Backpacking - Bolivia and Argentina

The past two weeks have been pretty intense travelling, with some incredible experiences along the way. The route plan has changed several times, and I am now writing from Iguacu falls in Northern Argentina having travelled through Bolivia and passed briefly through Chile on my way back to Florianopolis on the Brazilian coast where I will be spending Christmas, and then on to Rio for New Year's.

Route so far. To be continued after New Year

Bonito, Brazil


Having left the wetlands of the Pantanal at the beginning of December, I ventured south to Bonito, a small town with crystal-clear rivers, tropical fish and caves with ice-blue underwater lakes as its main attractions. Rappelling down on a rope seventy meters at 8am into a pitch black cave was certainly an awakening experience. Once safely down with the adrenal glands working overtime, the scale of the cave was barely visible with the water only noticeable through its slapping of the cave walls. Twenty minutes later, the first single ray of sunlight shone through from the ground level opening, illuminating a protruding stalagmite on the water's surface. A pretty incredible scene.

Ready for the 70 meter drop

First ray of sunlight entering into cave

As more light came in and the beam widened, the extent of the cave's size became more visible, a vast expanse of impressive rock formations the size of two football pitches. The morning included a snorkelling tour of the caves kitted out with full body wetsuits, and then a paddle boat tour of the cave walls. The rappel back out of the cave was a fairly gruelling 20 minutes up to the sunlit opening. Altogether an impressive and quite surreal experience of South America's largest discovered cave.


Sucre, Bolivia


Getting to Sucre from Brazil was quite a mission, all in all a 36 hour journey, including a 12-hour overnight bus journey through Bolivia as the only gringo aboard. Thoughts of taking out the laptop to watch a movie quickly disappeared when I crossed from Brazil over the Bolivian border, where the living standards seemed to have dropped off a cliff. There was a noticeable change in appearances from facial features, clothes, cleanliness, as well as prices which were significantly cheaper in Bolivia (university costs 5 USD a year, as does a decent three course meal). Despite having S America's largest quantity of natural resources, it is the continent's poorest country. The Spanish robbed Bolivia of its pure silver used to bankroll its growing new world empire, while decades of government mismanagement of its resources has left a majority of the 9 million in poverty. Bolivia, now landlocked and bordering Peru, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina lost half its territories to its neighbours over the past century.


Sucre is Bolivia's judicial capital, the site of Bolivia's liberation and once political capital that is now La Paz, further North. It's a nice colonial city, and a perfect backpacker's hangout. I spent two days hiking in the surrounding mountains with a guide following an Inca trail and reaching 3,600 meters. We overnighted in a very basic hut open to hikers to wonder in and part of a town nestled in the bottom of a crater. The second day, having gotten up early to reach the main road in the bottom of the valley for the 'bus' (a big pickup truck with people crammed in the back) that comes by around 10.30am (this depends on the driver, and the bus may well come at noon, 2pm or later), at noon we were told that given the previous day's rain the bus would not be able to cross the river and was therefore not coming. After walking three hours already that day, and eight the day before, the ten hour walk back to Sucre was not looking too appealing. Thankfully, in the next town the guide managed to convince the local 'doctor' that one of our group was ill (she would in fact never have been able to make the walk) and that we needed the town 'ambulance' to take us back to the river where we could call a taxi to take us back into town. The doctor never thought to ask what was wrong with her and whether he could do anything to help.

Inca trail through the mountains - 3,600m

Hiker's accommodation in village

Journey back in ambulance with villagers

Village ambulance

Potosi, Bolivia


After a day of exploring Sucre and visiting a few museums, I caught a shared taxi with three other Bolivians to the mining town of Potosi, a 2-hour journey away. Potosi is known as one of the highest cities in the world at 4,000 meters, and even after just a few uphill steps you feel the shortness of breath. The town is pretty much dependent on the one big mountain in whose shadow it sits, where the Spaniards found pure silver and from whence they financed their empirical expansion and located their mint - Potosi was then one of the biggest cities in the world, larger than London or Paris with 200,000 people.

