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Day 2 - Rina gets Sick...
The relentless pursue of natural beauty today began with a 4.45am wake-up call from a Bolivian tour guide Santos, however unfortunately Rina has struggled through the night with a combination of altitude sickness and mild food poisoning . Despite various Bolivian herbal and non-herbal remedies that have been prescribed by our hosts, she has had a pretty horrific day. Whilst Bolivia is almost instantly the most spectacular country I have ever visited, this tour is not for the faint hearted. Today we have travelled 320km, which took 12 hours and the terrain in which our 4x4 hammers through is grueling to say the least, and when your suffering like Rina has, it's not nice!
To reach our first stop we climbed to 4855 m above sea level, and if you have never experienced such altitudes it is not easy, the lack of oxygen gives you a headache that feels worst than a hangover following a monster session. However the various sites are well worth the pain. The first was a 17th Century gold mining village set beside a snow-capped mountain which was extremely affluent, corrupt and ran by a devil (or so the story goes) who is still worshiped by miners in Bolivia today. From this point on we went up and down in terms of altitude, and what is most fascinating about Bolivia and this tour is the continually changing landscape.
At the second stop I had my foot buried in the snow and half an hour down the road we our sweating in Arizona type surroundings, then 20 minutes later you are at a blue Lagoon in the middle of the desert.
In just one day we have witnessed snow in the mountains, sat in hot springs, drove through salt flats, walked up the side of a volcano, stood next to volcanic geezers at over 5000m and even seen bloody snow in the desert…surreal.
We finally reached another basic but acceptable hostel for the evening and think Rina is pretty relieved, just hope tonight is better than last night. However what I am not enjoying is the lack of washing, no hostel seems to have hot water and there is no chance that you can have a cold shower at theses temperatures, so it is simply a case of roughing it…lovely!
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