I'Ve had a very exciting time in the last week or so. I'll start with Potosi. It's a city at 4000 m, and essentially founded due to it's proximity to the silver mine, a huge conical hulk of a mountain about 4800m high looming over the city and one which supplied the Spanish empire with its silver. Many travelers d'o tours of the mine, which is what I did. However the mine is not a tourist mine, but a working mine with horrendous conditions. The air is noxious and the tunnels so narrow that we had to crawl on all fours to get from one level to the next. We spent about 4 hours in there, which is of course nothing compared to what the miners have to d'o day in day out as part of their work in the now co-operatively managed mines. Their life expectancy due to the fumes is short. In the past when the Spanish forced the indigenous people to work there they had to stay down the mine for months at a time, and estimates put the deaths at 8 million. I think such tours form a worthwhile and balancing part of tourism in general, one can wander around admiring beautiful buildings but it certainly gives cause for one to reflect why the beautiful buildings are there.
One Spanish girl told me she didn't really feel sorry for the miners as they were there out of choice and they didn't really know any other life, but I think that given the lack of other opportunities this certainly stretches the meaning of choice.
The other attraction in Potosi is the old mint, where the silver was turned into coins, nearly 500 years ago. There I saw huge horse powered wooden machines which did the job. The animals died quickly as they were not used to the altitude.
I met a guy from Rio de Janeirio on the tour of the mint, and we travelled to Sucre together on the bus. Sucre is the legal capital of Bolivia and is about 150 km from Potosi. Here all the old colonial buildings are whitewashed, and hence it is quite a striking place. However on the day I was there all the museums were closed, and so I had a wander around the town and spent time in the square reading. I met up with my friend later in the afternoon and had a few drinks with him.
I saw a couple of museums the next morning before heading back to Potosi on the bus, where I'd left my bike. The next day I got up at dawn and started off for Uyuni, potentially a 2 day ride away. However various factors conspired to me deciding that I having much fun on the bike and flagging down a bus 60 kilometers later. The first included cycling in the wrong direction for 15km, all downhill! So I had to cycle up 15 hard kilometers again and then started off in the right direction, still cycling uphill and passing within sight of the town centre. Then a puncture, which was not just a normal puncture but one where the whole valve just came clean off as I was riding uphill. And my luggage kept falling off as somebody had decided to steal my bungees the night before. Couple this with some heavy luggage and some hard mountain passes and I'd had enough.
I've only done little bits of cycling in the last week, perhaps because long distance cycling on ones own is quite a lonely task, especially through such remote areas. Other people can cycle on their own for months, but perhaps not me! I'll probably continue this way and cycle some bits and avoid others. Cycling is a great way to see a country, but Ive realised intense cycling in a new country and culture where there is so much else to do and see as well is not a great idea.
The bus got me to Uyuni that night and I then decided to cycle the famous salt flats the next day. The town is 20 kilometers away from the salt flats, and I got up at dawn and did that and then cycled about 50 or 60 km on the salt flats themselves. Salar de Uyuni ( the salt flats) is a real phenomenon, an absolutely flat area of salt about 150 km by 100km. Cycling across it is like sailing across a sea. One can see the curvature of the earth on it like one can at sea; only the tops of distant mountains can be seen and their bases appear later. Parts of it have 10 cm of water covering it, I cycled for a few km through the water. It's almost like flying due to the reflection of the sky creating blue all around, above and below. The altiplano drains into it and in summer ( rainy season ) the salt flats are covered by 50 cm of water. Long ago a large part of the altiplano used to be a lake, and the salt flats are all that is left of that lake.
That evening I decided to take a three day tour from Uyuni into the remote southeastern regions of Bolivia and to the Chilean border. I wanted to see this beautiful region but it didn't seem much fun by bike given the remoteness of it, so I persuaded the woman at the agency to let me put my bike on top of the jeep. There were 6 of us in the group; a fantastic group of people. The group included 2 from Portugal, 1 from Cataluna, 1 from Ecuador and 1 from France.
The first day of the tour covered the salt flats again, which I didn't mind as the salt flats are extremely impressive. This time we went to an "island" in the middle of the flats. The island is notable for the cacti growing on it, and some are 1000 years old. The views from the top of the island are indescribable, one can see the salt flats stretching for miles in all directions. The air is so clear that it's possible to see over 100 miles, and a volcano the other side of the flats which one might guess to be only 30 km away was actually 100 km away. It's s very popular tourist attraction and there are a lot of tour groups there, but it's easy to see why.
The second day took us south into the remote wilderness of the southern altiplano. The area includes some stunning lakes, of different colours due to the different chemicals in them. The road was not paved and goes high. That day was very windy, and we didn't spend very long outside the jeep looking at some of the attractions. The wind whipped up a lot of the dust and grit in this semi- desert and it was hard to walk into. We spent the second night at a small hut on the shore of Lago Colorada, a lake coloured partly red due to the chemicals in it. The wind chill was extreme ( daytime temps were already below zero) and our friend from Ecuador started to suffer from the weather and the altitude. The huts had no heating and we spent a fun evening playing cards wrapped in several layers in our sleeping bags. We were given some excellent Bolivian vegetable soup though.
My birthday started at 5am and at -13 (inside). We all sat in the jeep shivering whilst the heating slowly took effect and we climbed even higher to 5000m. The scenery was stunning, as it had been for the last 2 days. At 9am we arrived at some volcanic springs, and I was the only one to go in! I'm not sure why the others didn't go in as they were fantastic after such a cold couple of days, I could have stayed there all day. It was a great start to my birthday! My presents that day included the morning in the front seat, a stick of toblerone, and a bearhug.
The border came shortly afterwards, and the rest of the tour group went back to Uyuni, leaving me to cross the border. I was sad not to spend the rest of my birthday with them. I had a ticket for a lift in a car the other side of the border, but since it was largely downhill to the town I wanted to go to I chose to cycle. I passed through Bolivian customs and then had to climb for 5 km or so over the pass into Chile. Although I didn't d'o the work to get up there it was certainly the highest I have ever been or cycled, at close to 5000m. The road was iced over and had quite a bit of snow on it, and I fell off a couple of times. I crested the peak and started to go down, although I had to walk bits as the ice made it unrideable. The road curved around a 6000m volcano. A few hundred metres lower and the ice finished, and I had a 40 or 50 km downhill run into the town of San Pedro de Atacama. It was stunning looking back and seeing the Andes stretching into the distance for probably 200 miles. It must count as one of the best downhills of my life!
I am in San Pedro de Atacama now, a touristy town ssurrounded by the Atacama Desert. I'll use my bike to explore the areas attractions and then when Im finished I'll probably cycle to Calama, about 100 km west. Ill prob take a bus and to Arica and then out of Chile. Chile is as expensive as Europe, so I think I'll limit my time here a little.
I finished my birthday by calling Young Sun on Skype, who was very sweet and made me a cake with candles and showed it to me on the web- cam. As I couldn't eat it I consoled myself by eating the toblerone later. I treated myself as well to a birthday dinner of a quinoa and mushroom risotto with cheese on top. Im going to try and find a cookbook of the vegetarian dishes around here as some of them are delicious.
No comments:
Post a Comment