Looking out at the Salt Flats from isla de pescala

This and more photos of the salt flats and rest of Bolivia and Argentina can be seen on my facebook album... heres the public link;

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=258373&id=887685205&l=5d86abffd8

Chattin to the goats

A little clip of me attempting to make conversation with the goats up in some mountain farm during our horse riding with Enrique in Salta, Argentina.

Salar de Uyuni

Along the tourist trail in Bolivia one of the most visited places is the Salar de Uyuni, or the Salt Flats as its known in English. It is the worlds largest salt flat at 10,582 km squared. We visited it from Uyuni (hence the name) which is the town most people access it by. The town seems to exist solely for the purposes of tourism, and its a cold, dry deserted place which I would advise anybody to only spend a minimal amount of time in. Altough most people take a 3 day tour, we were advised ny a few people that one day is really enough to get out to the middle of the flats, experience it and get back before you get stranded out in the night cold! We left (realtively) early in the day and drove out of Uyuni about an hour, along the abandoned train tracks to get to the salt flats. We stopped on the outer fringes of the flats for half an hour so the locals could tempt us to buy their merchandise of al paca clothing and souvenirs fashioned out of salf. On we drove then into the heart of the flats stopping along the way to get out of our 4x4 and really experience the vastness of it all.

At one point I walked away from the group for about 10 minutes in no particular direction, just towards nothing. After a while I was completely alone in the middle of the desert and the rest of my group and the car were but speckles on the horizon a few hundread meters back. It was one of the most eerily quiet yet serene settings Ive ever found myself. If I was into meditation, I´d imagine it would have been a perfect place to do it.

Towards the end of the day our guide brought us to isla de pescado; a strange cactus filled "island" in the middle of the salar. Here you can climb for 10 minutes to get to the peak (avoiding the huge cacti) where you find an amzing panoramic view of the whole area. Driving home in the jeep with the sun setting on the salt flats and some nice tunes on the radio was a memorable experience. (see some photos above)

Onwards and Northwards

After Iguazu, and as happens every few weeks, we had to take a look at our time and money situation. We decided that we needed to start heading generally north if we wanted to make to Bolivia and Peru with adequate time to go where we wanted. Usually people go from Salta directly to Bolivia, but considering we had already been there and taken a 23 hour bus ride to get to Iguazu which borders Paraguay and not Bolivia, we figured the best way to go from there was through the less travelled Paraguay. So thats what we did. The next few days were spent just getting to Bolivia and all I remember is a haze of night buses, border crossings, and a day in Paraguay´s capital, Ascuncion, about which I have nothing really notable to say!

Deciding which route to take through Bolivia depends largely on where you are coming from and where you are going to next. As we entered the country on the south east border from Paraguay, we wanted first to go to Uyuni which is like a base camp for tourists going to the Salar de Uyuni, or the Salt Flats. From there the rough plan was to head up to La Paz and use it as a base for activites and deciding where to go next.

Bolivia is a country of constrasts. And extremes. Anyone traveling there should be prepared to be tested physically and mentally and no matter how well prepared you think you are to travel in a place like this, you will likely encounter something completey unexpected. From the dizzying heights of La Paz (Located at an altitude of 3,660 metres (12,008 ft), it is the world's highest capital city), to the lowland tropical regions of rurrenabaque and the pampas rainforests and everything in between, you can feel like you are in a completely different place from one day to the next because climate, landscape and even the local people change dramatically from one area to the next.

We crossed the border - with all the formalities including presenting your passport to be stamped in a dark room with a dodgy bolivian offical, showing your certificate of vaccinations against dengue fever, then being accompanied back to the bus by a few boys no older than 16 in military uniforms brandishing AK-47´s - and arrived in a tiny isolated town called villamontes. From here a group of around 6 of us (being the only foreigners in the whole area) splashed out spending a whole maybe 3 dollars US each to get a private minibus to bring us to Tarija, where we killed time for the day walking around the town, before taking a night bus to the slightly larger town near Tupiza. After arriving here at 4.30am we said goodbye to the japanese couple who had accompanied us thus far but no were reseigned to taking a hotel room for the day and sleeping. Not wanting to be stranded in another isolated Bolivian town we got to work on negotiating with the few taxi drivers who had flocked to us knowing we were looking for a way to Tupiza as quick as possible, and soon enough we struck a deal with an eager young man with a decent looking car who would drive us all the way there over a rocky bumby road in the mountains. Of course, 3 hours in and just after sun rise, we encountered a puntured tyre. Our driver quickly and casually got out to change the tyre in a way that I could tell it happened all the time. With the boys asleep in the back, myself and Mattias got out to walk around and enjoy the morning view of the mountains...( evenutally, the boys woke up and joined me for a photo op - see photo above)

Eventually we arrived in Tupiza, and the next morning took a 7 hour bus - one of my most uncomfortable bus journeys ever, for many reasons - to get to Uyuni. We made it, shivering from the cold and out of breath from the altitude, but excited to plan our trip to the salt flats.

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
- John Steinbeck

Overlooking "The Devils Throat"

Puerto Iguazu / Foz do Iguaçu

As we neared the end of our time in Argentina there was only really one more place that we really had to go to. One of South Americas most striking a popular natural attractions, Iguazu falls is situated right smack bang in the middle of the borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil.

The waterfall system consists of 275 falls along 2.7 kilometers (1.67 miles) of the Iguazu River. Some of the individual falls are up to 82 meters (269 ft) in height, though the majority are about 64 metres (210 ft). The Devil's Throat (Garganta del Diablo in Spanish or Garganta do Diabo in Portuguese), a U-shaped, 82-meter-high, 150-meter-wide and 700-meter-long (490 by 2300 feet) cataract, is the most impressive of all, and marks the border between Argentina and Brazil.

