind got stronger the whole lagoon turned in to this crazy turquise color.  Evidently, as Gregory told us later, everyday at about that time the wind picks up and changes the color of the entire lagoon.  We continued on our trek to our next stop, the Hot Springs!  On our way we made a quick stop at the, Dali Desert.  It was a small patch of desert which had scattered large rocks which casted long shadows to make it look like it was right out of a Salvador Dali painting.  We took a few photos and continued on to the Hot Springs.  When we arrived there was already several other jeeps there.  So we quickly changed into our bathing suits and hoped in to the hot spring pool.  It was a great view.  Unlike the hot springs that we went to in Chile which was a built pool that had hot water pumped in to it (indoors), this one was on the edge of a huge lagoon and just had built up walls with hot water running in to it (the floor was also sandy and rocky).  It was absolutley picturesque.  While we were there we ran in to two Israelis we had met in Bariloche (and seen again wine tasting in Mendoza) and I over heard one of them telling some Swedes that this was much better then the Hot Springs in Israel because it doesn´t smell like eggs like the one on the Jordanian border.  After relaxing in the hot springs we headed indoors for some lunch.  After lunch we then headed to our next stop, the geysers.  When we started getting close we started seeing steam in the distance.  Not exactly sure what it was when we got there we were more amazed then we possibly could have been.  When most of us thought about geysers we thought about large holes shooting up water (like the ones near San Pedro de Atacama that two of our jeep mates went too).  Well these weren´t that.  These were huge holes shooting out steam and larger holes with large bubbling mud.  It was absolutley amazing, there were dozens of holes with bubbling different shades (white, blue, red, pink, yellow, grey) of bubbling muds.  We spent almost an hour just walking around and trying to get great pics of the bubbling mud.  When our driver finally dragged us away back to the jeep to make it to the next spot in time all we wanted to do was continue to walk around and watch these dozens of holes.  So we loaded back in to the jeep and headed to our next stop, Flamingos!  When we arrived at the next lagoon, titled the Red Lagoon (not because of the Flamingos but because the lagoon is legit red) we saw several flocks of flamingos.  Honestly, I think they look a little different then the flamingos you always see in zoos, not as pink.  I did think to myself while we were here that it was pretty cool that basically in a month we had seen both Penguines and Flamingos (pretty much the two polar opposites when you think about birds).  I got a few piucs of Emily pretending to be a flamingo (she just didn´t make the cut, I think).  Our final leg of the first day was to the hostel, which was pretty basic accomendations (we were in the middle of the desert) with no showers or running water (to flush the toilets you had to pour some water in to a whole in the back of the toilet).  Our driver told us that dinner would be iun about 2 hours, but he pointed us to a great overview of the Red Lagoon (oppisite from where we saw the flamingos) to watch the sunset.  The five of us trekked out there to watch the sunset and by the time we returned, dinner was ready (Emily was pretty excited because it included quinoa soup).  After dinner (which was interuptted twice by the generator goiung out) we stayed up and chatted for a little bit play cards (with this weird deck of cards which are evidently called Italian-styled playing cards that go from 1-9 and then three face cards but not Jack, Queen, King).

 The Green Lagoon

Desert Mountains

Dali Desert

Hot Springs...Great View!

Steam from the Mud Geysers

NEXT IS A COLLECION OF BUBBLING MUD SHOTS THAT I TOOK...

Red Lagoon with dozens of Flamingos in the background

Flamingo!

Emily doing her best Flamingo impression

Sunset at the Red Lagoon

The next morning we all worke up feeling a bit better from the alitutude sickness we had the night before.  We ate breakfast (which would have included frozen bread if it wasn´t for my camping stove) and headed back in to the desert.  Our first stop was to a small area that had several rock formations.  The famous one was called, the Stone Tree.  To help protect it they had put up a fence, which unfortunatley ruins a chance of a good picture.  Besides the Stone Tree there were other large stone formations that we had fun climbing and checking out the landscape.  We then had a long drive through the desert passing by several lagoons until we reached another lagoon filled with flamingos.  This time the flamingos were much closer to land so we were able to stalk them and get pretty close until Emily spoofed one of them and he went flying away.  From the lagoon we began another long drive to a small village for lunch again seeing amazing rock formations including one which looked like an eagle.  After lunch (which once again included quinoa soap) we made our way through a rocky road going through a valley filled with hundreds of llamas (every time we passed by a llama he gave us the classic llama stare) and donkeys just grazing away and field after field of quinoa growing along the mountain sides.  Eventually after a few hours in this valley (and me chasing some llamas hoping to get a picture with one of them) we finally hit our second refugio.  The refugio was right on the border of the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats, which is the largest Salt Flat in the world at a size of over 10,000 dquared km).  From the edge of the Salt Flats it just seemed like the white went on for ever and ever.  After dinner and a bottle of wine we headed off to sleep because we had an early wake up call the next morning.  Although the second day was not as action packed as the first, just driving through the deserts and seeing the small villages and natural beauty of the desert was amazing (it might have me changing my views of the desert, which I have pretty much hated since having to go through basic training there).

