Day 115: Salar de Uyuni (2)

The second day on our tour was scheduled to be the longest one; in the end, we spent about 12 hours getting from one hostel to the next. To make this during daylight, we had to get up really early. Our guide woke us up at 5 am, and we left at 5:45.

Our first stop were the ruins of San Antonio de Lípez, the old site of the village we had slept in. During the Spanish occupation, the village had 5000 inhabitants, most of which were slaves working the nearby gold and silver mines. The Spanish built 27 churches, most richly adorned with gold and silver. The splendor of these days is long gone, however, and today there are only ruins left.

This cemetery was used as a mass burial place for the hundreds of people who died of a disease imported by the Spanish:

Today the ruins are inhabited by Viscacha - a Bolivian animal that looks like a cross between a kangaroo and a rabbit ;-)

A little later, we discovered that even four wheel drive jeeps can get stuck. One of the vehicles driving in front of us didn't make it through a particularly muddy part of the road, and the other drivers had to help by putting big bundles of grass in front of the wheels. Our driver later made it through without any problem - he's the best, of course :-)

The landscape continued to be stunning throughout the day. This, for example, is the view from our lunch spot:

There were quite a few lagoons on our way. This is Laguna Celeste, populated by beautiful pink flamingoes.

The view of the lake with the clouds and mountains in the back was quite dramatic:

One of the next lakes, Laguna Verde, appears green only when there is wind. The wind mixes the minerals in the water, arsenic and magnesium, thereby producing a green color. Without wind, the minerals sink to the bottom and the lake appears white. Luckily, we had a bit of wind - but unfortunately no sun ;-)

This is the desert of Dalí, named like this because the volcanic rocks strewn around the area look like they could have been arranged after one of Dalí's paintings. My photo doesn't really do it justice - the landscape looked fantastically surreal.



The colors of the mountains never failed to amaze me. So great!



Later, we got to take a bath in a natural hot spring. The temperature was perfect, nice and hot. None of us really wanted to leave.



The final highlight of the day were the Sol de Mañana geysers. The area around the geysers looked like another planet, really wonderful! And I love bubbling mud pools, so it was the perfect end to the day.



The geysers are at an altitude of about 5000 meters above sea level. So here is proof of me at my highest ever altitude so far:

Day 114: Salar de Uyuni (1)

The first day of our four-day tour to the Salar de Uyuni took us from Tupiza to a little village called San Antonio de Lípez. The tour is a quite different from the guided tours I did in Argentina and Chile - and a lot cheaper. There are only four of us doing the tour, and we share the comfortable four-wheel-drive with the driver, who is also the guide, the cook, and her son who got to tag along because school only starts next Monday.

The tour led through the sparsely populated altiplano, starting at 3000 meters in Tupiza, and then quickly climbing to - and staying around - 4000 to 4700 meters. There are only very few villages, mostly consisting of just one to six houses.

The roads are in a condition corresponding to the amount of population. Without a 4WD, you'd quickly be stuck.

Most people live either off llama farming or mining. This, for example, is a gold mine shared by a handful of families:



There are also antimony and copper mines around, all equally tiny.

The llamas living in the area are all domestic. To mark which family a llama belongs to, they wear colorful strips of cloth like earrings:

The vicuña, a relative of the llama, also lives in this region. Contrary to the llama, vicuñas are free animals. Due to a harsh winter a while ago, it is even forbidden to hunt vicuñas right now, in order to let their numbers grow again.

The landscape is really magnificent. Even though the weather wasn't all that great, everything was just beautiful.



This is the view from the Paso del diablo which is named like that because dunes of fine sand accumulate in the road in winter.



Here is some more gorgeous landscape:







Our home for the night, San Antonio de Lípez, has 220 inhabitants. This is a typical house in the village:



Despite its size, the village has a tiny school:



Of course, it makes sense that there is a school - the next village (350 inhabitants) is about two hours away.

Day 113: Tupiza

After taking a bus from Villazón to Tupiza in the morning, finding a hostel, and arranging a tour of the Salar de Uyuni for the next days, the two French girls who came with me from Argentina and I went horseback riding. Sitting on a horse had the advantage that we didn't have to exert ourselves at this altitude - Tupiza is at about 3000 meters above sea level.



The landscape around Tupiza is wonderful: red mountains, cactuses and canyons.











