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After Puno and returning from Lake Titicaca, I said my goodbyes to Samantha which was very sad. Having spent 10 weeks with her and the other volunteers, now embarking on the first real leg of my journey, and on my own, it felt scary! I got a bus from Puno to La Paz and ended up sitting next to an Australian lady who also was travelling on her own. She ended up coming to the same hostel that I was staying in a spent 4 nights there. Now, this hostel was described as ¨The party hostel of La Paz¨, and sure thing it was. Imagine a group of barely post pubescent 18 to 20 year olds is a incestuous party pit which is old mansion house, converted into a 24 hour discoteque/ (we´re going to call it a hostel!) - The Loki hostel. In La Paz itself, for me there wasn´t that much to see. I viewed some of the museums in the centre and spent many days, endlessly walking around the many street markets, ventured up to the witches market where you can buy all sorts of hocuspocus to relieve you of any ailment you so deserve. Amongst the hocus and potions, there lay llama foetus amongst others, believed to bring good luck to anyone who so wishes to purchase them.
At the weekend, I booked up a tour to go and see the salt flats in Uyuni. I managed to persuade a guy from the hostel called Alex to come along. He was contemplating trying to get out of the vacuum of La Paz also, it was a perfect opportunity. We took the 12 hour night bus from La Paz, the most bumpy and annoying bus journey of my life. Every time I nodded off, i´d be woken by my head being bashed against the window of the bus as we went over yet another rock (well, I believe the to be rocks anyway!) When we arrived in Uyuni, I was slightly grumpy and to make matters a little worse, no one from the tour agency came to pick us up from the Bus Station as stated on our itinerary. We walked to the tour office which luckily was just around the corner. Again, there was nobody there! the office opened after a short wait and we did all the necessary paper work whilst wondering where everyone else on the tour was and panicking over the fact that we might have to endure the company of only each other for the next four days. Luckily, the people we were placed with on the tour were brilliant and really made the tour what it was. They were all from England too and we had a lot of fun.
On the first day, we went to the train cemetery, our first stopped to muse amongst the old, rusty and redundant trains, once used to transport silver from Bolivia outwards. It was a lovely hot day and we were all jumping around, from train to train, taking pictures and generally being a little stupid. After this, we went to the salt flats ( the largest salt flats in the world). The salt flats, again at attitude (over 3500 metres) are the remnants of a prehistoric lake which dried up hundreds of years again. This area is amazing, dazzling white and hot. We looked around but actually spent most of our time here thinking of interesting photographic illusions to make on our cameras for giggles! Our first night Uyuni Salar de Uyuni involved us staying in a hostel made entirely of salt. Salt beds, salt wall, salt chairs, you name.... it was all salt. It was kind of a weird experience and I´m sure, a health and safety risk. The air in there was making me feel very strange! But it definitely was fun and in the morning, I woke up at 5pm to see the sun rise above the mountains, reflecting down over the salt desert....
Over our second and third day, we visited some of the islands within Salar de Uyuni. Again, a scorching hot day, but like in the dessert, the nights were bitterly cold. We hiked up islands, volcanic areas covered with archaic larva. One island we visited was really interesting. Imagine an island, 4000 meters above sea level, no water thousands of kilo meters either way, covered in coral and cacti more than 100 years old all in the middle of a desert! It was bizarre!!
On the last day which went to the Laguna Verde and Laguna Rojo where we saw pink flamingos feeding on planctum in the lakes. Salar de Uyuni has to be one of the most picturesque places i´ve been to so far. It was staggering beautiful.
After the trip, we dropped Alex off at the border to cross to Chile, where as I had planned to go back to La Paz (later to realise that that was a mistake and a half). I said my goodbyes at the border and then I was driven 10 hours back to Uyuni, to get the night bus again and arrive in La Paz the following day.
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