Bolivia; into the wild.

 Our night bus from Salta dropped us very early in the morning at the small border town of La Quiaca which at 6 in the morning was really really cold, so together with about 20 locals we huddled in the bus station before getting to the boarder when it opened at 7.00 am. We discovered the laxest border yet as we walked through to Bolivia with no one there only to be sent back when someone discovered we had not stamped out of Argentina. We got ourselves stamped out only to be again sent back when we had not been stamped into Bolivia, so after crossing into Bolivia twice unofficially we finally made it in with a proper stamp in our passports.

We walked into the bright cloudless town of Villazon where desperate for warmth (it must have been about -2) we discovered a woman with a trolley containing hot pots of various food and after the now usual pointing manoeuvres found ourselves the proud owners of a massive bowl of spicy potato and meat soup. A wonderful introduction to Bolivia as the Argentinians think that pepper is a wild spice and should only be used with discretion and we had been craving a bit more zip in our food.

We caught the first bus out of town to Uyuni, as our guide book said that Villazon was a dump although in our brief stay we found it very pleasant just cold.

 The bus drive to Uyuni was a seven hour epic along unmade roads rising up and up into the Andes.

 We arrived at Utuni, an old railway town, which was only really built because it was on the junction of Bolivia's rail network. It's railway station is the biggest building in town and it's railway heritage litter the streets.... literally!

 The reason to go to Uyuni is to go on a tour into the salt flats and down south into the very high Andes and visit the national park there. We signed on and next morning headed out to the salt flats in a big Land Cruiser. Our fellow passengers were more upmarket than us and were staying at the edge of the salt flats in this hotel totally built of salt.

 Once out into the endless wastes of the worlds largest salt flats the thing to do is to have fun with the perspective taking pictures.

 Including our driver Luis (black hat) there were 7 of us, we were treated really well and the food was excellent. There is an island in the lake which we also explored.

 Apparently these cacti are 700 years old.... also note how it was so cold I've had to buy a hat.

 Our digs for the night were in another hotel built of salt.

 In the morning we headed south briefly crossing the flats before heading up and up and up. We thought we had been high before but now we started venturing up to the snow line.

 Where at lunch time we came across these funny little critters called  viscacha a long tailed rabbit that bounces over the rocks. We discovered later that they did not taste too good being very tough. Not hard to see why.

 On we went to see believe it or not flamingos!!

 Weird wind formed rock formations, and as we entered the park itself snow storms. This is the dry season, obviously another case of weather being affected by too many English people being around. This put a stop to photos and anyway by now it was really really bitterly cold and even Liza was finding this a bit much. We spent the night in what the Bolivians described as a refuge which will give you some idea of the standard of accommodation although to be honest we were really well fed and once tucked up in sleeping bags and blankets we were not too cold although I did make sure i did not need to get up in the night to go to the loo!

 The next morning saw a dusting of snow that had been swept across the plains (I think we were at about 5200m here) which did mean that our planned trip even higher had to be curtailed  although the rock formations on the way out were spectacular.

 Lama herds were fairly common.

 The rock formations were so spectacular even Liza had a go at climbing them.

 Then as we returned to Uyuni we had a quick detour to this train graveyard where an abandoned project to increase the Latin American track had failed leaving these never used trains to slowly rust in the dry semi desert conditions.

The next day we took the bus to Potosi, our guide book said 6 - 8 hours only they have just build a brand new road which meant that we swept there in three and a half hours. Potosi is the highest town on earth at 4200m and boy do you know it! A stroll up or down the streets soon leaves you gasping, although considering the up and down we have been doing since we went on our road trip in Argentina we are, I think ,pretty well adjusted. I have had issues sleeping at this altitude and Liza has had a couple of headaches. Even so I do think climbing to the top of the bell tower of one of the many churches as soon as we hit town was not the most sensible decision we have ever made!

 But the views are pretty spectacular.

Potosi was founded by the Spanish because of the silver in the hill in the picture above. It was for well over 100 years the worlds main source of silver and the hardships endured by the indigenous people and African slave in extracting it was immense. However the buildings left by the Spanish including the mint, are spectacular. The mint has been turned into a superb museum and we enjoyed our visit.

Salta, a 5 day road trip.... up up and away!

 The delightful church in Salta greeted us after an overnight 1st class bus journey from the Jesuit Missions. A wonderful very pretty town which had a lot to offer including some great museums. We have come to the conclusion that to run a museum in Argentina what is of primary importance is a really really eccentric curator and Salta's ethnographic museum had certainly taken this on board.

