Welcome to Bolivia!

Much as we enjoyed our time in Salta, we were planning many trips when suddenly we realized we had to get moving! We were in luck, and managed to schedule perfectly-aligned travel in notorius bolivia. Left on the 5am bus from Salta to the bolivian border at La Quaica, walked the 2km over the border to the train station, and just managed to catch the (4-times-a-week) train to Uyuni. Uyuni is the main starting point for the famous Bolivian salt flats tours, and our first experience of a 100% gringo-oriented town. Hated it. But we got in at 1am, and managed to organize a one-day tour starting 10:30 in the morning. It would get us back in time for the overnight bus to La Paz, the capital.

The salt flats are immense, and completely desolate (approx. 2000km in diameter). On our tour we watched how salt is harvested (the first 2 inches of the flats are soft enough to scrape into heaps, these are then crushed into finer grains, and packaged into Bolivian salt bags. No cleaning involved:) Mmmmmn, tasty! There's an island that rises from the salt, and is covered in cacti. Bizarre. Unfortunately our camera died so only a few pics.
Salt processing

The cactus island in the salt lake
It's cold (-10'C at night, 30 during the day)! Our frozen hostal room window in the morning.
Uyuni is the place where trains get retired... pics of the train graveyard outside town


Build with what you have... half the houses are of mud blocks, half of salt blocks.




We were happy to leave Uyuni, but enjoyed the salt flats. La Paz is a bit of a shock. It's massive, and life is lived on the streets. They even have themed streets... fruits over there, makeup over here etc.

Our favorite so far is the fruit. Everything here seems to be picked at the perfect time, and sold quickly, so the taste is amazing. We also love the 2boliviano (30c canadian) freshly squeezed orange juice you can get on every block. They squeeze it right in front of you.

Quick outline of plans:
- We're going to catch a small cesna plane to the jungle north (near Brazil) on Friday. The $130 round trip ticket compared well to 42 hour bus trip (bring extra food, last year it took 6 days due to rain).
- In the meantime I think we're headed to Soranta in the mountains on the north shores of lake Titicaca. It's a town of 8000 and known for the hiking around it. We were originally planning on going to cocacabana but the uyuni gringo trap has turned us off the must-see-gringo-trail scene. We'll likely check it out the way to Peru next week