Hola todos! This one covers off the final leg on the 4 day push to Salta from Sucré.
After the long day getting into Argentina I decided to have a little lie in before getting on the road to Salta again. Before I checked in I bought a ticket for the 11.30 bus to Salta from Humahuaca and kick out at the hostel was half 10 so had some time to rest up.
I soon get out and mozy on down to the bus station. The bus shows up a little late but we are soon on way. It is another 4 or 5 hours to reach Salta. For the most part this bus ride was quite uneventful apart from the slowness of it.
Luckily no breakdowns this time but it did stop at every little town in between Humahuaca and Salta during each stop people would come on board trying to sell you different things and just generally get in the way of people trying to get on and off. It was just a slow going thing, not the hardest part of these last few days but definitely had been the most tedious with just how slow it made things.
Eventually though we get to Salta probably an hour or so late but finally we are here and can relax. It’s a short 20 minute walk to the gaff and I’m soon checked in then go for a walk round. Salta is a very relaxed little city and feels like you could be in Spain or somewhere else in Europe here. All in all was a very nice little place to chill for the weekend and gets me to thinking Argentina is going to be a good time if the rest of it has this vibe.
I spend the evening hopping round a few bars near the gaff and generally winding down from the long Journey it had been. So far Argentina has given a very good first impression.
Hola todos! After the brief stay in Uyuni we carried on to Argentina as planned the next day. As mentioned it was another early start to get the bus to the border town of Villazon to cross into Argentina.
I had originally planned to get up at 0500 but was up since 0330 as someone left a light on outside my room that I turned off when I went to bed and it was shining through the thin curtains on the glass window. Go outside turn it off then nod back to sleep and the alarm goes. Up we get, shower up etc then a short walk over to the station at 0530. The 0600 bus is already there and soon drive gets up and lets everyone on. We are rolling out bang on time happy days.
The bus ride down to Villazon is quite easy going. We are on a cama bus so got a sort of bed like seat and lots of legroom, also we end up making good time arriving at Villazon just after 1200 nearly 1.5 hours ahead of schedule.
Next it’s Frontera time and having read online this one can sometimes be a bit of a circus with people trying to sell you fake tours across the border but getting out it was not like that at all, very quiet actually. I walk out and grab a taxi to the border to save a half hour hike in the sun. We soon arrive and I go into Bolivian exit immigration, I am soon stamped, given my piece of paper and sent over the bridge to the Argentinian side. On the Argentina side it was a very short queue and they asked me where I was staying, I gave them the address of the hostel in Humahuaca and they give me back my passport and send me on my way – turns out they don’t stamp you in Argentina double checking with them. All in all took about 5 minutes to get through both sides of border control.
It’s a 15 minute walk into La Quiaca town for the connecting bus and after a brief visit to the ATM I’m soon at the station and the bus boy there greets me in English “where you going amigo?” “Humahuaca” “bus there goes in 10 mins grab your ticket and get on” I do just that, get on and we’re soon on way.
The day had clearly been going too well up to this point as once we are out of town this bus is going painfully slow crawling along at 20 mph, maybe 25 if we’re going slightly downhill, though it’s mostly flatlands as we’re still on the Altiplano here. From what it sounded like the turbo had gone on this bus.
After several hours of crawling along we eventually stop and they put us all on a different bus and we’re back on way for about 10 min utes to get pulled into to the Gendamarie checkpoint where they come on and check everyone’s passports etc. that is quick but they end up chatting to drive for half an hour about idk what then let us go. Eventually we reach Humahuaca about 2 hours late around 17:30.
Its a big old stair climb up to the hostel but get there, check in go grab a shower etc then have a wander about Humahuaca, which is quite a nice little town actually and eventually grab dinner at a place where there’s some love music then have an early one about half 10 being knackered from this Journey.
Hola todos! Its been a few days since I crossed into Argentina, I had been moving quite fast since we left Sucré and haven’t had the downtime to keep up on this blog, so as per usual when we finish a chapter here is the post Mortem on Peru and Bolivia.
As per usual I will put a full summary of each place visited on the wordpress version of this post.
Peru:
My honest thoughts of what I seen of it. It is quite dare I say overrated, that said the RNG didn’t roll very well through a good chunk of it.
My overall experience of Peru can be summed up Started good when we arrived in Lima but then slowly then sunk into burnout between being ill, tourist traps and the general inertia that getting about was (too many bus detours and schedules with the Perú hop making travel days quite hard going)
Peru overall felt generally expensive with prices not really dropping much outside of Lima minus accommodation getting slightly cheaper as we
For most of my travel in Peru I used the @Peruhop and while some of their schedules made things hard I would recommend them as a first time in Peru especially if youve not been to anywhere else in latam and don’t want navigate the bus situation here.