 Rock Formations

Random Views in the Desert

Random Views in the Desert

 More Flamingos on the Second Day!  These aren´t the ones Emily scared off

Eagle Rock Formationm I don´t understand how it is like that

Brett chasing llamas!

The llama on the bottom right is giving the damn llama look, it´s creepy!

Great views in the desert

MORE LLAMA CHASING!

The third and final day of the tour was spent almost all day on the Salt Flats.  We woke up mad early (around 5am) and ate breakfast and were out driving on the Salt Flats a little after 6am.  Driving on the Salt Flats in the dark was an experience.  For the most part the salt flats is all flat but that still doesn´t make it difficult in the dark.  Our driver pretty much got lost just driving so we stopped at a random spot just to watch the sun rise.  Chilling on the salt flats was pretty amazing all around it just seemed like I was on a huge iced over lake.  The area like the desert was pretty cold in the morning but we still got out and took tons of pictures during sunrise.  The thing to do on the salt flats is wacky perspective pictures, where one person stands well behind another person or an object and by angling the camera correctly you can make funny pictures (see our pics below).  After watching the sunrise we headed over to one of the 18 ´islands´ in the Salt Flats, Incahuasi Island.  The island is covered in cacti and there is a nice 45 minute loop that we walked that gave us great views of not only the ´island´ but also the immediate area of the salt flat.  From the island we continued to drive through the slat flat, which really seemed like just driving on a frozen lake (that happens to be 100km x 100km).  Our next stop was to the old Salt Hotel, it is an old hotel (there is now 5 new ones that although similar are actually not on the salt flats but on the edges).  The hotel is completely made out of salt, including the walls, tables, chairs, bed frames, etc, (everything except the matresses and windows).  The building was pretty cool, it is now used as a small museum that has several salt sculptures.  The hotel was evidently closed a few years back because septic system in the hotel broke and made the entire immediate area smell pretty bad (who ever thought that salt would preserve something).  After the hotel we passed by a large mounds of salt that were being collected to be processed and used for table salt (evidently the salt has some natural chemicals in it so it needs to be processed pretty heavily).  Our driver said that even with the salt mining, the salt flat actually grows every year because during the rainy season in January and February more salt from the surronding areas settles in salt flat.  After passing by the salt mining we headed in to the town of Uyuni (the end of our trip).  We took care of a few things in town (like Emily needing to get her Bolivian Visa) and then headed to the final stop, just outside town, which is an abandoned train yard, with dozens of rusted out train engines.  Basically, I was in heaven! At this point we drove back in to town and our trip ended.  It was a great trip and we could not have asked for much more from our driver.  We heard horror stories about drivers (driving drunk, erratic driving, just plain rude, etc.) but Gregory was excellent.  He explained (in Spanish) everything to us and was pretty accomadating when we wanted to wake up early to go see the sunrise.

The Following is a collection of fun photos from the Salt Flats

 A big kiss

Great view at sunrise of how the salt (yes that is not ice) is all cracked

 Another view during sunrise

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 Our Jeep!  Gregory, our driver is waving

 Loads of Jeeps lined up in the early morning

 View from the top of Incahuasi Island

 Lots of Cacti on Incahuasi

 Cacti and Salt

 Inside the Salt Hotel (the picture of the actual hotel isn't that cool so I didn't upload it)

 Hiding behind a pile of salt (not snow) that is waiting to be collected for processing

Trains!

 Brett on an abandoned train!

 Picture of Downtown Uyuni

(In the next post I´ll talk about Emily´s two debacles in Uyuni: the Visa issue and her backpack being stolen)