Smells like silkworms
Howdy folks!
Well i am back from my excursion to the salt flats! Very good stuff but first...
As I think i said we spent an extra day in Sucre cos the tour leader thought potasi was a hole and like the sucre hotel a lot better... but it was all good... Got taxis to Potasi (same nice interesting curvy roads with the driver falling asleep towwards the end!) and did the mine tour... Think we got more of an adventure experience rather than cultural whihc was a bit disappointing... A lot of people I had spoken to had loved their mine tour - got to talk to the miners etc. We met three miners and were told about their working conditions - start working there when 14, work 7 days a week, life expectancy of about 50 on the upper levels, but if work in the lower levels then only 10-20yrs after they start working due to the bad conditions (is around 45 degrees and has high levels of arsenic) and then we let of a stick of dynamite and explored some of the mine. The tour operator hadnt gone the way she took us out before and it was pretty interesting at times... Had a little rock face had to climb, a tunnel had to crawl thru on your tummy and get dragged out of, and then after we´d been walking down there about an hour the guy points to a hole in the ceiling (about 4m above) and say we need to get up there... so he clambers up the wall like a monkey and goes in search of a ladder to help us get out... the ladder didn´t fit down thru so we had to get a ´leg up´from the guys to clamber onto the ladder which was wedged against the opposite wall and make our way up... - got some lovely bruises from it all.
Potasi is a UNESCO site and I thought it was really pretty around the historical part - I really enjoyed it, even tho the hotel we were staying at was still in the process of being built, it was all good. Then got a private bus to Uyuni... Just had dinner and got ready for our 4wdriving adventure...
Visited the train graveyard, had fun at the salt flats (will add more pics later as they are on a different memory card), and then did a whole lot of driving. We went up to 4900m - most of the time we were around 4200m. The only time the altitude has really affected me was when I was in La Paz when i had those bad headaches... And just get a bit breathless sometimes... Carmela got really bad altitude sickness and was feeling pretty nauseous, but after some of the tablets she is making a good recovery. Our 4wd man was chewing cocoa leaves for altitude - and they smell like silkworms i reckon...
The things that stick out about the three days are all the llamas, the bumpy dirt roads, the dust, and the red-brown-grey andean mountains, and the most beautiful night sky ever - was hardly a spot without a twinkle in it! We also saw heaps of the andean deer whose fur is apparently the finest natural fibre and is worth 5times its weight in silver... We had a long drive back on our final day - got up at 4 to see the sun rise, however our vehicle getting bogged right beside a geyser (right after our driver had told us not to get too close to them due the gases being not good for you)... and then we got a flat tyre later on but arrived back in Uyuni at around 5. Caught a night train at 12 - was pretty funny as we got into this carriage with no lights and were just waiting there... this fancy lit up train pulls up beside us, and because we all have so much faith in our tour leader we were asking whether we should check we were on the right train... In the end our carriage got shunted to join the other one and we got electricity. A little man then hands out blankets and little pillows and a little cake snack... If you had already fallen asleep he tucked the blanket around you (very cute). Anyway now back in La Paz and had super fun shopping this afternoon with Jo. We are now off to our final group dinner - 5 are leaving tomorrow (including Jo) and 4 are joining us. Will write again soon!
Dinosaur footsteps
The ´God´that they make an offering to before working in the mine (reminds me of the monster in Pans Labyrinth)
Potasi streets
Train graveyard
Salt flats