Salt Flats and Oruro

As promised here is my update about our trip to the Salt Flats from 2 weekends ago. In Spanish this is called Salar de Uyuni. Salar means Salt Flats, and Uyuni is the place where they are. I have in fact been there before, with Abi and Laura, back in 2008 when we first came to Bolivia, but as it is quite a unique place and everyone else was going on this trip, I wanted to go again. Greedy huh.

(Just to update in real time - on Tuesday, Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, died - he was very good friends with Bolivia and with Morales, so this could effect us here in some way. There is obviously lots of coverage on TV about it all. Alicia was telling me about a political satire programme on the radio that was talking a lot about the close relationship between Hugo and Evo (Morales), and that they'd said what would you get if you joined Hugo with Evo? HUEVO (meaning EGG in espanol). I liked this joke, mainly because it's probably the first Spanish political joke I've understood (not that I've heard that many). The taxi driver this morning was pretty anti-Morales, due to his drug policies - a valid point. Sorry for the digression but it's quite an important update).

We had to get up at 430 on the Friday to get the 6am bus - Noelia from the Spanish School came with us again as she had to La Isla del Sol. She's very sweet, and so patient - she didn't even get upset when pushed over by the nasty Quechua lady getting on the trufi in Oruro. She's also a very good Spanish teacher, and last time I had a lesson with her I had to tell her the story of Little Red Riding Hood, in Spanish, to practise using past tenses. I had to keep asking her what the story actually was, as I couldn't remember. I forgot the all important bit about the wolf dressing up as the grandma. Anyway. We met Noelia at 6am and got on the bus to Oruro, from where we were taking the train to Uyuni. Oruro is about 4 hours away to the Southwest, but it took about 6 hours as there'd been a landslide the day before and the road was pretty congested because of this. I pretty much slept and listened to panpipe music, and drank water, but not too much as there was no loo. This is the continual problem when travelling around here - it's a bit of a catch 22 because you don't want to get dehydrated, especially if you're going somewhere at high altitude, but you don't want to drink loads of water and not be able to go the loo. Luckily I was still recovering from my weird stomach bug so mainly just slept and didn't eat or drink anything just in case.

We got to Oruro and went for lunch - possibly this is where some of us got typhoid, as someone later mentioned that Oruro isn't the best place to eat. Anyway afterwards we went to get the 3.30 train - it goes about 3 days a week from Oruro to Uyuni, and sometimes to some towns close to the Chilean border too. It's really clean this train, and had a bathroom - que luxury - and a restaurant car too. Food was slightly strange but it's always exciting to have a restaurant car on a train as it makes me feel like I'm in a film. Again, I did a lot of sleeping, and a lot of gazing out of the window at the huge scenery passing by - mountains, lakes, plains, the odd flamingo here and there, amazing clouds and rain and and sunshine - I listened to Janacek's Sinfonietta because it keeps mentioning it in the book I'm reading (1Q84 by Murakami), and I was intrigued to find out what it is so had downloaded it. All in all I was pretty happy on the train, possibly even a bit euphoric.

We arrived to Uyuni around 1030pm and found our really cute little hotel nearby - there were no windows in the rooms, so it felt perpetually like the middle of the night in there. I shared a room with Noelia, whose alarm went off at 5am and made me jump. That's when she normally wakes up - wowsers.

The breakfast tables were made of salt, which from a distance looked like polystyrene.

We took breakfast up to Lee as she was suffering a bit with altitude sickness - it's a bit higher there, probably about 3800m. We had time to wander around Uyuni a little bit before 2 jeeps came to pick us after breakfast. It's a very touristy little town, you become one of many gringos there, which always upsets me somewhat. I did jump on the bandwagon however and buy some llama wool leg warmers and an Andean cross necklace.... When in Rome...

Me and Shiv - not sure what the weird leg posture is about

Our first stop in our jeeps was the train cementery, which is exactly what it says it is - a load of dead trains, just outside the main town. We climbed all over them like a climbing frame in a playground, and I spent quite a bit of time gazing at the mountains and clouds again. It's kind of easier to just show you the pictures, so here you go:

a message for me seemingly...

