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Im writing this blog as we are sat in a bus stuck in a road block just outside of Uyuni, Bolivia. We are headed for Potosi, 4 hours away. From what we can understand, the road block has been created by a local in protest of his dad being imprisoned. He has placed rocks accross the road to stop lorries etc getting in and out of Uyuni. We are not sure why we cant just move the rocks out of the way, but we are leaving it to the locals on our bus to enter into diplomatic discussions with the protesters and just waiting patiently! There are several lorries just stuck here. We have already walked twice up the road with our luggage to try to get beyond the road block, and get another bus, only to find more road blocks have been created! Welcolme to Bolivia!
We have been in Bolivia for 4 days now and the differences from Chile are already obvious. This is a poorer country, the locals look and dress very differently to their chilean neighbours, ameneties like hot water and good wifi are even harder to come by, road blocks and bad roads are apparently common! But on the plus side the sights have been beautiful so far and things are a lot cheaper than Chile! So we are looking forward to exploring this massive country.
We entered Bolivia as part of an organised jeep tour, which started with us crossing the border into Uyuni, Bolivia from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. I have heard stories about long wait times and bribes at certain overland borders in South America. Well this crossing was a piece of cake. We arrived by bus at the Chile border and got our exit stamp on our passport, delivered with a smile. Simple. We continue onto the Bolivian border, a very simple building, and receive our entrance stamp and tourist card, with a smile. No bag checks, no questions, no requests for money. We then stop for breakfast in a shack just outside the border, and meet our Bolivian guides and the rest of the group who will be doing the 3 day tour of the South western tip of Bolivia with us. There are 11 of us doing this tour, coming from Brazil, Switzerland, south Africa, Australia and Ireland. Just chatting to them over breakfast, we get the feeling this is a pretty sociable group, similar age range to us, and we are going to have a laugh together. We are split into 2 jeeps,and commence our journey, climbing rapidly to 4900 metres altitude. I was massively worried about altitude sickness, as I had read it is common during this tour, and can have some pretty debilatating effecrts. Luckily, apart from the odd banging headache and some breathlessness at times, our group escape any nasty symptoms. This is the highest we have ever been in the world! The next 3 few days are spent exploring the amazing scenery in this area and i think the photos we have posted speak for themselves. It is bitterly cold here, minus 15 degrees on our first night and our accomodation had no heating or hot water. After eating dinner with our group, playing cards and drinking Pisco to warm us up, we retired to our dorms at around 9pm as we were too cold to stay up. I slept fully clothed including my winter coat , inside a sleeping bag with hat and gloves on, with 3 blankets over me and I was still cold and didnt sleep too well. On our second night we all stayed at the Salt hotel, which is eer, made of salt - salt blocks, salt floor etc. The accomodation was nicer, it was at lower altitude so not as cold, and had a hot shower which was such a treat. We introduced the group to the card game s***head, and had a great night playing cards and drinking quite bad Bolivian wine, after a dinner of llama chops and chips. On the third day we got up at 430 am to go and watch the sunrise over the Salar de uyuni, the salt flats of uyuni, the largest in the world. The drivers are either still drunk or very hungover from last night. I dont know what they were drinking or if they even slept, as they sleep somewhere else at night. The salt flats are what's left of an ancient lake that dried up thousands of years ago leaving a deep floor of salt spanning 4000 square miles and 2 metres thick in places(!!!) its hard to appreciate just how big this place is and its a pretty incredible sight. We arrived in Uyuni, our destination, early afternoon and said bye to half our group who were going on to different places. We were only staying a night in this pretty boring town, and thats why we find ourselves today on this bus with 3 other people from our group, just waiting to get out of here. So to update you on the bus situation. We are finally on the move, hooray, only 4 hours delay!
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