¡Eh tu!
We,ve arrived in Bolivia after a fourteen hour bus trip!Whew! Again, jolted by seeing how hard working the people appear - carrying heavy loads on their backs, pushing carts laden with goods to sell, babies strapped to their mothers backs while they worked outside! The street scene above is typical! Again adobe brick houses, llamas and dogs wandering the streets, quiet communities. The modes of transport people use are mainly bicycles, push bikes, donkeys, and their own two legs. There are some cars here and there.
We met up with some other travellers and decided to take a guided three day tour of the Salar de Ujuni (a huge national park filled with many awesome natural phenomena. On the way we stopped in a village for lunch which included quinoa, llama meat, and coca cola. These two photos are Jarki and I with our new friends, eating lunch in a village eating establishment. The photo on the left is our hostess - a small Bolivian woman in typical clothing, gathered skirt, felt hat, layered in shawls and cardigans, hair long and platted, and wearing heavy knitted knee length stockings. I understand why... it´s so b***** cold up here. We are 3000m above sea level. ¡Brrrr! The young people we were with were a lot of fun - full of the joie de vivre!
I felt like a real pleb beside them as they all spoke muliple languages - FLUENTLY! Sophie - German (English, German, Spanish), Alexis-French (French, Portugese, English, Spanish), Damian-French (French, Spanish), Amanda-Canadian (French, English, Spanish), Che - Irish(Spanish, Gaelic, English), Angela-NZer (Lazy English), Jarki- Australian/Nzer (Sloppy, Twangy Aussie). We saw many interesting land forms - I wished I had a geologist attached to my arm to explain the landscape - huge glacial valleys, volcanoes, geysers, rainbow coloured mountains. We spent a day on the emense salt flats - 12000 square kms, 6-8m deep, altitude 3600 m above sea level. One evening we stayed in accomodation that was 5600 m above sea level. My nose bled a few times and we had difficulty breathing. temp -15 degrees c.Mindblowing! We had a lot of fun experimenting with perspective photos. You can see me holding Jarki in my hand, me holding my friends on an apple and us standing in our giant shoes. This is the Laguna Colorado. The lake is pink due to the crustacea - that live in the lake - thousands of pink flamingo come to feed here every year. They are in this photo!
Adios amigos! XXXXXXXX