In Peru I would also say I made the Biggest fail of the trip – skipping Macchu Picchu, however refer back to a post I wrote at the time (Burnout) it’s real and when it hits you have to take a break end of story. In general all of Peru or at least what I seen of it other than Lima felt like a big tourist trap, that said I cannot speak on the northern half of it as I never got there having skipped Ecuador.
In spite of all the things I’ve had issues with in Peru I met some nice people on the way both locals and other travellers and had some good times while I’ve been there.
When I eventually got to Bolivia and told my friend @not.the.real.ed.sheeran him and his fella both told me I got the wrong end of the stick with Peru and that I also missed out on some of the best food Peru has. Oh well es lo que hay!
Bolivia:
Overall Bolivia was generally an all round better time but not without it’s hiccups though I honestly don’t think there were any major lows of note on the Bolivia leg.
Bolivia is a country of many contrasts, being on the high Altiplano you have places like El Alto and Potosí where the altitude is so high up you struggle to breathe while the natives who are the majority population here go about their lives carving out their existence in these harsh places, then on the flip side you have colonial cities like Sucré, which are very clean and orderly and have a relaxed vibe to them.
Bolivia has the largest share of indigenous people to the overall population in all of Latin America (around 60%), which adds an interesting dynamic to the place seeing lots of people out and about in the traditional native dress.
In Bolivia I met some cool people in pretty much every place I stopped at and I think the type of company you have can really make or break a place.
I would also say we eaten pretty well in Bolivia and the traditional food was pretty good, notably the picante de pollo, chicken with rice/noodles in a spicy sauce.
What else to say? One major downside that I experienced in Bolivia was struggling to breathe up on the Altiplano, especially above 4000 meters, honestly it was a triple combo of altitude, being bunged up with mucous from hangovers of my head cold and the fact that air quality here in the cities is pretty bad, this is because they use a cheap nasty petrol that’s high in sulphur content and low octane meaning it doesn’t burn as well as other fuels so a lot of it ends up in the atmosphere and you smell it when you pass cars in the street. Yet despite that there isnt tons of smog in the air. Whatever the case it did a number on my breathing.
Overall despite it’s challenges Bolivia ends as one of the better countries I’ve done though don’t know if I would want to live there with the altitude and breathing issues, then again there is a whole other part of it quite low down in altitude east of Sucré which I didn’t do because time and the route I was on. Overall I very much liked Bolivia and could happily visit again.
Video link and Gallery at the bottom of the page.
Summary of places visited:
🇵🇪 Perú:
Lima: Lima is very much a megacity having a population of circa 10 million – about 1/3 of all Peruvians live in Lima. The place is massive and there are many different districts some pretty safe and others quite dangerous. I mostly hanged around Miraflores and Barranco which are the safest and most popular places there among tourists though I did venture out to Callao which was a totally different place looking run down and sketchy and did at at one point accidentally wander up into up to one of the ‘cono’s’ and that was pretty sketch but I survived and all is good. The one thing I would say about Lima is it was the most expensive place on this trip since Mexico City and my wallet certainly felt it after we left there. All in all was quite a fun place and wouldn’t mind visiting again.
Paracas: Our first ‘tourist trap’ town of Perú, this will be a bit of a recurring theme as we go down the list. Paracas was the first stop on the Peru Hop route to Cusco. Paracas is quite a pleasant little beach town in the Peruvian desert about 4 hours south of Lima and is a popular vacation spot for people in Lima. I certainly did not hate the place as I did a good hiking trip out of town and the main attraction, Perú’s ‘Mini Galapagos’ – Las Islas Ballestas. See my blog posts on them for the full story. To sum up Paracas it’s a 2/3 days kind of place and done as it is rather basic and once you’ve done those there isn’t much else. While accommodation was cheap, food and drink were similar prices to that in Lima and again this will be a recurring theme through Peru. The only thing I didn’t do here was hire a dune buggy and go out into the desert, but my reason for that was because I would be doing that in the next place. Huacachina. Which perfectly moves us on.
Huacachina: Second ‘tourist trap’ town of Perú, Huacachina’s claim to fame is being Latin America’s only desert oasis, which it technically is though today its way too big to support itself naturally so they feed it with water from outside by pumps, another thing about this place is it is used as a poster child for tourism campaigns and is marketed like it’s this magical place in the middle of nowhere – it isn’t. There is quite a large city Called Ica, which is literally 2 minutes up the road from it. I only spent 1 night here before I moved on to Arequipa and I think that was just right. I arrived and did the dune buggy tour straight away and it was good fun but it really is the only thing to do here, once you finish the tour your back in the oasis but all that’s really here is a few restaurants and hostel bars selling food and drink at quite an inflated price for Peru, while not extortionate you knew you were a captive audience here. Definitely another one and done place.