The mountain with over 200 mine entrances

The Armani collection for 2011 - theme: understated recession

The main attraction of the town for visitors is a tour of the mines from where you get an impression of the incredibly uncomfortable and dangerous conditions in which the miners operate and earn their living. The Devil's Miner is a famous documentary based on the Potosi mines. The tour is a demanding 2-hour crawl, crouched and often on hands and knees, through the mine shafts that follow the mineral veins (tin, zinc, aluminium, copper and some silver that is left) into the mountain. We went down 30 meters into the dusty, dark, hot and claustrophobic tunnels with a real Indiana Jones feel to the whole experience, passing miners pushing one tonne trolleys filled with rock along the tracks - I pushed for no more than 3 minutes and could never imagine doing it all day every day (they are self-employed and their salary is proportional to the amount of rock mined which they then sell to the refineries). To help the miners with the altitude and conditions, as well as suppress hunger they work with mouths filled with coca leaves, and drink 'Bolivian Whiskey' with 96% alcohol - I took a shot and immediately regretted it! To enter the mines, gifts of coca and dynamite are bought for the miners in town. Handing sticks of dynamite to miners chewing coca and drinking almost pure alcohol while 30 meters underground was not the most reassuring of activities. We were shown how to setup and then activate the dynamite sticks and then let off a small explosion, which despite not being full force shook the ground even 30 meters away.

Pushing one tonne

Chilling 30 meters deep

'Drinkable Alcohol': Bolivian Whiskey - 96%

Preparing the dynamite

During the colonial period, the Spanish introduced into the mines the worshipping of the devil, a practice that is still followed today with the aim of protecting the miners. Above ground Pachamama (mother earth) is worshiped, and below ground the Tia (devil). Offerings of cigarettes, alcohol and coca leaves as well as Llama foetuses are made to both Pachamama and the Tia, who has a rather large dong that is touched by worshippers to enable fertility - I obliged.

The Tia and his dong with the offerings

After two hours of crawling around the tunnels I was happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and emerge safely. Really quite an eye opening experience, and probably the few places in the world where you can experience a working mine without any of the modern technologies that somewhat facilitate the process.

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia


From Potosi another twelve hour bus ride took me to Uyuni, from where I started my three day 4WD tour of the salt flats and Bolivian desert, finishing in the Chilean part of the desert at San Pedro de Atacama. The tour is a very popular gringo trail and by no means an exclusive outing, but the views and scenery are pretty spectacular. The salt flats are an area of 2,000 square km that was once an inland salt lake that has since dried up and left a huge plain of bright white salt, with mountains at its very periphery. In the middle of the plain there is an island, Isla de Pescadores, that has thousands of cacti, and allows for an incredible 360 degree panoramic view of the flats from the top. The first night was spent in an impressive, cozy hotel made from salt and in a tiny, remote village in the middle of the desert.

Isla de Pescadores

Salt hotel

Salar de Uyuni view from Isla de Pescadores

The next two days were spent largely in the car driving through the desert passing impressive landscapes with no sign of vegetation anywhere, but still home to Llamas and Vicunas. We stopped off at several brightly coloured (from the rock minerals) salt lagoons that sporadically appeared and were home to thousands of Flamingos, and on the final day after visiting the volcanic geysers took a swim in the natural hot springs, a pretty refreshing bath-like dip after a 5am rise. While no doubting the package tourism feel to the tour, it was still a worthy trip with some otherworldly landscapes, and I was lucky to have good people in my group.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile


Crossing the desert border in to Chile the difference from Bolivia is immediately felt as you are greeted with newly paved roads and air conditioned buses. The Chileans have a more European look to them with less of the native Inca facial features. Food is better and prices higher, almost twice as high, but still quite a bit cheaper than London. The town has a cool backpacker hippy beach vibe, with an abundance of sand but lacking the water, and open air bars with fires, around which endless backpacker stories are recounted. The two days spent there were filled with Sandboarding in death valley, essentially snowboarding on sand which was epic, and at night taking a star gazing class in the desert with an amusing French astronomer - San Pedro is known as the best place in the world to watch the stars and is home to the world's largest telescope.

Sandboarding in death valley

Picture taken from camera through telecsope

Moon valley

From Chile to Iguacu, I stopped for 3 days in Salta, an old colonial town that was more a breather than an attraction, and flew from Salta to the waterfalls which I visited today - a mind drenching site but to be written about at a later point.