I can't believe I'm finally in Bolivia, this is so great!

Day 112: A Change of Plans

When I woke up in the morning, the first piece of news was that the road was open again. So we all waited patiently until the bus was scheduled to arrive in Jujuy... and then waited some more. At about 9am, I went to retrieve my phone that I had been charging in the terminal office. When the staff there heard that we were all waiting to go to San Pedro de Atacama, they broke the bad news to us: the open road was the one to Bolivia; the road to Chile would remain closed for at least another three to five days.

Staying in Jujuy didn't seem like an attractive option; there isn't really a lot to do in the city, and everybody had already explored the nearby Humahuaca gorge.

So suddenly everyone was weighing their options. Some opted to go back to Salta, others to Mendoza. But most thought about going to Bolivia first, and from there back to northern Chile. Considering that I want to be in Oruro, Bolivia, for carnival, I didn't really have time to hang around Jujuy for days. So I, too, decided to skip Chile for now and head to Bolivia.

I had expected that we wouln't get any refund for the bus ticket to San Pedro de Atacama, but thanks to the help of some Spanish speakers in our group, we found out that we could get a refund of 70%. The refunding process took ages, and all the time they tried to convince us that the road would be opened again soon... But by that time, we had heard that story once too often to still believe in it.

At a news stand in the bus terminal, I found that the landslide even made it to the local newspaper. Apparently, several villages along the road had been cut off from the rest of the country.

From the bus to the Bolivian border, we got a good view of the cleared-up landslides. Even on the cleared road, they looked quite dramatic. At one point they had to improvise a detour due to the masses of rocks and earth on the road:

Late in the evening, we finally reached the Bolivian border. The buses don't cross the border here; you have to get out at the bus terminal in La Quiaca, Argentina, walk to the border, and arrive in Villazón, Bolivia, after the formalities. The crossing was uneventful and quick: absolutely zero waiting time! I guess not having to wait for an entire busload of people finishing immigration has its advantages :-)

Day 111: Stuck in Jujuy

So, this was going to be the day I would leave Argentina for good (at least on this trip). However, nature obviously thought I should spend some more time here, and sent down heavy rain in the night. The rain caused landslides, blocking the only road that leads to the Chilean border.

The bus company, obviously hoping that the mess could be cleared away quickly, drove us as far as possible, and then we sat waiting for around five to six hours.

At some point, without any visible reason, they turned the bus around and took us back to Jujuy, the closest bus terminal. There we were told we could leave our luggage in the bus, and should talk to the agency at 8pm to find out exactly when we were leaving again.

So I set off with two girls and a guy from France to have a look at the town. I even found free wifi somewhere so I could call the hostel I booked and tell them I wasn't coming.

Back at the terminal at 8 pm, there was no new information. Be back at 9, they said. In the meantime, other bus companies started posting handwritten signs on their ticket windows, saying that the road was closed and bus services were suspended until further notice:



At 9 pm, there were still no news. Everyone was getting a little impatient because the luggage was still in the bus, we didn't know where the bus was, we didn't know if we were leaving that night, and it was getting a little late to look for a hostel.

At 10 pm, finally, a bit of news: the bus would be coming back to return our luggage, and would then take everyone who wanted back to Salta. It would then leave Salta the next morning at 7 am, reach Jujuy at 8: 30 and then go to Chile.

When the bus finally arrived, we tried to get them to let us sleep in the bus, but unfortunately we didn't succeed - company's orders, apparently.

By that time, all the affordable hostels in town were already full, so we ended up as a group of about 10 people sleeping on the terminal floor.



We tried to make the best of it, had a few beers together and joked about the situation as best we could.



As is often the case, drinking alcohol made me sleepy, so I was one of the first to fall asleep that night.

Day 110: Humahuaca

Today I joined a tour to explore the gorge of Humahuaca, a world heritage site. Going there by public transportation is possible, but inconvenient (the buses stop at bus terminals, not scenic points), and renting a car is rather expensive. Plus, tour guides do provide information that is not contained in the guidebook ;-)

Our first stop was Purmamarca. The backdrop of this village is a brightly colored hill, called the hill of seven colors.

Originally, Purmamarca was a village dedicated to agriculture and pottery. Nowadays, both have been abandoned in favor of tourism. This is a street that might have been typical formerly - today, only the shop in the front left corner is typical. Especially the main square is completely covered with souvenir vendors.

