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According to our guide book, the journey to Tupiza should take 6-7 hours so we made that eight as per Latin America bus rules. We were therefore very surprised when we made it there in 5.5 with a lunch stop!
We arrived into sunshine, heat and lower altitude, a welcome change from Potosí. We checked into our hostel, 15 minutes walk out of town and that afternoon began our quest to find a tour of the Salar that ended in San Pedro in Chile. We spent the next few days trying to sort this out by trying to juggle with two companies at once to get enough people for this particular tour. At one point we thought we had it and all we needed were for the other two people to pay a deposit but eventually this fell through and we booked ourselves onto a tour going a different route and ending in Uyuni, Bolivia with an extra day of transfer to Chile. After all this palaver this did actually turn out to be the best way to do it.
As for Tupiza itself, it's a small town with not much going on but with beautiful surroundings. It appears that the place is recommended more in a French guide book as we seemed to only meet French and French-Canadians. However even with the influx of the French-speakers, it was definitely not very touristy.
On New Year's Eve we wandered a bit, internetted, and found a good place for a set lunch for £1.50. After lunch, we had booked to go horse riding in the surrounding area, a place that felt like we were in the Wild West. We were met at the hostel by a nice girl who chatted to us a bit and took us to meet the horses which had been brought by Clinton our guide who turned out to be a man of very few words. We were kitted out with (sort-of) cowboy hats and off we went, me on Talia and Simon on Máximo. Talia was definitely boss and did anything she could to stop Simon and Máximo from passing. Unfortunately she was also a plodder and nothing I did would make her go any faster: she clearly wasn't pretending she was in a cowboy film like the rest of us. Anyway, these issues were surpassed by the scenery of huge red rocks, cacti and gorges that we rode through. It was a beautiful afternoon and the scenery was the reason we had come to Tupiza. At one point we came across a man herding about 100 goats in a gorge. The colours of the rocks together with the blue, clear sky were stunning but this was just the start of day after day of buenas vistas for us.
That evening, clean and dust-free, we headed into town for New Year's Eve. We had set our sights on a Mexican restaurant/bar which we thought could be fun but sadly turned out to be closed. The other eating options were a bit limited to pizza, which we'd had the previous night, and the ubiquitous chicken and chips. We eventually found a grill restaurant where we found three French-Canadians that we'd previously met and sat across from them to enjoy some food and wine (warm white which I'd accidentally picked thinking it was red. Turns out they haven't caught onto refrigerating white wine in Bolivia yet). Things weren't going quite as planned, but this is Bolivia.
We had heard that the main plaza was the place to be for the celebrations so after staying in the restaurant for as long as we could, this is where we headed. Here we met up with a Belgian and a French couple and took in the atmosphere which improved as it got closer to midnight. There was a bit of music going on and a few fireworks being let off and lots of families out. At midnight there were more fireworks and then a procession of people started around the plaza which went on for ages. It was a different New Year for us but a good one once we'd worked out what was going on. Drinking alcohol did not seem to be a part of it, just with the foreigners, although we did have a very drunk Bolivian join our group until we managed to get rid of him!
The next day we did not do much, partly because there was not much to do and the town was very quiet. We bought some food for the evening from the market then tried to find a place for lunch. It seems more places are closed on New Year's Day than on Christmas Day, but we found one slightly rubbish place which did the job. We managed to make it up to a white Jesus statue on the hill for a view across town and beyond, joining several young Bolivian couples and some smashed glass- clearly this had been where the party was last night!
In the evening we made some food and finally got to speak to some native English speakers, an Irish couple travelling the opposite way from us who we swapped tips with.
Tupiza had been a good place to stay for a few days but we were now ready for our five day trip into the wilderness of south-west Bolivia, our last Bolivian adventure.
Katy
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