The trip to bolivia, as with most border crossings, was exhausting. We got on a bus in Salta at 12:30am headed for the border. It was a comfortable one, our last for a while. I guess that I never mentioned that in Argentina (and much of South America from what I hear) the buses are all double decker and are extremely comfortable. The seats on the lower level recline into flat beds and the ones up top recline more than any I've ever seen, though not flat. Also, there's just 3 seats to a row so they're very wide and well cushioned. A cleanish bathroom is found on every bus so they don't stop as often as in other countries and so there's a meal service as well. Only some of the buses give food, but one gave me way more than I could eat and had a hot dish as well with complementary wine. Not too bad.
So, the trip, well the bus was 7 hours long and we woke up groggy at the Argentine border town very early in the morning. There I spent 30 minutes shivering in the cold when the girls waited in an epic line for the bathroom. Why didn't they use the bus? From there we walked 15 minutes to the border and stood in line with many other travelers to get an exit stamp. During the hour long wait, I approached every backpacker I saw leaving Bolivia to try and buy a guidebook off of them but nobody had one for sale. Some had the Shoestring book and still needed it and others gave it away to Bolivian hostels. What a waste. I also got to watch local people walk across the river border through a hole in the fence a couple hundred yards away.
Finally on the Bolivian side, to get my visa I had to fill out an extremely long form, give a photo, and pay $135 to enter the country. Supposedly I won't have to pay the $135 again unless I get a new passport but I'm sure that will happen before I return to Bolivia. The others in my group sailed through but I had to do all that for the sin of being American. I suppose down here I should say US citizen instead because South Americans indignantly claim that they are Americans too since they're from the Americas and that it's outrageous of the US to claim that it's the sole 'America'. I think that's pretty dumb. Words are like marketing campaigns... they're not based on what's 'right', just on what's 'popular', and in the grand sceme of things the US is pretty damn popular even though many just love to hate it. That's just another form of popular recognition.
From there we had to wait for like 6 hours in the train station until we could connect to Tupiza, the first popular town inside of Bolivia, and about 2 hours by train away. I didn't look out the window too much since the hot sun was blazing into that side, but it looked like the sort of parched country that Nevada is blessed with. I read 'The Kite Runner' and munched on bread and water.
Tupiza is a small town of 22k people at an elevation of 2950 meters. It's got a reputation as a cowboy town and thusly the most popular activity is horse riding. There are a couple hostels in town, but not too many travelers on the streets which blare parade music most of the day. Many of the young girls in town are preparing for the upcoming carnival by practicing their moves. We even saw 6 year old students practicing their formations when we peeked over a wall. I guess if the place wasn't so desperately poor it might be considered charming. As it is, the place had a bustling market, good street tamales and empanadas, and low prices so I was very satisfied with it.
After checking into the hostel which lacked wifi, lockers, or toilet paper, we wandered town deciding what tour to do. Eventually we settled on a 5 hour horse ride after a disappointing dinner we headed for bed. Long travel days are exhausting. Oh, I made sure to haggle a few bucks off of the $20 tour price. What a deal. Oh, this is a picture of some mummified llamas at the market. I think that they're used for some kind of witchcraft but maybe that's just a misunderstanding of a beautiful local tradition.
The next day I bought a big bag of apples to bribe the affection of the horses with, and we were led over to the small ranch that had the horses saddled up and ready to go. I haven't liked the idea of a horse ride since I went on a long one in Costa Rica a few years ago. There was a lot of rain and it was pretty uncomfortable. This one turned out to be a lot better. The horses stayed at a slow and comfortable pace and we didn't have to do much of anything... they knew the routine very well. First stop was the Canyon Del Inca.
The area is pretty bare of large plants and features erosion on a large scale. Red earth and rocks form towers in narrow canyons that only showed traces of water in some small and shallow pools in the narrowest places. 
We hiked a little ways up but there's not much more to see... just more rocks so we turned around, got back on the horses, and crossed a lot of open country before reaching the next set of canyons. Some of the cacti on the way were in bloom with huge white flowers and some rarer small red ones.