 A Salta house complete with flowers.

We decided after a couple of urban days in Salta that this was the first place where it would be possible and worth hiring a car. The first in our entire trip, so a day after running round to car hire places and getting quotes we took the cheapest we could find, an old Ford Ka with too many miles on the clock, a cracked windscreen and a few bumps and scrapes already on it and took off on a 1250 km road trip into the uplands of northern Argentina on what was an unforgettable expedition. We consulted our hotel owner in Salta and armed with a small map and a spare bottle of water headed off.

 Heading south for the wine growing town of Cafayate we first came across this reservoir Dique Cabra Corral, a sharp still morning resulted in some great reflections.

 We drove up the Valles Cachaquies into stunning rock formations and colours, the like of which neither of us had ever seen before

 Note me in this picture - just to give some idea of scale!!

 We arrived in Cafayate where we went to the local museum where once again we encountered a typical Argentinian museum curator with the full range of absolutely necessary eccentricities, this one believing despite all evidence to the contrary that we spoke perfect Spanish and acted accordingly. She did have however one of the most astounding collections of burial pots from the pre Inca civilisation which had some amazing intricate patterns.

We then toured a couple of the local wine tasting establishments and bought a bottle to have in the evening.... very nice too.

That evening we encountered some fellow tourists one of whom being Australian insisted on kicking up the hostel BBQ and doing steak. There was however a surfeit of Englishmen present so in a town which boasts,as we were told while testing wine, 340 days of sun a year, it rained!

The rain however was of real use, firstly to the local vineyards who were very pleased about it but also to us as it fell as snow on the high ground and for the rest of our trip we had snow covered mountain tops!

 Day 2 saw us drive the 200 km of dirt track roads to Catchi in the middle of nowhere. We had to stop when this guy and his mate were driving this very reluctant bull towards us down the road. We first thought that they were having real issues but quickly discovered that this was not the case it was the bull who was having the issues..... they came past us on the way from not a clue to not another clue.... we had seen no signs of habitation for about 30 miles!

 Our lunch stop at Molinos, this churches roof inside was made of cactus wood and was really spectacular.

Cachi was a beautiful town where we spent a quite cold night the following morning we began a long drive to San Antonio de los Cobres, having to take a 150 km detour from the straightest route as we did not have 4 wheel drive, we had not really realised that for the past 2 days we had been climbing up and up and arrived at this summit on the road.

It was a little windy!

 We coasted down this road - I measured 15 km of not touching the accelerator with the car in neutral.

Once down to about 1400 m we then immediately started to climb up this valley again feeling really intrepid, here's Liza being an intrepid exploring woman!

 Heading up and up and up we found Lamas! these were really helpful and stood still enough for photographs.

Arriving in San Antonio we found that the hostel we were expecting to stay was shut and the only other hotel in town was way outside our price range we discovered this gentleman who ran the local mud hut hostel for locals which is where we ended up spending the night. He also insisted on taking us on a tour of the local sights which were this hill in the background. This was the highest part of our trip at about 4500 m

This viaduct which used to take ore from the silver mine nearby which is where our guide used to work

 And the local hot spring, here with a plastic water bottle on top

Our host's mud hut - with corrugated iron and uninsulated  roof was not the warmest place we have ever stayed but once rolled up in the blankets we were warm enough although the 4000 m altitude was a bit of an issue! It was also my dad's birthday which made the chances of a skype call to wish him the best a bit of a non-starter.

 From San Antonio we drove to Humahuaca,  a 70 km of dirt tracks round salt flats and over frozen streams before again finding tarmac with another amazing coast down the mountains, this time 25 km without going near the accelerator to Purmamarca with the amazing coloured mountains in the background where lunch was enjoyed.

Humahuaca provided us with an interesting restaurant which served Lama. A very lean meat which we decided could be served to a vegetarian who had been told it was a vege-burger without them knowing. A very fine grained bland meat which we thought was OK if you could not get beef which is not a particular issue in Argentina.

From there via a tropic we headed back to Salta.

We stopped at Tilcara where there are some pre Inca ruins which have been thoroughly worked over by reconstructionalist archaeologists to an extent that would have had them hounded out of the UK

Turning lines of stones where buildings had stood as seen above into what may have been there at the time like below!

My last shot is of this superb vista from the road of one of the local graveyards with the multicoloured mountains behind. Now we are back into Salta our hire car returned, we are planning on getting a bus to Bolivia tomorrow.