Nazca: I didn’t stay here but it’s worth a quick note as we did stop here on the night bus to Arequipa. Nazca town itself did not look like much to look at though from what I could see hotels were dirt cheap here but there wasn’t much going on here, most people just pass through to Arequipa and if they do stay here it’s one night or 2 to do the Nazca Lines flight. I didn’t do this as was quite expensive and if I did it would be a long wait for the night bus the next day so skipped on it. That said the Nazca lines are very interesting and would be something to see from the sky. Maybe one to revisit if I ever come back to Peru.
Arequipa: To be honest I liked Arequipa, it is a Spanish colonial city that acts as a major economic and transit hub in that southern region of the Peruvian Mountains, altitude wasn’t too bad here (~2600 meters), climate was mild and easy going and met decent locals here as well. The city itself is quite a fun place to explore and the architecture in the old town felt very similar to that of Puebla’s old town back in Mexico. Arequipa has a unique sense of independence from the rest of Peru and it shows as there are brands of foods and drinks made here you can only get in the city itself, such as Arequipeña beer and Cola Escocesa. Outside Arequipa there are places to do on excursions such as la Ruta De Sillar quarry and the Colcca Canyon, though I never got round to doing the canyon tour I did enjoy the quarry excursion.I enjoyed Arequipa and if I went back would stay a bit longer than I did, it was quite a chill place.
Cusco: Cusco is both a living city and another tourist trap destination, being the last big city before Macchu Picchu if you plan on going there. I initially was but I ended up having a major burnout episode here which meant I ended up leaving here without visiting the main attraction of Perú. Say what you want about this but when burnout kicks in you have to listen to your mind and body. End of story.Cusco city itself was a nice enough place with a pretty old town and some cool back streets to wander through and up the top of the mountain you have Saqsaywaman, the ‘Poor Man’s Macchu Picchu’ which is a cool Inca ruin and has some interesting history behind it, you can read the blog post on that one for the full story. I didn’t mind Cusco itself but the overall experience was one married by burnout and so a redo of this one is definitely on the cards if I come back to Perú.
Puno: The last stop in Peru before Bolivia, Puno was a short stay though it was quite interesting being on Lake Titicaca, the main thing people come here for is to take a trip to the Uros Floating Islands, which is what I did. While interesting it did feel a bit tourist trappy but not as much as some of the earlier places visited. Puno itself is a small city and while it looked rundown it did look like it could be quite a fun place on a weekend having quite a good bar scene though I came here at the start of the week and didn’t want to stay that long as once you do the boat trip there isn’t that much else to see here. From there it was an easy hop across the border into Bolivia 🇧🇴.
🇧🇴 Bolivia:
Copacabana: Copacabana was the first stop of Bolivia and my last stop on the Peru Hop route. Copacabana is quite a sleepy little town and being on the border with Peru it is a little bit more expensive than the rest of Bolivia being on Lake Titicaca and being on the Peru Hop tourist circuit. It was a sleepy place with everything shutting by 22:00-22:30 in the evening and generally not much to do there in the evening besides have dinner and have an early one. The main attraction here is the Islands on Lake Titicaca which there are regular boat tours out to. I did one of these yours to the Sun Island, which was quite interesting, again got a full blog on this tour if you want to see more. One note is if you wanted to you could do an overnight stay on that Island though as a solo traveler I imagine it would be quite boring after you’ve done the main hiking route of that island. No real hate on Copacabana but its such a sleepy place that makes it a 2 nights and move on place in my book.