Florianopolis tomorrow, back to the beach, sun and surf. Looking forward to it.


Over and out.


BTW...

More from the Pantanal

As my last post packed in quite a bit I didn't manage to write as much as I wanted about the Pantanal, where I have been staying for the past five nights and from whence I leave today to go further south to a small town, Bonito, famed for its crystal-blue rivers packed with tropical fish and underwater caves. I will spend two nights there before heading to Bolivia and Peru - a change of plan from originally heading south into Patagonia, Argentina.

Morning boat trip on the Rio Negro

Cayman

The majority of the Pantanal is located in Brazil, in the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. A minority area of the wetlands crosses the border into Bolivia and Paraguay, and altogether the area is twenty times the area of the Everglades in Florida. Most of the Pantanal is privately owned, split between massive ranches each with 1,000s of hectares of land upon which their cattle herds graze. As mentioned in my previous post, on the 28th I rose early to travel by horse with Mancha (not Mancho as originally thought - Mancha means 'stain' as he has a birth mark on his throat) to the neighbouring ranch for the eagerly anticipated seventh annual 'Festa do Cavalo Pantanal' (Pantanal horse party). The ride over followed a path through thick jungle, with the horses nervous of the animal rustles within, fully-aware that they are not top of the food chain, despite the security of Mancha's pistol strapped to his hip in its leather holster.

Horse ride through the jungle

Essentially the event was a sports day for cowboys, testing a variety of skills that cowboys use in their daily routines of rounding up cattle and maintaining the ranch. Both a sporting and social event, everyone from the surrounding ranches attends, cowboys, wives and would-be wives and children, arriving on horse, tractor and trailer or both. The day was divided in two styles of events, with the midday interval providing a Churrasco (barbecue). A cow is 'sacrificed' for the event and cooked on long wooden stakes balanced over an open-pit fire. Meat here is cooked very well-done, so that it is dry and juiceless but still tasty. Guitarists and an accordion provided the traditional musical entertainment during the day, sitting almost cliche-like on three wooden stumps by the tractors.

7th Horse Festival

In the morning, the event was a time-trial assault course. First having to saddle the horse, the cowboy then galloped along a hundred metre stretch taking out his machete knife (all cowboys carry a leather holster at hip level on their back with two knifes, a smaller and larger one) to cut down three palm branches at twenty metre intervals. This seemed a pretty simple affair but surprisingly several cowboys missed them, and sometimes all three. They then had to slalom their horse through a set of narrow poles at the end of which hung a horn that was to be blown. Often cacophonous and hardly distinguishable from the rear-end of the horse. They then dismounted and chugged a large cup of Terere, the traditional tea that cowboys drink throughout the day through a metal straw. Then back on the horse and through a gate that had to be opened and closed without dismounting, and finally over a small jump the height of two levels of sandbags that would be laughable in European riding circles, but still made the horses nervous (horses are for work and are not used to jumping), and across the finish line. The second half of the day after lunch and some well needed napping in the hammock were one-on-one tournament races that included a sprint and turn around a barrel and then a series of weaving slalom before a sprint back to the finish line. This was the day's main event, and supposedly the cowboys practice all year in the hope that they are crowned champion. This provided some interesting watching, including seeing some downhearted cowboys beaten by women riders - the cowboy society is very macho, and would avoid losing to women at all costs! The last event before prize-giving was an amusing musical chairs, which, as you can imagine, is not that easy when you're on a horse and have to jump down to sit on the wooden stool with horse by your side.

The only Gringo in the village

Cowboy race

Mancha turning round a barrel

My other days were spent on the river kayaking or fishing for Piranha and Dorado, or on horse roaming the lagoons and jungles, managing a few gallops with cowboy Mancha on the plains. I managed to see a lot of wildlife including Caymans, Giant Otters, Capybara, Toucans (very cool with their long colourful beaks), Parrots, Foxes and several extremely strange looking mammals including a Giant Anteater.

Kingfisher

Piranha

Owl

Giant Otter

This morning I got up early at 5am to milk the cows in time to have it as yoghurt with my cereal and as milk with my coffee. Pretty cool experience, similar to squeezing a stress ball.

Now I'm off on my seven hour 4WD car ride through the Pantanal to get to Bonito.

Until next time,

BTW...