Okay so I am majorly behind with writing anything and I can not be bothered to spend all night on line, so I am just gonna fill you in on the last few days in the absolutely stunning Salar de Uyuni and then maybe tomorrow (am stuck in Uyuni at the moment, nice but small) fill in some of the gaps.
OOh may actually start with Potasi and the mines, which are facinating. AFter spending some time in La Paz I made my way to Potasi where there is a mountain which has been mined for over 500 years, originally mainly for silver, making the spanish very rich, and now for a whole range of metals - but please donīt ask me to list them! Anyhow you can take tours of the mines. The tour starts with you getting all dressed up as a miner, overalls (which actually the miners donīt wear - but it would be terrible for a tourist to get their clothes dirty!), boots, hardhat and head torch, yey head torches are so cool (okay yes I know I am sad, can not believe I just wrote that either) and then you head off to the miners market to buy gift for the miners, gifts of dinamite and fuse, soft drinks, cigarrets which are 1 boliviano (7p) per 20, and coca leaves. The latter being by far the most popular gift, although the dinamite is probably the most useful since the miners have to buy all their own dinamite, which is kinda esential. So then after a tour of the processing plants you head off down the mines. Now I didnīt mind it down the mines at all, but then Iīve never had a problem with small places. Dad and anyone else who has even slight issues with claustrophobia would hate it. It starts off fine but dusty and then you have to crawl down a hole which is little more than half a meter high, completely coated in dust and at some points almost vertical down to the levels that the miners are working in. Where they are working they are making the holes for teh dinamite by hand with a big metal rod and a hammer, which can apparently take up to 7 hours per hole and they do 15 at a time before exploading them. Of course the exploading takes place while other people (and tourists if you go on the afternoon tour (I was on the morning tour)) are near by! We went down two levels like this, and as I said I wasnīt that bothered by it, but other people in the group were, so when it was offered to go down another level to where it get really hot and small, but enthusiastic nodding was completely outvoated by the rest of the group going "letīs go back up". SO we went back up the same small passageways, which is supprisingly hard and the miners used to do it with 40kg bags on their bags until they installed an electric winch about 6 years ago. Even when in the bigger passageways where you can walk upright, getting out is an issue as you all have to sqeeze to the sides ever 5 minutes to let another cart with 2 tonnes of rock, being hauled by 4 people past. At times like that you really do feel like a nusence being a tourist in a working mine. ANyhow it was fascinating, but not traumatic, lots of people apparently come out traumatised vowing never to go back again, we were offered a free tour the next day and if i was staying there i would have taken it. Feel a bit cheated not being traumatised, but probably a good thing. Anyhow then it was off to a complete change of scenary to Uyuni, which I had be told be everyone was outstanding - I was not to be dissapointed.
I arrived in Uyuni at 1am with a friend I have met everywhere, booked into a hostel, got up, had a very cold shower and set off to find a tour. Booked with a cumpany that was recomended to me, $60 rather than the $70 paid by everyone who booked the day before, ha ha ha, and went to get breakfast. Breakfast was good, met a very excentric, very nice middle-aged, South African lady and loads of people I had met before. Went to the market bought thermals and off to start the tour.
Meet all the people in our group who are very nice and am about to get in the 4x4 when the tour people are all "oh sorry no you have to go in this van, cos youīre doing 4 days and everyone else in your group is doing 3" and iīm like "hmmmm, but I like this group and I want to go with this company" anyhow being me I donīt protest too much, and end up with another group, who incidently are also all only doing 3 days! Not too bad as I had actually already met most of the group in Potasi, but three of them were very french and it had two people in in who very much dominated the group and conversation and everything, and I was not too impressed, but what can you do?