Trouble was, as we approached the next canyon some clouds were forming on the horizon, some small drops of water reached us, and the wind picked up but we pressed on because we still had a couple hours of horse time and wanted to make the most of it. The next canyon, whatever it was called, was pretty much like the last one except that when we finished with it the rain finally came. I had my rain coat in my satchel and so did Marion, but that still only covered a small part of myself. Jowen and Donya were fully exposed to what turned into an extremely strong downpour complete with thunder and lightning. The horses didn't mind the noise so much, but they spent more time straying from the path and walked slower than ever.
As we were at least an hour away from town, we just had to accept being completely soaked. Rivers of mud came out of every minor gully and every crease in the nearly barren hills.
It was really quite a sight and I laughed at the situation and mostly enjoyed it, though soaking my jeans and shoes wasn't so nice. Closer to town the road converged with the river and the horses had to struggle down a raging torrent of muddy water that we prayed they wouldn't slip in. Eventually the rain let up but the river didn't and I got a few pictures. Our 16 year old guide didn't seem bothered by any of it.
After getting home we did our best to squeeze the water our of our clothing and backpacks, thanked the stars that our cameras were ok (I took them when the first drops fell and put them in my rain coat), and I dropped off my pants with a guy who claimed that he could have them dry by morning. He succeeded and we caught a bus towards Uyuni in the morning after getting some breakfast in the market hall. Oh, and about the picture... I forget if I mentioned that I'm growing a silly mustache for South America. It's something to do.
What is there to say about bus rides? They're long, not so eventful, and I got to see a wide variety of jagged, flat, and rolling land devoid of anything but scrub brush. I ate a bag of now cold tamales that I bought in the market and drank from a huge bottle of water for the 6 hour bus ride. Finally we got into the rather unattractive and flat town of Uyumi where we planned to book a salt flat tour from. Of course we walked around for a while asking the many gringos where the best hostel was and I think we found it. Clean comfortable dorms but no wifi or lockers... I guess that's as good as it gets around here.
Having some beers in the town square, in front of our hostel, let us chat up some other travelers who just finished their tour and we got to her the details. Basically, everyone does the 1 or 3 day tour. The one day takes you out to the salt hotel on the lake (Salar they call it) and to the train graveyard before dropping you off in town in the late afternoon.
The 3 day does that and also a couple long hard days of driving in the mountainous highlands. The girls claimed to not have much time and wanted to do something short. Jowen and I wanted to part from them politely so we insisted on doing a 4 day tour which included an overnight stay in the salt hotel. The girls ended up deciding to join us anyways rather than join a new and random group for a shorter tour. Oh well, they're fine, just not so interesting as I said before. The meal above was from the market. I think it's llama meat with tiny potatoes and giant corn as big as my thumb.
We got our supplies together (lots of wine) and the next morning we loaded into large Toyota SUV to drive out to the lake. At first the land was just dusty and flat but as we got closer to the lake we started to see some building building made from dirty looking salt bricks and thatch. Then we reached the point where the land ends and the lake begins and were a bit surprised to see a hell of a lot of water. 
It looked about a foot deep and the other trucks were driving right into it after a brief stop. The seven of us climbed onto the roof of the vehicle to better take in the view and we started our drive through the shallow lake to the salt hotel that was a speck on the horizon.
The sun was bright and we put on some sun screen (not enough) and enjoyed the views. Shallow and clear water on top of the white salt forms a very convincing mirror and the sky and lake blended into a single blue horizon in the distance. Some volcanic islands and snowy mountains in the distance appeared to float in the sky. It was magic. Normally on this day we would also drive further out into the lake to reach Isla Del Pescados but the water was too deep this time of year and the island was out of reach. There's supposed to be some beautiful hairy cacti and a stranded colony of curly tailed rabbits there in the middle of the salt. Oh, I also want to mention that this lake is really high up... like 12000 feet high and 4000 square miles in size.
During the rainy season (the summer apparently) the lake gets some water and turns into the mirror that we saw today. The winter dries out the lake and turns it into a huge flat plain of salt crystals. That's the most popular time to visit, July through September, but it gets damn cold (-20C at night with wind) and I think that it's got to be prettier now. After maybe 45 minutes of driving over the water we reached the salt hotel in an area of the lake that's a little shallower at 2 to 6 inches of water. There were a couple dozen jeeps there unloading tourists and cooking lunch on the tailgates. We added ourselves to that bunch, left our shoes in the car, and wandered into the salty water.