La Paz:The more relevant of Bolivia’s two capitals, I very much enjoyed my extended stay here, I saw quite a few interesting places, and met plenty of cool people here including my new best friend who is totally not Ed Sheeran. What more to say?La Paz is a very high altitude city being around 3000 meters with neighbouring El Alto being around 4000 meters above sea level, the only real downside to this place was the aforementioned breathing issues I had through Bolivia.In La Paz there is a lot to see and do, where I was staying down in Sopacachi there are quite a lot of cool bars and restaurants to check out. La Paz has a cool colonial centre as well where can be found the old parliament and the Witch’s Market, which is just a name for a large market selling various things but you get the idea. The easiest and most exciting way to get around La Paz is to take the Teleférico – the cable car system around the city. There are several lines which go round the city in a ring and take you up to El Alto, which is it’s own thing altogether. To recap El Alto is another large city which grew out of native migrations to La Paz to the point where it is now actually bigger in terms of population than La Paz. It is an interesting place as you see the natives in their traditional dress and the hustle and bustle of the markets here. I wish I spent more time up here checking out some more of the place. My friend who’s not Ed Sheeran did a tour up here of the Cholets, interesting buildings in a totally new modern art style, almost like Transformers which is what the natives make their houses into when they make it big up here. Unfortunately I don’t have any picture of them so you’ll have to Google it. My friend tells me that secretly this place holds the economic power of Bolivia; it’s the people up here doing all the large scale import export and I believe him on this.In and around La Paz there is plenty to do as well, such as an excursion to Tiwanaku, which is an interesting pre Inca ruin. There are also some interesting valleys to hike such as Valle de las Animas and Valle de la Luna, all of which I have covered on separate blogs. Another thing you can do which I never made it on is cycle along Bolivia’s Death Road, one to do if I ever go back there. All in all La Paz was a fun city and could happily visit again.
Oruro: This place is another that falls into the 2 nights and move on category since while it was quite a relaxed place there really wasn’t much to see here. There is a large Inca statue on a hill I planned to visit but again as the breathing was being a problem in the altitude here I simply never got up there. Again though it was another place where I met friendly locals and had a pretty nice time in my short stay here, a decent enough place to stop at on the way south through Bolivia.
Potosí: Potosí is famous or rather infamous for one thing; Silver mining and lots of it. When you get there you see the mountain of Cerro Rico which is where the Spanish Empire got most of their new world silver from back in the day and the fact this mine is still working and the fact there are still tens of thousands of tonnes of Silver down there after 500 years is mindblowing. I didn’t stay in Potosí long but the 2 nights I spent here was long enough. Potosí is not a place for the faint hearted. The air felt heavy here in the extreme altitude and even more so down in the mines. All I know is life is hard here and I feel for those guys who work in those mines trying to earn a living in such harsh conditions. It is a tough place but I would say it’s worth a visit simply because of the heavy history here and to give you a better appreciation of the comforts you take for granted assuming you are reading this from a western country. Potosí was hard but worth it as my final words here.
Sucré: Bolivia’s Old and ceremonial capital was another interesting place and a good place to go if you want to dive into the history of Bolivia. The whole reason Sucré exists was because the Spanish didn’t want to develop Potosí into the capital because the altitude was too much for them so they built Sucré where the climate was more accommodating and set up the mints there. Sucré was the power base of Bolivia’s old elite and it shows in the architecture here. The city is a Colonial style city with most of the buildings being white in a very similar style to Popayán back in Colombia, though one stark difference to Popayán is it felt a whole lot less sketchy in the night, no need to be constantly looking over your shoulder. Sucré is a very slow and laid back kind of place and nice if you want to take a relaxing city break somewhere and just take in the vibe of this place. There are a few places outside you can visit such as Castillo Glorieta and ‘Jurassic Park’ (Parque Cretácico) which I have covered on seperate posts. I enjoyed Sucré but definitely think I overstayed here spending a week and a half here. The ideal stay here is probably 3-5 days depending on the pace you want to go at.
Uyuni: Uyuni was my final stop in Bolivia and it is another 2 nights and done place. The main reason everyone comes here is to see the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni and that was exactly why I visited here as well, that and the fact it was the easiest place from where you could get a morning bus to Villazon, where I crossed into Argentina from.The Salt flats tour was a full and long day but it truly was an epic tour that was worth every penny. I have covered this on a separate post and plan to make a full video on the train graveyard and salt flats when I get round to it. Uyuni town itself isn’t much to see, it is a dusty small place which gives off a ‘hotel Bastardos’ vibe, if you haven’t seen that look it up on YouTube, hotel bastardos fistful of travelers cheques. Overall though the tour made this detour very much worth the time and money.
Hola todos! Been a while hasn’t it? I am currently in Termas de río Hondo making my way to Central Argentina. Have been moving fast since we left Sucré and as such playing catch up on the blog once again. For today’s installment I will run you through the detour to Uyuni and the tour of the famous Salar de Uyuni salt flats I did while I was here.
Firstly getting over to Uyuni was quite the slog as it was a 0530 start out of Sucré to get up to the station and get an 0700 bus to Potosí. Got to the bus station fine and reached Potosí about 1030, after a brief haggle to get a taxi to the other terminal in Potosí I was able to get on a bus at 11.15 going to Uyuni, I arrived in Uyuni about 1545 and checked into my hotel okay a good hour ahead of planned time. The evening there was pretty uneventful but the next day I did the Salt flats and train graveyard tour. I am planning to make a video on this place when I get round to it so just going to keep this one fairly brief.