After this we drove to a lake that had some flamingoes in it, and nearby there were some llamas and we also found a little lizard and held him in our hands - that's a first for me. I have also managed to get over my fear of small to medium sized moths, and so far have caught 2 of them in my hands to take outside. The others seem to not share my 'no killing of insects' policy (apart from Nikki) - Santiago stood on a moth the other day and I told him to never do it again please. Anyway the lizard was very well behaved and sat very still on my hand, you could feel him breathing quite fast. After a while of staring at him we put him back under a little bush near the llamas.

My picture of the flamingoes was too far away to see them, so here's a nice sign instead

After that we carried on to the Salt Flats themselves via another little market where I bought some more gringotastic souvenirs, including bolivian flag earrings. In some places the salt at the salt flats is 6 metres deep, and in other places it's 12 metres. That's a lot of salt, given that the salt flats cover an area of about 2000km in all. There were some men piling the salt up into little pyramids, called conicos de sal, and then lorries come along and pick them up and take them away. Apparently they don't export much of the salt, but use it here in Bolivia mainly. This is good if true, because when they started exporting quinoa (a super healthy protein-rich grain) to the rest of the world it put the price up too high for locals to afford it anymore, which is not good as it was a staple food for them previously, and is really good for you. This is an example of bad development. Here are some salt pyramids:

We ate lunch on the salt flats, which was weird - see picture. It felt like eating lunch on the moon, but with more gravity I expect:

Then we took pictures of perspective-defying things:

And jeeps, jumping, and half jumping

Maz, Shiv and Beth jumping

there's a bit of water on the salt flats as it's rainy season at the this time of year

mid jump - not easy to get us all in the air at the same time

We visited a salt hotel, which is made of salt (I saw some pretty serious looking structural cracks inside, so not sure I'd like to stay there and end up buried in salt the next morning). The roof is made of plastic obviously because rain + salt would = no roof. I don't actually have a photo of the salt hotel - but here's the flags that were outside (there wasn't an English one - I said that was fine with me, but Tom was upset there wasn't one and said I should be more patriotic...), and the inside of the salt hotel:

a salt llama

a non-salt Snoopy - he was on the curtain inside

After all the salt excitement we headed back to Uyuni for some food - pizza - and a long wait for the train which left back to Oruro at 11.45pm. An angry Quechua lady kept coming in to the waiting room and shouting something in Spanish about how we weren't allowed to use the plugs to charge our phones etc. We thought maybe she needed a hug, it might have helped dissipate her anger, but none of us gave her one. The train back was the same train we'd got the other way, I think we were on the same carriage in fact. This time I had a window seat again and was right next to a heater which blew very hot air on to my legs, which was quite annoying. After getting cold on the journey to La Isla del Sol via La Paz I had brought loads of warm clothes for this trip, and a blanket, and I wanted to make sure I used the blanket no matter what, but I had to give in and get rid of it as I was literally boiling hot.

We got to Oruro about 7 and went for api and bunuelas in the market, followed by a small mining museum complete with a trip down into the mine (no thanks for me as I still have claustrophobia and my life is just fine without going into small dark spaces like mines - I looked after the bags outside instead and listened to dogs fighting in the street).

api - left, bunuela - right

I had 4 apis, as people couldn't finish all theirs - I really like them, it's made with purple corn - you can't eat purple corn apparently, it's only good for making into api.

view from my bag watching position - I think of a miner - probably rising up in revolution as they did over the years against the terrible conditions down the mines

After this we went to look at the view of Oruro from up a big hill where there was a Christ statue - this is where Noelia got into the fight with the nasty old Quechua lady who pushed her over...

Virgin Mary on the hill opposite us

And that was pretty much the end of that. We got the bus back to Cochabamba, which was more or less uneventful, I did my favourite thing again - sleeping while listening to music (mainly panpipes this time), and when I woke up it was really hot again - it seems the weather had changed this weekend and the rainy colder season was over. It's nice to have some sun, but I always find as an English person that it really zaps all my energy, and I need siestas. Or maybe I'm really getting old these days - Tom and Diana found some grey hairs and pointed them out to me very proudly... thanks guys. Me Beth and Nikki went for ice creams at our favourite ice cream place - Frozz - and then we went home.

Sorry it took so long to get this update written, the thing with blogging is the longer you leave it, the harder it gets to remember everything even though I keep notes - it's better to do it closer to the time to capture the mood properly. I bought a nice new notebook and some coloured pens so I can be more organised with my to do lists and blog notes etc - Leanne has taken to calling me a nerd (in an affectionate way I think....) - I think she might be right :)

Over and out and happy mothers' day! Pepinillo xx