La Paz, Day 1

I have way too much to catch up on so this entry will be a condensed quick version of everthing I`ve done the past couple weeks.

The mine tour in Potosí was really interesting. ´Fun´ is the wrong word cuz you go down into the mines and see these men, some boys as young as 12, working 12-hour days with no food in contaminated air. It was intersting though, and as usual I had conflicting thoughts about whether I was doing any good as a tourist or not. It was a bit scary at times, actually. We were all dressed up in our protective clothing, hard hats, rubber boots, head lamps. At some points along the tunnels are tracks for the miners to pull/push trolleys of minerals in and out, we had to dodge them suddenly when we heard they were coming. There was never much room obviously so sometimes we had to run down the track a bit to get to a wider space. Sometimes we were crawling the shafts were so narrow. We had a dynamite demonstration as well - one of the miners was getting ready to blow a bigger hole in his section so we scooted to a safer place and listened as the muffled boom boom went off. I could feel the energy wave through the rocks. There is so much to say but to describe it all would take pages.

I went to Tupiza with Andy and Tamsin and we stayed in the same hostel. The first afternoon we just arranged everything we were going to do. The next day we went horseriding which was fantastic. Unlike the smaller weaker Bolivian horses I rode when in Samaipata, these horses were from Argentina: big and strong and very very well bred and well looked after. The canyons we saw were spectacular - it really was like being in the American Wild West and the galloping was scary but great fun. I`ve never gone so fast on a horse before! The second time we tried it my horse tripped though and almost fell over so he gave up after that.

The day after we started our 4 day jeep tour. Aside from copying down my rather extensive journal entries regarding this trip, I don`t know how I can describe it. I think it`s the best thing I`ve done so far, and I doubt I`ll ever see such amazing landscape ever again. Bolivia is so full of hidden and unexplored treasures! What I paid for the trip was well out of my usual budget, but it was worth every penny. Bolivia`s southwest and leading up to the salf flats is virtually impossible to navigate without an experienced driver and a 4x4 vehicle. The roads are rough and sometimes barely visible, they fork out all over the place, and there is only the occasional very small village. With a good topographic map and a compass and a lot of patience it might be possible to do this on one`s own, but I don`t think many people would attempt it.

The landscape changed so much in our 4 days that just reaching the top of a hill was exciting cuz we never knew what to expect on the other side. We went from tundra-like land to the roughest rockiest terrain, to rich coloured lagoons with flamingoes straight out of a fairy tale to the vastest yellow deserts where nothing can possibly grow. The salt flat, the biggest in the world, was incredible too. It`s like walking on hard crunchy snow, but it so so flat and stretching out for ever, sometimes to the horizon. The last morning we got up early to watch the sunset in the middle of it, and driving across the flat flat white land was surreal and magical and I`m never going to see anything like it again.

After exploring the salt flats we made a final stop in Uyuni, a town not far from the edge. I hung out with some other people who`d just finished the trip as well for a few hours, and took a night bus to La Paz, where I am right now. I dropped my bag off at a hostel, but I have to wait a couple hours before others check out before I can have a bed for myself and catch up on some much needed sleep.

As much as I love La Paz, it`s very different being here after 4 days in a completely different world with no people but those in the other jeeps. Time to change gears once again.