Tupiza and the Salar

After a cold visit to Oruro, at 12,000 feet, warmed by a visit to some nearby hot springs, we took a 13-hour train ride to Tupiza. We saw many flamingos migrating. We descended to Tupiza, at about 9,000 feet. Tupiza is where outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are said to have spent their final days.

Butch and Sundance fled from the U.S. to Argentina with Sundance's girlfriend Ethel Place. They bought a ranch and also engaged in cattle rustling until someone figured out that they were wanted in the U.S. They fled to Bolivia where they robbed more trains and banks, and they were stealing the payroll on its way to the miners when they were finally killed in a shootout, according to legend. Some say that only Sundance was killed and that Butch made it back to the U.S. In any case, the final robbery and the shootout were near Tupiza, and you can see why U.S. wild west outlaws would like this place.

The land is like Utah, full of red rocks shaped like spires and hoodoos. We hiked in a canyon similar to Utah's slot canyons. We watched a man collect gravel by shoveling dirt through a screen held up by a stick, collecting only the larger stones. The same technology would have been used during the time of Butch and Sundance.

The next morning we left for a four-day 4WD tour of the country between Tupiza and Uyuni, ending in the salt flat. From Tupiza we climbed up onto the altiplano, or high plane, which is mostly between 12,000 and 16,000 feet, with peaks up to 19,000 feet. We shared the tour with another couple, Jen and Andrew, who are also from the U.S. and living in Cochabamba. And we were guided by Jose and his wife Berta, who cooked delicious meals for us.

On the first day we visited several tiny villages, some subsisting on mining and others on llamas. We saw beautiful red rocks and scenery that reminded us of Canyonlands in Utah. We saw a mule train going from one village to another, and at night we played soccer by moonlight with Quechua-speaking children, at about 14,000 feet in altitude.

The hotel is what is called basic, but we did have a bed in a room with Jen and Andrew, whose thermometer recorded that it got down to 41 degrees in our room at night. It was well below freezing outside. Even at this altitude, Bolivians don't have heat. There is little to burn on the altiplano.

So that the Landcruiser would start the next morning, our guide covered the engine with blankets and started it every two hours during the night. And he woke us up at 4:30 the next morning for a day of visiting beautiful startlingly-colored lakes surrounded by mountains that are also colored by the minerals in this region. We saw geysers, flamingos, and had one flat tire. We also got to soak at a beautiful hot spring overlooking a lake backed by mountains. At times, we were as high as 16,000 feet.

On the third day we saw more beautiful lakes, more flamingos, a fox, many guanaco (the wild ancestor of the llama), and had four flat tires! Jose and Berta can change a tire in about five minutes time usually, although on one occasion the jack tipped over and the wheel crashed down onto the sand, fortunately not on top of anybody. At night we stayed in a hotel made entirely of salt! Even our bed was made of salt. Check out our pictures at flickr.com/photos/kimigary.

On day four we got up at 4:30 a.m. in order to watch the sun rise over the salar, a beautiful experience. The salar is the hugest salt flat in the world. I was surprised at how hard the salt was. Our vehicle left no tracks on it. We hiked on the "island", an outcropping of coral and cactus that used to be an island when the salar was a lake. And we took many silly depth of field pictures, because on the salar everything is flat and white and you can't tell how far away things are.

We ended our tour in Uyuni, and took the train to Oruro. On account of a roadblock by students who wanted health care, no buses were running from Oruro to Cochabamba, but we found a mini-van that would take us to the road block. From there we walked for about 15 minutes, with many other people doing the same thing, through the roadblock. We got in another mini-van on the other side, and we enjoyed the sunny warm weather as we arrived in Cochabamba. (During winter, every day is the same in Cocha. 80 degrees during the day and 50 degrees at night. No precipitation).

Back in Cochabamba, we discovered the American clothing section of the market. Several city blocks contain stall after stall of used American clothing. This clothing comes from U.S. thrift stores. Some of the clothing even bears price tags from thrift stores that I recognize. You can get almost anything for a dollar or two, and it's even in American sizes, big enough for us!

Also back in Cochabamba, our housemate's brother is visiting from Scotland, and he brought two packs of REAL CHEDDAR CHEESE! I hadn't tasted anything like that in the nine months that we've been in South America! Yum!