But then we were off and wow, it really is stunning here. The first day was spent on the salt falts, which are just huge huge expances of white salt, we had great fun trying to take picture of people holding 4x4s and squashing each other as there is absolutely no sence of perspective or relative size there, they were cool, but mine didnīt work too well. Went to a little village where they process that salt and build almost all their houses out of salt blocks, even the cement is salt based! Bought the most pointless survenier ever from the salt flats, its a dice shaker and dice made of salt, very cool excpet that the dice themselves are anything but cubic, they will be fun, if somewhat unfair to play with! They also had candel sticks made of salt that were actually rather nice and so cheap (like 30p each), am currently plotting how to get back to the small town where they sell them to get some, somehow donīt think it will happen as spending 50 bolivianos on a taxi would kinda negate the fact that they only cost 5 bolivianos!
THe second day was lagoon day, wow, beautiful lagoons surrounded by stunning mountains which are hundreds of shades of reds and ocares and yellows and sometimes even blues and greens, several of which being capped by ice. We had lunch at flamingo lake (not sure what it was actually called, but that would have been a good name for it, due to suprisingly the huge amount of flamingos there). On the way there we were all complaining that we could see no flamingos, but as you neared it, you could see that they were all clustered in one corner and there were hundereds. In the afternoon we visited probably the most stunning lake of the trip called Lagona Colorada, which, no kidding, is crimson. bright red, which patches of whict ice and clear blue water where the spring entres it - I have a lot of pictures if that, which of course will be inflicted on all of you in time. Discovered i can take panoramics on my camera, got a bit carried away with that setting, will probably have to print them off myself. Also visited lots of crazy rock formations in desert sand which could have been straing of of a Dali painting, infact one of the sites was called Dali Desert (and iīm sure thatīs the wrong spelling of desert but i canīt think how to spell the other right now).
This morning we visited a guyser and bubbling mud pools, which were cool and it was fantastic watching the reaction of people that hadnīt been to iceland and hance seen lots of them. At 7am we arrived at a hot spring at 4800m, only me and the english guy in our group went in, the rest being too scared of the cold (the ambient temperature was below zero), but oh my god it was fantastic, so warm and in the most beautiful setting ever, I have pictures of me in it, bizzarely though in panoramic cos i forgot to turn off the mode when i gave my camera to the guy to take pictures, oh well. Getting out was not as bad as expected and in fact very comical since my hair froze, seriously my hair was one big icy mass!
We dropped the people doing the 3 days off that the Chillian boarder, pick up two german guys who were heading back to Uyuni and headed back, apparently this was now turning into a 3 day trip. Final sites were not as stunning but interesting, including the village of St. Cristobel which was originally in a site that contained mineral deposits and was good to mine. So the mining company paid to relocate the entire village, complete with spanking new church and houses with solid walls and corregated iron rooves. very strange it as all so clean and modern and finished and not falling down unlike all the other desert settlements, and then it was back to Uyuni.
Oh yeah I forgot, fairly traumatic experinace on the second night. So we arrive at the hostel place and there is the cutest little girl there, probably about 3 years old, but her mum did not like her getting attention from all us gringos, so shut her in a room at the end of the corridor. Anyhow a little while later the kid starts crying, and crying, and crying, so after an hour on of the guys in our group has finally had enpough and goes to tell the mother, "please, check on your kid, stop her crying, its driving us all nuts". Ten minutes later she actually goes to check, and instantly comes out going "have you anything for burns!" This kid has somehow been burned almost her entire body and has been there in pain for an hour with no attention. The guy who complained is a paramedic and there was also a doctor there, so everyone springs into action. The locals locals come out with bowls of ege white, which apparently helps, but Iīm not sure if it was used. The burns were cleaned and the kid taken to the nearest clinic, which was an hour away. Kinda put a dampner on the evening. Anyhow the kid came back covered in dressings and is gonna be okay, only 2nd degree burns and she may or may not escape scaring, but it was quite shocking, especially for the two people that were actually involved in helping. Just the fact she was left alone crying for so long with no attention is terrible, but anyhow.
So we got back to Uyuni and I actually complained about it being 3 days not 4 and teh group being changed, so they are paying for my accomodation, how nice of them. feel quite bad actually cos they are so nice, but never mind.
So am off to start the 2 and a half day journey to Buenos Aires tomorrow, then back in the UK at week tomorrow - it had better still be hot.
See you all soon
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