Next day I am up and into the square for 10 am when I am picked up first and the land cruiser picks up the others, in total there were 6 of us plus our driver, it was me, a Peruvian girl, 2 German lads, a French and Italian lad. Quite an interesting mix, though these were the most cool Europeans I met on this entire trip, just generally a good group of sound lads.
First we stopped at the train graveyard, this is interesting as these are all British built steam trains that got retired in the 1940’s and 50’s after the mining industry here declined and now the trains are being left to rot. Interesting stuff.
Next we briefly stop at a town called Colchani where the German fellas end up having a beer and so do the rest of us during our 40 minute stop here. After this drive comes back and picks us up and we are out on the salt flats proper.
We drive for about 20 minutes across the salt flats. They are very bright in the midday sun and you deffo need shades out here. Drive gets the table out and we have the packed lunch that was picked up on the flats which was pretty good.
After this we drive to various locations on the flats including the museum where they have all these different flags. Interestingly it used to be a hotel and you can still go into the rooms inside it.
Another interesting place is the sculpture labyrinth, which was built to celebrate the Quechua culture and you can go inside the maze and get lost which we all did but get over to the other side and see the sculptures.
After this it was near sundown and so we are driven back to the spot where we had lunch and drive pulls out a bottle of vino, we all have a glass and watch the sunset which is beautiful by the way and turns the watery part of the salt flat into a perfect reflection giving this place it’s earned name “El espejo del mundo” – the mirror of the world.
After sunset we are taken back to town, despite it running over time it was an excellent trip and well worth the £60 spent on it. After this I go out for dinner then have an early one as it’s another early start in the mañana for the crossing into Argentina.
Hola todos, todays blog will be about another little collectivo excursion I did with my pal @not.the.real.ed.sheeran. This time we went about 30 minutes south out of Sucré to a little place called Castillo Glorieta.
This place despite its name is not a real castle, remember there is only 1 true castle in Latin America and that is Chapultepec back in Mexico city. This one is another glorified manor house that belonged to one of the rich families of the old elite of Sucré, the wealthy couple by the names of Francisco Argandoña and Clotilde Urioste, who were wealthy aristocrats and Philanthropists.
The family here did a lot of charity work including patronising orphanages as they were unable to have children of their own. They also did diplomatic work including loaning money to the Bolivian government in the 1879 war with Chile and donating large sums of money to the Vatican. Because of the Vatican connection the pope at the time gave them the title of ‘Prince and Princess of Glorieta’.
This castle is a mixture of different architecture styles apparently because they couldn’t decide what they wanted. It has a mixture of Moorish, Byzantine/Russian and Dutch renaissance style architecture in different parts of the castle. It’s construction finished in 1897, a year before the civil war which saw La Paz seize power from Sucré.
While you would imagine this place to be a giant middle finger to the working class of the day, family here actually got off very lightly thanks to their reputation from their public works projects, they simply lost power but didn’t have their estate or much of their wealth seized, despite this they fled to Europe for about 10 years before Francisco would die in 1910 unexpectedly. His widow would eventually come back to Sucré and continue their works until she passed away in 1933, as she had no children the ‘principality’ died with her.
Over the next few years the castle would fall into decline as other members of the family tried to claim inheritance over it until in 1952 when it would get pillaged during the revolution. In 1966 the estate gets sold to the Bolivian military for basically pennies on the dollar and since then the site and it’s grounds are technically a military establishment.
The castle was restored in 1995 and opened as a tourist attraction it still sits on a military camp, across the bridge is a small base that looks like a training camp as you can see the soldiers doing exercises running about doing push ups etc, though I didn’t hear any drill sergeants giving anyone a bollocking so it can’t be a full on boot camp can it?
All in all was a good few hours out here before we hopped the colectivo back and then later went out for some drinks. The next few days we did a few other things looking about the city and of course ‘Jurassic Park’ but overall not that much to say.
If anything I think I overstayed here by a good 3-4 days but didn’t really want to be on the road over Easter in case of the holidays disrupting travel so decided to wait out easter here. Plenty of worse places you could spend Easter mind!
Hola todos and Happy Easter Sunday desde Sucré, the *true* capital of Bolivia! After we left off in Potosí I decided to make my visit there short and get on over to Sucré, several reasons for this, firstly my mate who’s not Ed Sheeran was also headed there and there was a good chance for us to hang out again for a while, also the altitude is a bit lower there so be a bit easier for the breathing and also it just looked like a nice place to be if you were looking to get off the high Altiplano for a bit of R&R, so yes I got myself over there rápido.