The church in Purmamarca was funny: it is open every day - except for Sunday. And here I was, thinking that Sunday was church-day for Christians ;-)

The next stop was Tilcara. On a nearby hill, the ruins of a pre-hispanic fortress have been discovered and partially reconstructed.

There were several of these fortresses in Humahuaca gorge, all located on cactus-covered hills. The reason why the fortress hills, and only those, are so full of cactuses? Well, apparently the inhabitants held llamas for transport, wool, and food. The llamas ate cactus fruits which of course contain cactus seeds. The llamas couldn't digest the seeds, so they were contained unharmed in the feces. Thus, more cactuses.

The houses and walls in the fortress are constructed simply by layering stones on top of each other, without any type of glue holding them together. The roofs are made from cactus wood with a thick layer of dried mud on top. It is amazing how cool it was inside the houses... very refreshing after the heat outside.

After Tilcara, we stopped at a pottery whose owners are trying to preserve the traditional craft by involving family members from all generations in the process. More for show than any real purpose, they had a couple of llamas in the front yard:



Incidentally, I also had llama for lunch. It tastes very good, similar to beef. By the way, the Argentine pronunciation of llama is crazy - they pronounce the double l as sh, like in shell.

After lunch in Humahuaca, we had some time to walk around the town. This is the church, built at the beginning of the 17th century:



Huge cactuses like this one were growing all around town:



And, finally, the most gorgeous part of the day were the beautiful pink mountains dotting the gorge. Just have a look at these great colors!

Day 109: Still in Salta

The first thing I did in the morning was visit the Museo Arqueológica de Alta Montaña - the museum of high altitude archeology. They display Inca mummies discovered in 1999 at the top of a nearby volcano, in an altitude of 6700 meters.

I never knew much about the Inca, but as it turns out, they used to sacrifice children. The mummies on display are children aged 6, 7 and 15 years.

Sacrifice children? Why, oh why would they do that? I know I am judging another culture according to my modern European values, but I think sacrificing children is just evil. If adults choose to sacrifice themselves for some purpose that's another story, but children should really be untouchable.

That being said, it is amazing how well-preserved both the mummies and the items buried next to them are. Apparently, they believed that death is just a transition, and that the miniature items given to the children would help them after. So there is a whole array of miniature festive inca clothing, animals, utensils and jewelry. Judging from these items, they were quite advanced craftspeople.

As a contrast after the museum, I took a bus to a small town called La Caldera, some 45 minutes away. There I attended my first real South American carnival festivity: the unearthing of carnival.

The procedure was accompanied by a group of costumed people dancing and beating drums:



And this, I guess, is the place carnival was dug out from:



People were putting in offerings of some sort - mostly drinks, but also cigarettes.

At the spectator side, huge snow-and-flour battles were taking place where nobody was being spared. These two were taking a short break from the mayhem:



There were big stacks of artificial snow spray on sale, and apparently the cans went quickly ;-)



After going back to Salta, I climbed Cerro San Bernardo which offers a great view of Salta:



There was quite a crowd of people using the 1000 stairs up the hill as training :-)

In the evening, I treated myself to a big dinner to celebrate my second-to-last day in Argentina. The steak was incredibly big - the picture shows only HALF of it! Just compare the steak to the regular-sized knife...



I was pretty much full after half of it, but of course I couldn't let the yummy steak go to waste ;-)

Day 108: Salta

I arrived in Salta in the late afternoon, with only enough time for a short stroll around the city, and a quick look at some of its churches.

The two biggest ones are the cathedral...



...and the iglesia San Francisco - note the theater-curtain decoration above the doors! First time I've ever seen church doors like these :-)



Across the city, I noticed many small shops called Santería.



They are shops that sell religious merchandise. It's funny that they seem to cater not only to Christians, but other religions as well: there was a fair amount of incense in the windows, and I think I also saw some Buddha statues in the back of at least one Santería.

Seeing the incense in these shops, I suddenly realized that I miss the nice incense smell that was ubiquitous in Japanese temples. I hope I will see (and smell) such temples again once I get to Asia...

On the streets, I also saw the first trace of carnival. A group was performing on Salta's main square, advertising their evening procession.



Seeing this, I am already curious to experience carnival in Bolivia :-)