Bolivia Archives - Page 2 of 2 - In Search Of Umami

To get to Sucre we had to take a 17 hour bus through half of Bolivia. Of course the bus didn't have a toilet but it was kindly stoping when someone wanted to pee...too bad there were no trees on our way. As peeing gringos we would be probably a local attraction so we decided not to drink and hope for the best. It was a bit difficult since we were not going on a road just sand and rocks. The bus was jumping, windows were opening, dust was getting into the bus. Bolivian adventure begins!:)

After 5 months of travelling we were longing for a place to stay for a while, a place that could make us feel like home. And we found it in Sucre in an Irish sounding hostel Celtic Cross. Run by a German and South African it is as Irish as us two but it felt good, comfy and homie. And it provides us a real live telenovela full of original people dating, divorcing, being victims of Bolivian husband/ wife/ passport hunters. And so Sucre felt immediately like a village even though it is the capital of Bolivia.

Sucre is by far the most beautiful city we have seen so far. It's full of wonderful white buildings, colonial churches, pretty squares, nice markets with a variety of fruit, vegetables and chocolate!! Unfortunately the Bolivians haven't heard about cables running in the ground so all of them run through the air spoiling every picture.

But even such a stunning city has another side. Begging people on the streets and working kids. They sell food, magazines but the most popular job seems to be polishing shoes and not even wearing flip flops stops them from asking. Many of these people don't even speak decent Spanish just Quechua so one of the native languages which was spoken by the Incas and is actually not really a written language. So I guess Jandirk's rising knowledge of Spanish won't be helpful everywhere:)

Mercado central, one of many juice stations

From Salta on we started seeing familiar faces more and more. The famous "Gringo trail" where we all meet to see the must sees of South America. And the fellows we meet were divided into two groups: those who have already visited the Salt Flats and those who, just like us, were on their way. From the experiences of those who have already seen it, we found out about crazy drunken tour drivers and made a decision which one we should take. We went for 4 day tour offered by La Torre tour and we packed ourselves into their cool jeep with a pair of Canadians. Carlie and Scott were a young couple. We immediately got to know each other pretty deeply as Carlie had a bad food poisoning. It still didn't stop her from being cheerful and super social in breaks between one bag and another. And so we hit the bumpy, non- existing roads of Bolivia together to see countless lamas and their wild brothers vicunas. Both beautiful and graceful. Obviously I made millions of pictures like a Chinese tourist of which none turned out to be good. We also saw countless lagunas and flamingos of three different types (before I thought that a flamingo is just a flamingo).
For those who think that South America is hot everywhere, all year long the Salt Flats tour would be a freezing wake up call. During the trip we went as high as 5000 m and the temperature difference between day and night was huge. Our second night was definitely the worst I have ever experienced... -15 to -20 C, holes in the walls and windows. Even our two sleeping bags, full clothing or even gloves or hat couldn't protect us from the cold. Taught by the mistakes of other travellers we slept with all of our electronics to wake up with a sigh of relief that only the window got frozen. I'm not even going to mention that the toilets that we got to experience were a chapter on their own...
But it was all worth it, the views were spectacular and on our third and last night we got to sleep in a nice salt hostel. All the bricks and furniture were made of salt blocks taken from the salt flats, even the floor was covered in salt. For few extra bolivianos we took "ducha caliente" (unfortunately it was an over promise as the water in the shower was far from hot but at least there was water) and after a short but finally enjoyable night, all four of us were excited to finally see the Salt Flats of Uyuni. The Salar is the biggest in the world with it's 10 582 km2 surface. It's also pretty high, on the altitude of 3656 m above the sea level. Once a lake, now an ocean of salt, it definitely took our breath away. It's absolute flatness, the contrast of the infinitive, white salt with a blue sky and the company made us forget the cold and just enjoy. We visited one of the islands which is an incredible green point and gives a crazy view on the Salar. We also saw a hostel in the middle of it all which unfortunately got closed after sanitary problems. To finish our journey all four of us got lost in the crazy tradition of taking insane pictures. Jumping, laughing and balancing on different objects we ended up our trip definitely hoping to see each other again.