Arrival in Sucré the place has quite a nice vibe to it, it is a whitewashed city in its historic centre very similar to Popayán back in Colombia minus the general sketchy feeling that place had at night. This is a very laid back place and a decent spot to rest a while but it also had quite an interesting bit of history to it.
Sucré was a major economic hub back in the colonial era having much of its wealth come from silver mines nearby and being an administrative centre for a lot of the silver coming from Potosí, in fact a lot of it was minted here although Potosí also had its own mint house.
As I usually do I got on a walking tour of the city and learned some more about the history of this place. Sucré was the original capital of newly independent Bolivia and it was here where the declaration of independence was signed in 1825 in Casa de la Libertad (Freedom House), which can be found in the main square of Plaza 25 de Mayo, named as that was the date of the uprising for independence.
Why does Bolivia have technically two capitals today? Well the answer to that was civil war. In 1898-1899 the country had a civil war fought between the liberal faction based out of La Paz and the Conservative faction based out of Sucré. Initially the conservatives had the upper hand having more of the army on their however the liberals won out after cutting a deal with the numerous indigenous population to get their support in exchange for promises of land. The liberal faction won and the old elite lost much of their power but the promise of land to the natives ultimately doesn’t get honoured and the indigenous do not begin to see any upward social mobility until the late 1950’s, which is likely why we have El Alto growing separate to La Paz today.
Because of this struggle Bolivia technically has two capitals, the administrative Capital being La Paz, where the government sits today and Sucre being Constitutional and historical though this is more of a concession today. Fact there is a presidential palace here that you can go into and climb to the top for a good view of the city for a small fee, only 1 president ever actually ran the country from Sucré.
That pretty much wraps up the first few days here. After this my pal who is totally not Ed Sheeran arrived and we hanged out a lot over the next few days doing several visits to places including a castle of sorts and “Jurassic Park”, of which I highly recommend you check out the video I did on.
Overall I have quite enjoyed Sucré. Will be another blog to come on our castle excursion then I head for Uyuni, might even make another tiktok when I get there since it’s meant to be pretty interesting.
Hola todos! Today’s was en exciting if bizarre little excursion with my pal who is totally not Ed Sheeran.
We took a trip up to Parque Cretácico, a dinosaur themed park which, if it is true there is a wall there with preserved dinosaur footprints from 68 million years ago from when the Andes first were raised by tectonic plates. On paper it looked intriguing so we had to go check it out. To get up here it’s a 15 minute ride from the centre of Sucre, either by taxi or slightly longer by colectivo.
Once you get up here the Bizarro factor cranks up to 11. Right outside the park is the biggest cement factory in Bolivia, FANCESA, it is absolutely huge and in my opinion this engineering marvel is the true attraction of this place, and despite sitting in the shadow of 68 million year of prehistory it boasts it’s own interesting living history.
– It was built in 1959 to rebuild Sucre after it was destroyed in 1948; something our guide failed to mention on the walking tour the other day!
– It became the largest cement factory in Bolivia in the 1980’s.
– Today it is a major pillar of the local economy employing 1000 people and exporting cement to Paraguay and Argentina.
– In my humble opinion they are missing out on a great money maker here not offering tours of the factory! It looks so interesting with all the conveyor belts!
Back on the dinosaur park the footprints were supposedly discovered in 1995 and they can be viewed from the mirador at the top of the park, however as the area is collapsing you cannot go and get a closer look, but to describe them they are very circular, almost suspiciously so and a little too evenly spaced in some places to make me believe these are 100% legitimate, I couldn’t say really not being able to get close to them.
What else does that park have? Well you have a museum, a restaurant and there are guided tours available, all in all worth the 30 bolivianos if you ask me.
Hola todos! As I write this today I am chilling in Beautiful Sucre, however before I got there I spent a day in Potosí, the famous or rather infamous oxygen deprived mining boom town which at one point had been one of the largest cities in the world rivalling London or Paris in the 17th century, all because of the Cerro Rico – the rich mountain provided silver in abundance, in fact during its peak production it provided over half of the entire Spanish Empire’s new world silver. It is believed to have had 60000 tonnes of silver when they first started mining it back in 1545 when the town was founded.
Now on to the mine itself, after I arrived here I opted to do the usual thing of get on a walking tour round the city, I booked a morning one but the guide asked to move it to the afternoon but she suggested I do the mines tour in the morning and thats exactly what I did. I went to a company called Koala Tours and asked to join the 0845 tour, and for 200 Bolivianos (£22) I was able to sign my soul away and get on up there.
Soon everyone else shows up and we’re put on a bus up towards the mines, first they drop you off at a warehouse where they don you up in all the gear; hard hat w a light, jacket, waterproof trousers and wellies, next it’s a stop to the miners market shop where you can buy yourself a face mask and a gift for the miners, the gifts can be a number of different items such as coca leaves, cigarettes, alcohol or even dynamite, yes you can buy dyamite legally over the counter here no questions asked!