The salt crystals are pretty uncomfortable to walk on. In the areas with a lot of traffic they range between fine beach sand and sharp cubes the size of baby peas. The cubes hurt enough already to walk on, but if you strayed further from the hotel where fewer people walked and drove on the surface, the salt formed a hard crust with small spires of jagged salt jutting up under the water. My sandals were unavailable at the moment and I thought I'd tough it out so I walked barefoot like some other people. Thankfully I didn't cut myself or I'm sure it would have really hurt.
Because the land is perfectly flat and uniform, it's popular to take funny pictures with people in the distance messing with perspective. Some people bring out toys to use as props but we just made due with ourselves. I think they turned out pretty decently though the reflections of the people in the background spoil the illusion. I guess the winter would be better for the photos for that, and also because nobody wanted to kneel in the salt water so many kinds of shots were impossible. The salt hotel didn't have showers so getting too salty wasn't an option. As it was the salt formed crystals on my foot hair and really hurt if I tried to rub it off. Only fresh water can take it off effectively.
After spending the better part of the afternoon taking in more sun that humans should endure, I took a brief nap in the afternoon on my salt bed. It had some blankets on top and wasn't so hard. Most everything in this hotel was made of salt... the tables, chairs, and many statues. Just the bathroom really wasn't made of salt, but the toilets had a bucket flush and there was no water in the sink. 
They don't have anywhere to dump the sewage since they're in the middle of the salt lake and it all goes into a holding talk that a truck takes away every week. Because of that, people who didn't have a room at the hotel had to pay for the toilets. There were 32 guests, 23 of which were Japanese. The rest of us hung out though, but I'll get to them later.
Sunset! It was hands down the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen but was pretty cold and windy. We stayed outside in the cold for a good long time taking pictures of each phase of the evening while wearing everything in our wardrobes that could keep us warm.
In the distance you could see the silhouettes of a couple dozen people and a couple vehicles that had driven out for more privacy. I wasn't feeling like getting my feet any more wet so I leapt from salt island to island to avoid the puddles and to get a good view. I wish that everyone reading this had been there so that you would know, I'm not exaggerating the beauty of this place. It's crazy that so few people stay for the sunset.
Later in the evening we had a small dinner provided by the hotel and we broke out several bottles of local wine that we brought from town. They had it for sale at the hotel too, but it cost twice as much. The four of us were joined by three Canadians, Mike, Mel, and Danelle, and a couple Swedes named Axel and Oscar. It's 4 days later when I'm writing this and I liked them all so much I still remember everything about the evening. The lot of us played Bang and Uno late into the night and after the hotel turned off the generator we kept on playing by candle light. I stayed up the latest with Mike, and the Swedes and couldn't be roused for sunrise.
Thankfully for me, the clouds blocked any attempt at a sunrise and actually it rained a little bit all night. I hear that a few peoples beds were filled with water by leaks in the roof and the Swedes room actually came with an umbrella. Heh, well we waited around for several hours after breakfast (bread + coffee) for our guide to show up with the jeep and lunch. He was late and eventually we met the two people that would join us for the next 2 and a half days. They were a couple from Amsterdam (yes, 4 Dutch people in our group now) and I thought they were pretty cool. Joost is an IT project leader, improv actor, and diving enthusiast. His girlfriend Szuza emigrated from Hungary to Holland and works in the world of fashion doing something or other. I thought they were very cool.
The rest of the day was spent racing off of the lake, past Uyuni, and into the mountains. Oh, I forgot to mention that the previous day before going to the lake we first went to the train graveyard near town. After the local mines closed down 50 years ago, dozens of train engines and cars were abandoned there.
I climbed up a few of them but it's not so interesting. So anyways, we drove a long ways that night and spent the night in a small village in the mountains. I have no idea what it was called, but there wasn't much to is and Jowen and I walked around a bit before it got too dark and took some pictures of the church and surrounding area. Naturally we opened a few bottles of wine and played cards late into the night. What else were we to do when the only lights were a few candles around the table. We learned out lesson in the salt hotel and stocked up on candles as we passed through town.
In the morning our cook, a small Bolivian woman named Marta, made us breakfast and we set off to go higher into the mountains. We'd go high this day... we were already at 3600 meters in Uyuni and we started this day above 4000 meters. 
