First days in Bolivia

After an epic day on the road to La Quiaca we got up early and made our way to the border crossing.  Bolivia and Argentina are divided by the ironically named Rio Grande - a feeble dribble of water that really doesn't justify a bridge in order to cross it.  In any case it has a bridge and you leave Argentina on one side to arrive in Bolivia once you reach the other side.  Who owns the middle bit, nobody knows.

It was market day (as it seems to be every day in Bolivia) and so we were immediately immersed in total chaos.  Banana sellers, men with little carts whisking up homemade juice, women selling alapaca socks, hand woven blankets, pan pipes, fake Chelsea shirts, pirate DVDs and other authentic artesanal stuff.  All in all it made for quite a contrast with the calm of the Argentinian streets we were used to.

Our first destination after leaving Villazon was Uyuni, home to more markets and artesans and the world´s largest salt flats.  Uyuni itself is a fairly unpromising town on the railway line that used to run all the way from the mines of Potosi to Buenos Aires, so we wanted to get out onto the salt flats as soon as possible.  For a couple of reasons we decided to leave the bikes in town and hop in a jeep with a guide: firstly our bikes are made of steel and so we´d have to cover them in grease to stop them rusting; secondly we wanted to go and see some of the volcanos and lakes between the salt flats and the Chilean border, which involves crossing some quite inhospitable desert and requires a lot of local knowledge to avoid getting horribly lost (not to mention running out of water because it´s a desert and having to camp in areas where it can get as cold as -65f at night).

On the first day we drove out into the middle of the salt flats and visited an incredible island covered in cactus and outcrops of coral that died 40,000 years ago (when the sea that was once here dried up) and became fossilised.  Whichever way we looked we could see nothing but pure white salt, and dark mountains floating like islands in the distance.  The Salar de Uyuni is so big (12,500 sq. km) and so featureless (except for the two islands in the middle) that driving across it was a an extreordinary experience.  It felt like you could drive for hours and hours and still not make any progress towards your destination.

Still after a lot of driving in a straight line we made it off the salt flats we stopped at another relic from the days when this whole area was under water - La Cueva de Galaxia.  Miguel, the man who discovered La Cueva de Galaxia in 2003, showed us around his amazing find.  Whilst searching for a Pre-Inca burial ground Miguel and his friend Walter came across the entrance to a big cave that had become blocked with silt.  They dug through the silt expecting to find the Pre-Inca mummies they were searching for but instead were greeted by the incredible sight of two chambers full of fossilised sea weed and coral that have formed strange bone-like outcrops and stalactites that look like they belong on another planet.  (We´ll put some pictures up soon)

After marvelling at the caves we headed off to find somewhere warm to stay before the sun set and it got too cold.  We ended up sleeping in a hotel built entirely out of blocks of salt - salt walls, salt floor, salt tables, salt chairs, salt beds, salt everything (except the windows and the loo).  The next day we woke up really early and stood brushing our teeth outside the salt hotel and watching the sun rise over the mountains before driving off towards Oliague, a giant conical volcano that towers over a valley full of strange sandstone shapes.  The rocks have been carved by the wind over the centuries into all sorts of unearthly forms, and are host to some really strange looking plants, including giant green lumps of moss about the size of a car and the shape of a brain.

Next our guide drove us on to a sulphurous lake that is home to Flamingos and Storks.  On the day we visited there were only two Flamingos at the lake, but they were being very cooperative and standing near the edge so that we could get a good look at them.  We slept by Lago Colorado, where there were a few more Flamingos, and on the way there we were lucky enough to see a mountain fox chewing on some bones by the side of the road.

The next morning we got up at 5am and drove all the way up to a geyser field called El Sol de Manana, almost 5,000m up.  It was freezing cold and still dark when we reached the geysers, but the sun was about to creep over the horizon so the clouds in the distance were bright red.  When we got out of the car for a closer look the red sky and the thick clouds of smoke blowing across us from the geysers created quite a spectacle.

A few hours later we stopped for breakfast by some hot springs.  We decided to leap in the hot springs first.  There was a howling wind blowing and it was still so cold that we were wearing literally every item of clothing in our possession, and so we had to psyche ourselves up for putting on swimming trunks and jumping into the springs, but once we were in it was like being in a bathtub.  We sat there defrosting in the water and basking in the morning sun but eventually had to summon up the courage to get out and get some breakfast.  On the short walk from the springs to the comedor our swimming trunks and hair froze solid in the icy wind!

After breakfast and a very, very long drive we eventually made it back to Uyuni and were reunited with our bikes for the trip on to La Paz.