I make my contribution buying them some booze and coca, everyone else buys something and the guide puts it all in the bag and we are soon on way to the mine itself.
After a bumpy ride another 200 meters up this mountain we are there, the guide gives us a brief rundown of the place and tells us it is still very much a working mine with it still holding vast amounts of silver though they are also mining tin here. Interestingly the silver does not get refined here anymore so opportunity to buy an ounce here. Most of the silver gets taken over to Chile to be refined then exported abroad since it isn’t just an investment asset, you need silver for so much of our modern electronics we take for granted back in the west.
Actually getting down into the mines is quite the experience to say the least, to put it bluntly conditions are pretty brutal down here, firstly the combination of dust and the altitude really does a number on your breathing for starters, then you have the passages, in many parts of this mine your crouching down nearly to a crawl where you often bang your head because your so low it’s hard to see whats in front of you.
Now it is also still a working mine so miners come back and four with metal wagons and when they do you have to get out of their way quick. It is backbreaking work, an unladen wagon weighs 250 kg with a fully loaded wagon being over a tonne when full of rocks with silver. They move these wagons up and down the same track and if a full wagon needs to be taken past an empty wagon they pull the empty wagon off the track for the full wagon to pass and then lift the 250 kg wagon back on the track. Also these wagons sometimes come off the track and when that happens they need to lift a wagon weighing a tonne back onto the line by themselves.
Walkikg through you see shrines where sacrifices are made to Pachamama, the earth mother inside this mine, to bring good luck to the miners, they donate things to these shrine’s such as cigarettes. Beer and coca leaves for good luck. They most certainly need it – as you can imagine accidents are common down here! Another part of the shrines is you see represtations of both the indigenous and imported African slave labour that was brought here to mine silver – The Spanish weren’t down here digging themselves! Our guide reckons about 8 million people died in these mines over the 500 years they have been operating which is downright insane if you think about it even if it may be exaggerated numbers wise it feels heavy down here.
Going deeper into the mine you eventually have to work your way down a narrow passage to get to the lower mines and it’s even more claustrophobic down there, to the point where it was just too hard to get the phone out to take pictures as you had to keep moving fast without much room to stand up, eventually though we are lead to one of the exits and we finish the tour. About 2 hours we were down there. These miners work 6-8 hours a shift WITHOUT breaks, so you can imagine how hard it is. We were all feeling it after a 2 hour walk through there! Honestly the place makes Big Pit look like a yoga retreat!
After we are back on the bus and dropped back into town I go meet up with that guide for the walking tour in the afternoon, she shows me round various parts of the city but I ended up finishing it about halfway as I was knackered from all the crouching and being really short of breath up in the mines.
I spent the rest of the day chilling back at the hostel then went out for grub and a few beers, it was busy in town as footy was on and turned out it was Bolivias world cup qualifier and they beaten Suriname 2-1 so this means they have one more playoff to do before they qualify. The mood in town was good after this. Not much else to say here.
Hola todos! I am writing this one on the bus just about to blow into Potosi. Grouping these 2 journeys plus Oruro together to bring the blog back up to speed since didn’t really get up to anything worth writing about.
After election day I was up and out of my place in La Paz around 10am, after a brief cable car ride I am at the bus station and do the usual thing, find the shoutiest bus boy barking “Oruro” and before you know it I’m sat on a bus and within about 15 mins we are on way. First we go up to El Alto where it pulls into a new bus station and this bus fills up to the brim fast. Then half hour later we are on way properly. Once of El Alto you at properly back on the flat plateaus of el Altiplano – it’s flatlands with mountains in the distance but we are still near 4000 meters above sea level out here!
The ride into Oruro is pretty uneventful save passing through some poverty stricken looking small towns on the way in the middle of nowhere. After a few hours we are into Oruro. Like many South American cities it’s pretty grotty on the outside as your greeted by that familiar red brick that’s used for all the informal housing here. After doing the usual thing of finding a taxi and getting to the little Airbnb I booked for 2 nights I go for a wander it’s not that bad if basic, you got some cute little parks and this giant statue on an overlook, I make plans to go up there tomorrow but ended up bailing on that idea. I go out have some food and a gentle few well earned beers and turn in for the night.
