eMail Journal
A journal of emails sent during Bolivian portion of trip:
From: Rick Samco
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008
Subject: Hola from Bolivia!
Well, we´ve been in this high country for 5 days, trying to learn to breath at 12,000 feet. LaPaz is a beautiful city of 1.5 million set into a deep canyon with the city climbing the walls. The river through the middle of the city goes from 16,000 foot snow-covered peaks behind the city down to the Amazon (only hundreds of feet high) in about one hundred miles! The past two days we spent on the Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca at 13,000 ft., where bending over was an effort. But nonetheless we hiked 11 miles out and back to the northern tip of the island (Chincana) where the god of the Sun came to the earth for the Incas, an extremely special, sacred site. Marking the spot is a large Inka stone altar set on a huge white boulder, overlooking the lake. And across the water is the Isla de la Luna, where the moon goddess also came to earth.
And the island and lake themselves are incredible. 20,000 foot Andean range across the water, beautiful terraced (by Incas or earlier civilization) hills everywhere, growing every type of crop that you can imagine, azure blue water into lots of little inlets, beautiful weather (first sun that they have had in 3 weeks). And we have a wonderful English speaking guide, Reinaldo. He seems to be the grand old tour guide of LaPaz and knows everyone, everywhere and a lot of history. This is the off season because the rainy season just ended, and this year´s season was a whopper. So, extremely few touristas.
We are finding Bolivia a very complicated country, politically and culturally. The indigenous people (Aymara) are in the majority and are an extremely industrious and intelligent people. But they have been oppressed for a milleium -- Incas, Spanish, Spanish descendants, cocaine traffic, etc. Bolivia recently elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales, and that is completely changing the dynamics of the country. It is not clear how it is going to turn out. Right now it appears to be heading toward Cuban socialism. And their only real industry is cocaine export. Most everything else is imported (or, more accurately, laundered).
Tonight we take an overnight bus south to Uyuni to start our week long 4WD tour of the "southwest circuit". huge salt flats, geothermal springs and geysers, lakes of every color, etc. And we hear that it´s ¨only¨ 10-11,000 feet. Can´t wait ... we´ll try to update you when we catch our breath :>)
hasta luego, Rick and Martha
From: Rick Samco
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Subject: Getting acclimatized to this thin air ...
Right after the last email, we spent an 12 hour overnight bus ride from LaPaz to Uyuni, with 4+ rough hours on washboard dirt roads. Sleeping pills made it quite tolerable (thank god we didn´t have evacuate the bus in our semi-comatose state). Upon our arrival we met our driver, Paolino, and the pride-of-his-life -- a 94 Toyota Landcruiser (he told us not to tell his wife). And off we went ... but first some geography
The entire western half of Bolivia is a high Andean plateau, the heart of which drops from around 13,000 feet around LaPaz to around 12,000 feet in the south. So water flows from the north down to a southern depression -- a huge dry lake basin/salt flat, the Salar de Uyuni. Punctuating the southern part of that plateau are beautiful volcanoes, some rising to over 20,000 feet, and four of which are active. And there are many higher smaller ¨dead¨ lakes/lagunas nestled among the volcanoes.
So, we headed SW, heading up (yes, UP) into an incredible landscape of red-yellow volcanic soil, huge volcanoes with multi-colored alluvial fans radiating downward, and only inch high vegetation which provide an unbelievable green/yellow velvet texture to all of the surrounding land. And no roads ... just ¨four-bying¨ across a huge open landscape. Wild vicuñas (a wild ancestor of llamas) everywhere. Weird lava formations. And we would often crest a 15-17,000 foot pass and look down on a wildly colored laguna. This part of the world is the richest in minerals (world´s largest mines of silver, zinc, borax, sulfur, copper, ...) and each laguna would take on the color of its area´s dominant mineral. And most lagunas would have a few to hundreds of flamingos feeding along the shoreline. And, if a laguna had thermal hot springs (many did), then those areas would be a brilliant green from algae. We had never experienced any other location remotely like this ... we could have been on Mars. The literal high point was an 18,000´ field of geysers and bubbling hot mud pools. From a previous experience at 18K feet, I´ll tell you driving to that altitude is definitely the way to go. We have been drinking our twice or more daily cups of Té of Cocoa for the altitude and it works ... and no, no cocaine effects. Another ¨med¨ we have been taking is Bolivian vino with dinner ... delicious!
After two days of this, and a night at an incredibly remote, yet beautiful and new, ¨hotel¨ (Tayka Hotel del Desierto), we arrived at the Chilean border and were ¨handed over¨ to Claudio and Eduardo, our Chilean guide and driver, for the next portion of our adventure. We felt a little little like political prisoners being exchanged for something since Chile and Bolivia are not on the most friendly of terms. This stems from Chile acquiring its northern section from Bolivia in a 1800´s war (when Bolivia lost its only ocean access). We quickly descended to the tourist ¨mecca¨ of San Pedro de Actacama (aka SPA) at 9,000´ and spent 4 days exploring northern Chilean desert
< Description of adventures in Chile snipped out -- see trip's separate "Chile" section >
So, back into amazing Bolivia ... We headed north to the finale of the SW Circuit, Salar de Uyuni. This is the largest salt flat in el mundo -- 100 miles long and wide, 7 feet deep of the whitest salt you´ve ever seen (the salt is floating on another 100 feet of brine)! Two weeks before it was under 12 inches of water left over from the rainy season ... but now almost completely dry for us! We drove across this incredible white expanse for 40ish miles to Isla Incahuasi with its 1000 year old cacti, surrounded by brillant white as far as the eye could see, with volcanos at the horizon. And the salt is patterned with irregular meter sized ¨plates¨ formed when the drying salt expands. We got out of the Landcruiser a few kilometers from the island and walked. We loved the sensation of floating and felt like the cars were actually docked at the island. The weather was sunny and mild termperatures. We lunched at the a cafe and spent the afternoon exploring the island. Afterwards we floated off to a lovely hotel in the pueblo Tahua on the northern ¨shore¨. To frost all of this, we visited two caves with pre-Inca mummies. One was a mass burial site and the other, some distance away, appeared to be a more intimate family burial. The latter had everything completely preserved in the high dry air -- clothing, skin, artifacts, etc. And these were no museums, just there.
Finally, back to Uyuni, a tour of the salt farm, and then another overnight bus ride to LaPaz, where we are now waiting for our laundry. Tomorrow we say goodbye to Reinaldo, and fly to Quito in Ecuador to meet Bob & Joyce. Then on the Galapagos for more adventure & discovery.
Hope that this isn´t too long for you ... tried to keep it to the high points! All for now ...
Rick & Martha