Destination #10: Crossing (and surviving) Bolivia (Part II)

The Great Escape to La Paz Wednesday 11 August - Saturday 14 August: La Paz (Bolivia) 

We found out the hard way that the national pastime in Bolivia is striking, and we were unlucky to just land in the middle of a big one. Two provinces were squabbling over who owned the rights to a cement factory on the border between them and some angry miners joined in to protest against President Evo Morales and some new taxes. Apparently they also wanted an international airport for Potosi. 

Grand result of this all was that an angry mob of miners blocked all main roads around the mining city Potosi. In addition they were throwing sticks, and wait, you won't believe it, dynamite at passing cars and buses. As all this fun was spreading as a wildfire and was about to reach us in Uyuni, we were forced to change our travel plans radically, skipping Potosi, and renting some of the last 4x4 Toyota Landcruisers in Uyuni to get us out of there overnight. So here is where the great escape to La Paz via Oruro starts. 

Our convoy of four 4x4s left Uyuni in the direction of Oruro at around 20:00 when it was already pitch dark. The problem is that in this part of Bolivia there are no asphalted roads, no lights, no landmarks and no GPS. So we drove in complete darkness over bumpy and dusty roads, seemingly clueless where to go. 

We had an unlucky start as the first jeep of our convoy ran into a bunch of angry miners when asking for directions. These jokers started to hit the 4x4 with sticks and fortunately the driver managed to get Christian, Amy, Gaby, Michelle and Marcel out of there. From there on we avoided asking for directions and of course got lost. This forced us to knock on some doors in one of the small villages we were passing, where we offered one of the sleepy residents a wad of Bolivianos to guide us out of the desert and in to Oruro. The whole ordeal took us over 12 hours and I still wonder how our 16-year old driver got us there without GPS. 

Later we heard that we had been rather lucky, as one of the other guides told us he had to quickly make his way out of a public bus in Potosi after angry miners started to smash the windows and threw dynamite under it. Welcome to South America! From Oruro we took a bus to safety in La Paz, another 3-4hrs. Our great escape from Uyuni to La Paz took us around 16hrs. 

La Paz is a bit like marmite. You either love it or hate it. We loved it. This represented the real raw South America for us. Small cobblestone streets with people selling all kinds of stuff everywhere (from dead baby llamas to fake football gear from "Nike Drive Fit"). Or as my buddy Sach said "the place has soul". As the city lies in a valley, at night La Paz looks like the spaceship from the Steven Spielberg movie “Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind” when all the street lights are on. At 4,000m above sea level, La Paz also happens to be the highest capital city in the world. 

We did have a bit of luck, as Bolivia was playing Colombia in a friendly game. We easily managed to get some tickets and watched 90 minutes of dreadful football. These guys make QPR look good. Bolivia had one half decent player, the midfielder Da Rosa. He would probably just make it into the 1st team of Lincoln City. The game ended 1-1 after two comedy goals. I think the level of the Bolivian League is summed up by the fact that a team from La Paz called "T. Strongest" is leading the table. 

Emma chickened out of this, but a bunch of us spent a day with three blokes called Chello, Messi and Paparazzi (you can't make this stuff up) mountain biking down the infamous Death Road. The Death Road is legendary for its extreme danger: in 1995 the Inter-American Development Bank christened it as the "world's most dangerous road" One estimate is that 200-300 travellers were killed yearly along the road. 

At the end of 2006, after 20 years of construction, a new road (a by-pass) from La Paz to Coroico was opened to public. Since then, traffic on the Death Road has decreased substantially, although still circa 25 tourists managed to kill themselves on this road since. Death Road starts at 4,640m high at La Cumbre and goes down to Yolosa which is at 1,295m above sea level. 3,345m of vertical descent, 64km of downhill madness, all over a sandy path with a width of about 3m. It was pretty wicked. We survived and got a T-shirt for our troubles. 

As we were reaching the end of the first part of our trip, we unfortunately had to say goodbye to our own Indiana Jones / Chief Experience Officer / part-time sand-boarder / full time guide Christian. Where could we better do this than in one of his "friend's" restaurants called Maphrao On which had great Thai food and a dangerous happy-hour. The whole thing ended in Mongos, where a DJ was playing David Guetta while the Santos game was being shown on giant screens. 

The last day in La Paz we spent at the Tiwanaku archaeological site, had lunch at the excellent El Colonade and I managed to buy a fake Corinthians football jersey of another fat bastard: Ronaldo (the Brazilian one that is, not that Portuguese pansy). Actually I only bought the shirt so I could include this great quote from Fabio Capello in the blog. As a parting shot, here we go, this is what Capello said to Ronaldo when he emerged from the shower after a Real Madrid league game: “Aren’t you ashamed of being so fat?”. It is unclear if Ronaldo answered the question.