My next day in Oruro I get up at 5am generally feeling like crap but don’t manage to get back to sleep. By about half 9 I drag my ass up have a shower then go have a look about town. I eventually end up going for a coffee where I end up talking to this cute local lady who notices my suffering and recommends I go to this farmacia by the university and get this hot drink thing for my coughing and spluttering, after chatting for a bit she shows me where it is and I buy the orange drink she recommended. Go back my gaff, get the kettle on and drink this thing, it does completely flush my lungs out for a while and I’m breathing way better.
When I say I felt like crap I was bunged up like hell and found it very hard to breathe. I think it is a triple combo of the 4000 Meter altitude, hangovers of my damn mucous cold that had been giving me trouble since Lima and bad quality air, which can be attributed to the fuel they use here; it is a cheap nasty gasolina which is high in sulphur and low in octane and you can smell it when your out and about in the streets, so yeah been coughing up lots of flem while I’ve been here.
I later meet back up with that local lassie for a vino and some grub in the evening but not too much comes of that. I am back fairly early and get myself sorted for the ride to Potosi.
So for the journey to Potosi, do the usual thing in the bus station and I’m soon on way, this ride is a bit more interesting as we head into more rugged terrain going down to Potosi, or rather up should I say. This is what is probably going to be the highest place in altitude I will be visiting on this entire trip at 4100 meters above sea level. Though the mountains we pass through on way there must have been higher.
After about an hour of driving through more plateau flatlands we end up ascending into valleys that ate high up but green with shrubbery, I would imagine this is what the Scottish Highlands looks like – haven’t been but another one on my list to do when I’m back!
While we don’t see many views being in these valleys it’s still something to see and break up the boredom of the journey. Like going to Oruro you also pass through little villages and towns on the way though they looked a little better than the ones outside El Alto.
Going beyond these valleys we end up overlooking vast canyons like this could be Nevada or something. For the views this has definitely been one of the best travel days.
After about 5 hours we trundle on into Potosi. Now first impressions were not great as it was a bit of a nightmare getting from the bus station to my hostel and the place looked a bit grotty and arriving after dark didn’t make it that better, that said once settled in and after having a bit of a look round the square things looked a bit more hopeful, I am going to do a walking tour next morning to get the lay of the land and maybe try to get onto a tour of the mines.
Tomorrow we explore the city which once boasted the biggest Silver mine in the world!
Hola todos! Somehow I lost the notes I did for this one and have had to redo them and not having chance on the road hence the delay.
So after we left off from the last one Totally not Ed Sheeran and myself managed to find a few places where they would still let us have a beer over the dry election weekend which was very good going I have to say, among them was this nice little restaurant where we had a good chat with the lad serving us and then a short ways up the hill from there a cool little bar that looked very old school, the man running that place was cool and let us have a few beers in the back. lovelllyyyy.
That took care of Friday, then for Saturday Ed and his pal went back up to El Alto for some more footage for his video so Valle de la Luna would be a solo mission for me. I had to do laundry in the morning so didn’t head out till the afternoon.
Once the afternoon rolled round it was back on the cable car down to the same station we went the other day when we did the other valley, I am soon able to sort out a taxi up to Valle de La Luna. I get there, pay the £3 entrance fee and I am in.
So what to say about this place? Well for starters it is a much easier walk than the Valle de Las Animas being mostly flst with some hill climbs to get to viewpoints and there were good viewpoints here and it is another interesting landscape that resembles another random star wars planet.
Doing some reading into this place it apparently got it’s name after Neil Armstrong visited here after the Apollo 11 moon landing because it very much resembles what they seen on the moon with these rock formations, before that it was known as the valley of the spirits. True or not it doesn’t look earth like I’ll say that.
The spires here are made up of clay and sandstone rather than actual rocks and because of this the area is subject to erosion, in fact every time it rains in La Paz this place changes slightly. If you dear reader visit you may see something different to what I seen if you look at finer details.
Despite it’s arid look you also get catcus plants growing here, they are apparently a unique Andean cactus not seen in other regions and it is known as the San Pedro ribbed cactus or Achuma in Aimara, unfortunately didn’t get any pics of the cacti but you can look them up if interested.
After this I headed back and the rest of the evening went by pretty uneventfully only Ed was feeling ill so I went to those 2 places mentioned at the start on my own but not much else to say there.
Sunday itself was the election day and for us turistas it was pretty much a lock in as during the day there are no shops, restaurants or other places to go open, there is also no public transport and even international flights are grounded on this day. Any car on the road needs a special permit to be driving during polling hours. I didn’t go out and have a look at the voting I just chilled at my gaff, caught up with my family and just got my stuff together for the next leg.
The plan now is heading south to Oruro, from there I will visit the once great mining boom town of Potosí before heading to the old capital of Sucre before going back towards Uyuni and crossing into Argentina.
Will be dropping the blog for Oruro right after this one.