Source: Wikipedia (iguazu falls)

You can visit the falls from both the Argentinian and Brazilian side, but the general consensus is that although the Brazil side is impressive, the Argentinian side is considered better as it gets you right up close to the falls and literally on the edge of the famous Garaganta del Diablo for a much more intense experience. And so we made to trips to the falls in two days, first we crossed the border to Brazil for one day to view the falls from that side, then the next days got up close and personal on the Argentinian side. It really is a powerful experience as you walk along the various paths winding in and around (sometimes even under) the various falls and the noise of huge volumes of water all around you is pleasantly deafening!

And I´ll never forget all our reactions as we approached the famous devils throat waterfall. Standing over the railings just meters from this huge waterfall is awesome and we were literally speachless for a few minutes, just staring into the huge mass of water falling in front of us... And even if you wanted to say something the noise was so loud that you had to shout - Amazing.

Puerto Iguazu in Argentina was also the place were we met a few people in our hostel - yaya, charlotte, & doctor - who would soon be "part of the family" for a few weeks to come... but thats another story altogether!

Enriques Ranch

Enrique´s cabalgatas (horse riding) ranch had been recommended to us by a friend who said it was a must do in Argentina. Based on this we decided to phone Enrique himself, who handles all the bookings personally, and book ourselves in for some gaucho living in the heart of the Argetninian countryside for a few days. Enrique lives about an hour out of the city of Salta on a farm on his own and employs a handful of people to help him run the place and host tourists. At his house you can stay as long as you like (altough it is expensive so backpackers like ourselves usually opt for a day or two), each day you will go horseriding in the surrounding countryside, up and down mountains, etc, accompanied by a guide or two. In the afternoon you return to a HUGE lunch of top quality BBQ meat, salad, potatoes and a seemingly infinate supply of red wine - which is brought out in strange unmarked green glass bottles, leading me to beleive that there is some constant flowing red wine fountain nearby - followed by a little siesta to help to food go down and try to sober up. You head out again for the evening on horseback, swaying heavily - partly because of the horse, partly the red wine - and go for another trek in another direction. By sundown, around 7 or 8, all the horses are returned to the stables and the socialising starts again in Enriques front garden. There is usually a group of 10 to 20 people at any time on the ranch, always travellers and always easy going. Around 10pm (which is early for dinner in Argentina) some more food is served. Then MORE red wine. Then some MORE food, and MORE red wine (Enrique will never allow you to sit with an empty glass in front of you)... well, you get the idea.... In one full daybetween a group of about 15 people we drank a total of 40 bottles of red wine!Ultimately the evening culminates in everyone sitting around a big table having great banter with great food and drink, watching the sun go down with mountains in the backround and nothing but the sound of crickets and animals stirring around. A really nice experience and a break from city and town life.

Obviously with my recently aquired injury (you can see in the above photo the solid cast around my shoulders which I had to wear for a week) I couldnt participate in the actual horse riding, but did my best to get involved in everything and talk to everybody, which is not that hard when you are holding a constantly full glass of red wine. During the day while the lads went horse riding I´d find a comfortable place to sit and read my book, and I couldnt have asked for a more serene setting.

As for Enrique himself, he is a real character. An extremely warm and welcoming man, he personally meets and greets everybody at the ranch, serves everyone dinner and sees to it that you have everything you need. Its also a great place to practice spanish as Enrique (through either decision or necissity) speaks no english. He seemed to take a great shine to us, making sure I was looked after during the day when the horses were out. He laughed heartily at the dinner table when he saw me squirming to eat with my broken collarbone, and would regularly come up to me playfully exclaiming ¿como estas el invalido?? ("how is the invalid?"), the nickname el invalido stuck for the duration of my stay!

All in all it was a great experience and thanks to the personal touch of enrique and his team we had an unusual but very enjoyable few days at his cabalgatas ranch.

Sudamerica continues...

Its been all go since I last wrote anything. All the way back to Buenos Aires seems like a long time ago now. All the way back to China last November seems like a lifetime ago now! So, our time in Buenos Aires was over, we said goodbye to wee Graeme who was heading back to Edinburgh and lital the israeli with the crazy hair, and we headed back north to a (relatively) small city called Rosario. Very nice place, more accessible than the big BA and full of students, great night life, cheap cafe bars, etc. Also, interesting little fact, Rosario is the home town of Che Guevara AND Lionel Messi (world famous footballer plays for barca). Now for ya. After a few nights out and an interesting ´asado´experience we headed further north by night bus to a town in just hours away from the Bolivian border called Salta. It was all going great untill THAT happened. For numerous reasons I wont go into the details, but basically...one night, I fell over and broke my collar bone!! I fell onto my back and the collar bone (or clavicula) just behind my right shoulder snapped. Yes it was painful, and I spent all of the next day in Salta´s public hospital on drips and beds taking x rays and test and all the while struggling to communicate with the doctors through mutual broken english and spanish. However, all got sorted in the end.

For the next 4 weeks (which I have almost reached now thankfully) I have had to wear an uncomfortable support thing around my shoulders which restricted my movement, and for the first week or two, I need help with EVERYTHING. I no longer take for granted the use of my fully functional arms. For a while I had to miss out on some physical activites that the lads got up to (see enriques ranch, next post), but it was probably a good idea as my budget wasnt looking to healthy at the time anyway. Thanks to Quinny and Ali for all the help and carrying my big backpack to all the hostels and bus stations.