Next stop: Destination #11: Machu Picchu (Peru)

Destination #10: Crossing (and surviving) Bolivia (Part I)

The problem with going off-road is that once you are off it, it is difficult to get back on. It was only last week that we played our first wildcard in order to include "Sandboarding in the Death Valley in Chili" at the expense of the "2010 Shanghai World Expo", but now we are already forced to play our 2nd wildcard to include our biggest adventure to date: Escaping angry dynamite-throwing miners in Bolivia. 


Ok it all started out a bit more mellow than that and we were luckier than some of our fellow travellers but it was a great escape nevertheless. We are still undecided as to which destination we are going to sacrifice for our new destination #10: "Crossing (and surviving) Bolivia", but we will let you all know shortly. So here comes Bolivia in two parts, first the mellow (although bloody cold) part, secondly the more adventurous part. 

Saturday 7 August - Wednesday 11 August: Desert crossing into Bolivia 

At the Chilean-Bolivian border we traded in our mini-bus for a bunch of 4x4 Toyota Landcruisers. While we made our way into Bolivia through the stunning landscapes of deserts, mountains, active volcanoes, salt flats and geysers we almost felt like we were participating in Paris-Dakar. As the Bolivians are not too keen on Chileans, none of the roads in South Bolivia are asphalted, apparently among others to discourage Chileans to enter the country. This does mean that our 4x4s are not so much a luxury but also a necessity. 

Our first overnight stop was at a glorified shed at 4,500m above sea level. And boy it was cold here. Besides our 3 drivers, we had also hired 2 Bolivian ladies to cook for the 17 of us. They did a fantastic job (Llama burger anyone?), but nothing can keep the cold away at that altitude. At night it got "up" to minus 10, so we slept fully dressed with 5 layers, gloves and a woolen hat on in our sleeping bags. At this altitude the air is so cold that the men's dorm - where Marcel, Olivier, Nuno, Ben and I slept - resembled more a Darth Vader practice ground than anything else.  

The amazing thing about this part of Bolivia is that, despite it getting freezing cold at night, the piercing sun makes it incredibly hot during the day. So we went from five layers of clothing at night to shorts and t-shirts during the day. 

Our 2nd overnight stop was in the Salt Hotel (read hotel, think shed), at the edge of the salt flats. The whole "hotel" was made completely of salt and had a hot shower, for which we had to battle a bunch of Frenchies. Fortunately, it was less cold here than during our previous night and we played the card game "shithead" until the electricity went out at 22:00. 

From the Salt Hotel we drove across the salt flats (or Salar de Uyuni). I have to admit it is a fantastic experience, particularly given the contrast of piercing blue skies and blinding white salt on the flat lakebed. These salt flats now cover a total area of over 12,000 square km and are one of Bolivia's main salt mining centres and the largest salt flat in the World (distant number 2 being Salt Lake City). 

We had a go at shooting some funny pictures here (as there is no horizon, you can play around a bit with relative size of objects), but mostly failed miserably. 

At the end of our 3rd day we hit the isolated salt mining town of Uyuni. With 12,000 inhabitants, and at 3,600m above sea level this sizeable town for Bolivian standards, resembles one of those Wild West towns out of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns. Most of the residents here are either public sector workers or salt miners. After visiting Uyuni's main attraction the Train Cemetery, we checked ourselves into the Samay Wasi Uyuni Hotel, and let there be no mistake after 2 days on the salt flats this is Uyuni's equivalent of the Grand Hyatt. In the evening I did manage to win a pizza eating contest from fellow traveler Marcel in the Minuteman Pizza restaurant (run by a lost American from Boston) before moving on to the Extreme Fun Bar (you can't make this stuff up). They clearly got their pricing right because most shots and cocktails were just 15 pesos (or just over 1 pound). Recommendation of the day: the "Coca Leaf is Not Cocaine" shot, which includes licor de coca, modre coca, Aquardiente de coca and Granadina. 

Next blog: Part II: The great escape to La Paz

Destination #9: Sand-boarding in the Death Valley (Chili)

OK, here is where we start to get off-track a bit. Sandboarding in the Death Valley in Chili was not on our initial List of 28, but damn, it was so cool that it should have been. So we have decided to play our first wildcard, we are going to replace #22 "Going to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo" (which is ending at the end of October and for which we were seriously running out of time anyway) by sandboarding in the Death Valley in Chili. So here we go, our new destination #9: Chili. 

Thursday 4 August - Saturday 7 August: San Pedro de Atacama (Chili) 

A 10 hour bus journey brought us from Salta in Argentina to San Pedro de Atacama (or SPA) in Chili. SPA lies 2,436m above sea level. As a reference, approximately 27 percent of Holland lies below sea level. Despite drinking liters and liters of water, we couldn't avoid the altitude sickness kicking in. SPA is situated at the edge of the Atacama desert and apparently is the driest place on earth. The small town is packed with back-packers and hostels and believe it or not even has an official North Face shop.

