If you're seeing things… in your neighbourhood… who ya gonna call?04-Sep-2009 14:26, Canon Canon EOS 400D DIGIT, 10.0, 28.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 400
Potosi, or as we fondly recall the city that likes to punch you in the head, is the highest city of its size in the world at 4,070m. It is also dominated by Cerro Rico, the location of a working silver mine. It had been highly recommended by other travellers and a necessarily brief stop on the way north from Uyuni. It was also hopefully going to be a good opportunity to satisfy some pyromaniac tendencies by blowing up TNT. We’d even heard that our intended hostel had the most awesome book exchange known to Bolivia, which would be welcome after Lynette had to Ruth Rendell for a bus trip or two. But did we manage to explode any dynamite? Would we gain access to the fabled book exchange? And why did Potosi seem to dislike us so much?
It was so big, Steve couldn't use his mouth and squeeze at the same time.31-Aug-2009 15:25, FUJIFILM FinePix F40fd , 6.4, 8.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 100
The Salar de Uyuni are the largest salt flats in the world and one of the more famous tourist spots of Bolivia, although we weren’t completely sure why. We knew there would be lots of salt involved, and from the odd photo we were quite convinced the sights we’d see would be on the main fairly flat. Our ignorance and the fact we’d arranged to do the tour with our Latvian friends Martins and Dagmara made the anticipated trip all the more potentially exciting. But if all we were going to see was a lot of flat, white salt then I wasn’t sure we were going to do for the other seventy one hours of the three day trip. So was it as potentially boring as we’d feared? What’s this about volcanoes and multi-coloured lakes? Just what exactly is borax?
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m heading back to the ‘office’ after lunch; a wooden shack covered in chicken wire. As I approach, so does the unexpected and unwelcome sound of heavy machinery. When I’m less than ten metres from work, I see men with machetes hacking away indiscriminately at vegetation; these people not gardeners. Helplessly I watch a huge clanking and smoking digger snapping the enormous trees that normally surround my day like twigs, and a 15m recently decapitated log comes crashing down into my path. Article updated!
Whistling down Rio Yacuma enjoying the awesome kind of trek that is sitting down all day and just enjoying the view.27-Aug-2009 20:30, Canon Canon EOS 400D DIGIT, 13.0, 28.0mm, 0.0025 sec, ISO 1600
South America is famous for many things, one of which is the largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon. It touches many countries, and after a change of plans near the start of our trip we’d patiently waited until one of the last countries we were to visit to venture into something that really classed as “Jungle”. Which is odd, because technically it was Pampas we were exploring which is entirely different. Anyway, our departure point was Rurrenabaque, North Bolivia, and our destination was Rio Yacuma, a hotbed of wildlife that we were to leisurely observe for the next few days, and it truly was an excellent trip. Would we find any Anaconda? Did we really see Pink Dolphins? And who won the UK versus Taiwan Piranha fishing contest?
We were also offered this emotionallly unstable chappy, sadly without eye protection.24-Aug-2009 17:29, Canon Canon EOS 400D DIGIT, 8.0, 65.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 400
Imaginatively located on the highest navigable lake in the world, Lake Titicaca, we’d been told the Floating Islands of Uros are a tourist trap and the only thing to see in Puno. Right on both counts, but a tourist trap for a reason; they’re really quite interesting! Over five hundred years ago, the original inhabitants fled from the shores of the lake to avoid the impending Incan invasion. Now, they avoid property tax. But they also offer an insight into one of the strangest ways of living in the world, and it was a great way to break up the 18hr bus journey from Cusco, Peru to La Paz, Bolivia.
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