The day was defined by long drives over dirt roads and barren fields of rocks stretched between volcanic peaks draped in snow and cloud. We drove through some rain showers, blazing sun, hail, and wind whipped snow flurries. The area is called the Altiplano and it's an area of southern Bolivia that's particularly high and harsh to life. I think that the Incas only really inhabited it in the last 1000 years after sufficient herding practices made it possible. I like to think about how most every one of the dozens of snowy volcanic peaks that we saw probably had a tomb on the top. Our driver played a festive mix of pan flute music and forgotten 80s hits.
The area is known for its large lagoons crammed with thousands of flamingos. I had no idea that they lived there, but apparently they migrate to lower elevations in the winter. I also had it in my mind that they eat shrimp but at this elevation they feast on algae. At least, that's what I took out of it through my broken Spanish. There's also a population of foxes that eat them and their eggs when possible. We saw them in half a dozen lakes of varying sizes and colors. 
We also saw strange rock formations in a dozen different ways and enjoyed the martian landscapes. Later in the day we got to spend an hour in a hot spring recovering from the fatigue of the altitude. We all felt exhausted from it but at least I didn't get sick. I haven't seen any oxygen bottles for sale like in Tibet where they were so plentiful. I hope the next time I go there I won't need any since I seem to be flourishing at altitude this time around. Maybe it was the gradual introduction to the mountains that made it easier.
At the end of the day we reached an area of steam vents at the highest altitude we'd reach 4950 meters. They don't really exploit the steam to generate power... possibly due to remoteness or lack of available water. We then retreated to a cluster of guesthouses built to hold the dozens of tourists that do this trip each day. I was so cold by the end of the day that I 
declined to go outside again to see the last whispers of sunset and wrapped myself in as much clothing as I could even though we were safely indoors. We shared the building with a couple other tour groups, and Joost led the way for a dozen people to play a card game of his called Werewolf. It's a game of guile and lies... I think I like it. I learned how to play it with a regular deck of cards so maybe I'll try and get a hostel group together some time to try it again.
The next morning we drove a hell of a long ways and got back to town after a couple stops looking at flamingos and some borax mining operations. By the time we got back, our butts were all sore from the journey and we split up for a few hours to take care of lodging and transport options. Jowen and I
need to get to Oruro but Joost told us about how bad the river crossing on the bus are, but the train is sold out so we got some bus tickets for the next day and met up for pizza later that night. We might meet up with them again in a couple weeks in La Paz and they might be swinging through California in a couple months so maybe I'll see them there too. They're just good people.
The sounds of Carnival were in the air and the next morning all the streets around the square were crammed with vendors selling all the normal stuff and many food carts that provided breakfast. I had a sort of grilled pork with corn and potatoes covered in salsa. Jowen got a tripe salad and a bag of fresh fried minnows. The fish was good though so don't get upset. We also picked up some fruit and saltenas for lunch on the bus. 
A saltena is the same thing as empanada but they seem to be baked and have a pretty standard filling of peas, meat, raisins, potatoes, zucchini, and spices. They're great. Kids marched down the street in school uniforms and Halloween costumes spraying each other with water guns and foamy spray cans. They had a band and a good spirit was in the air.The bus ride though was the worst one in memory. Most of the male Bolivian passengers were drunk and the bus left and hour late. The shocks were shot and since the road is entirely unpaved it made for the bumpiest and shakiest ride I've ever experienced. 
After 3 hours the bus stopped in a village for a toilet break. All the passengers filed off of the bus, walked 20 feet away and started pissing on the ground, adobe walls, or whatever else was there. Women used shawls to hide each other as they did their business. I'd heard that Bolivia was like that and I can say that before this day I'd seen 3 different people crapping on the street. Minutes later the bus left and we laughed for a good while.
After 3 hours the bus stopped in a village for a toilet break. All the passengers filed off of the bus, walked 20 feet away and started pissing on the ground, adobe walls, or whatever else was there. Women used shawls to hide each other as they did their business. I'd heard that Bolivia was like that and I can say that before this day I'd seen 3 different people crapping on the street. Minutes later the bus left and we laughed for a good while.
Well, we made it to Oruro safe enough but pretty exhausted from the experience. The hotel that we checked into was supposed to have a 3 day reservation for the next three days. They lost the reservation so the next day we scrambled to find a new hotel but let's save all that for the next post, eh? Suffice it to say, it was the best parade I'd ever seen.
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