4km west of SPA lies Death Valley, a magical place with sand dunes which can run up to 120 meters long. Here is where we did the coolest thing so far: sandboarding. When choosing our sandboard (basically the same as a snowboard) it was determined that Emma was a "regular" and I was a "goofy". All of a sudden my whole life started to make sense to me, that was until I was told that if you are a "goofy" it just means that you have your right leg up front, and if you are a "regular" it means you have your right leg at the back of the board.

Anyways, sandboarding is "Da Daddy" as my buddy Max would say. Ok, we never really figured out how to break, or how to do turns, but we did manage to go down the dunes with amazing speed, until we fell over that was. 

Prize for best tumble down the dunes went to Michelle who decided to go for the "ostrich break technique", i.e. you go down the dune with dizzling speeds and when you lose balance you bang your head in the sand first while the board goes over your head. I took her a couple of days, but she eventually recovered. 


Downside of this sandboarding is that you will have sand coming out of bodily spaces you didn't know existed for weeks. Nevertheless, this was definitely the highlight of the trip so far!

So what else did we do in backpackers' paradise besides eating sand? We chilled-out in the Termas de Puritama hot springs (water temperature: 30 degrees plus), checked out the sunset in the Valle de la Luna (or Moon Valley) while drinking Christian's signature drink the Pisco Mango Sour, and last but not least, we went for some star-gazing, where I learned the hard way that trying to ask intelligent questions about black holes while everybody is freezing cold or half asleep doesn't earn you any brownie points in the group. 

Next stop: Salt flats in Bolivia

Destination #8: Eating steak in Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Wednesday 28 July - Thursday 4 August: Buenos Aires - Salta - San Antonio de los Cobres

Instead of taking the direct BA flight to Buenos Aires (like any sane person would have done), we decided, for some reason still unclear to me, to take an indirect flight via Dallas. So after a 9 hour American Airlines flight (with AA being one of those airlines which clearly stopped recruiting new flight attendants in the 1960s) and a 6 hours stop-over in the home city of the Dallas Cowboys, we finally boarded our connecting flight to Buenos Aires in the evening (which in itself took another sweet 9 hours). It did give us the opportunity to have a burger at a classic Dallas burger joint with the best name ever (and with a dyslexic owner for that matter): Fuddruckers.







First impression of Buenos Aires: damn it is winter here. Sunny but chilly, with temperatures ranging between 5 and 15 degrees. Having checked-in our back-packs at Hotel Carsson, we went for a typical Argentinian breakfast at a place with a real "Argentinian" name: Richmond. The breakfast should have been called "Death by Sugar", it included cakes, ehm, more cakes and let me think, oh yeah cakes. I.e. it fitted in perfectly with my diet.


We did get down to business quite quickly though and we did what we came out to do here: eat steak and lots of it. So spread out over our 5 days in Buenos Aires, this is where we went: 


We started at Resto (serving modern Argentinian cuisine, with sensible proportions of steak), we moved on to Cabana Las Lillas (special thanks to Julian for recommending this place to me already 3 years ago) for something which must have been at least close to a kilo of meat (these guys have their own ranch to supply the meat), then we had some T-bone at La Brigada, a parrilla full of signed football jerseys owned by Hugo, a wannabe and less fat version of Diego Maradonna) and finally ended in Don Ernesto in San Telmo for some excellent bife de lomo for just 32 pesos (or just 5 pounds).

Not speaking a word of Spanish caught up with us on multiple occasions, the most notable being me asking for an Australian mining company (Rio Tinto) instead of a bottle of red (Vino Tinto) which resulted in us getting two chilled beers in a giant cooler instead.

We also got the opportunity to watch part of one of the local league games on TV and found out that Argentinian football is basically an even more violent version of the Dutch Total Football, only with more handbags. They basically kick the shit out of each other while the referee waves "play on". Nigel de Jong would fit right in.


We also did some real touristy stuff of course, we had lunch at the famous tango place Cafe Tortoni, we went to see Evita's grave at Cemeterio de la Recoleta, got stuffed with a fake 50 pesos note in a bar in Palermo, went all cultural in the MALBA, visited the Governmental palace at the Plaza de Mayo (Casa Rosada), strolled through the street markets on the cobblestones in San Telmo and tried to get into Teatro Colon (and failed miserably).

After 5 days of steak bonanza and walking around the city, we were introduced to our tour guide from Gap Adventures, Christian Suarez, an ex-professional sand-boarder with the grand title of CEO or "Chief Experience Officer". He introduced us to the other 14 people in our group with whom we would travel through Argentina, Bolivia, Chili and Peru over the next 4 weeks.


First stop on our way up north was Salta, a city in the north of Argentina, 2 hours from Buenos Aires by plane. Salta (population of 800,000) is home to the Empanadas Saltenas, a local specialty which basically is a warm pastry with meat inside. We also had the chance to go up to San Antonio de los Cobres, a sleepy mining town located at 3,750m above sea level, traveling through the impressive Grand Canyon-like valleys of the Andes on our way there.

So much for our first week in South America.

Next stop: Sandboarding in Chili