Travel blog: Bolivian adventures in Uyuni and Potosi

The spectacular Uyuni salt pans in Bolivia (photo: Rhian Nicholson)

Thursday, 04, Sep 2008 11:27

Rhian Nicholson has swapped the bright lights of London for a three month journey across South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. Here is her 13th blog entry:

It's only when you're bumping along Bolivian roads with every second pothole sending you two feet out of your seat like a deranged jack-in-the-box that you realise what a brilliant invention tarmac is.

And just what a necessary evil road maintenance actually is. Ok, Bolivia, being one of the poorest countries in South America doesn't really have a lot of spare cash to jazz up its infrastructure but being a landlocked country with roads like that you can see why it's stuck in a rut.

So after an extremely long excruciating drive that sent cramps to muscles you never knew existed, your aching limbs finally arrive in Uyuni, a non-descript freezing-cold town in the south of the country.

It has earned its place on the gringo trail, however, due to its proximity to the world's largest salt flats, where unsurprisingly Bolivia gets most of its salt from.

Brilliantly white and stretching as far as the eye can see, the world's the salt flats have a nasty way of tricking your brain into thinking it's actually ice on the ground, making you move as gingerly as a newborn foal on ice skates when in fact you couldn't slip over if you tried.

Aside from boasting flamingos, geysers and bubbling sulphurous pools, the other major selling point is that these seemingly endless expanse of white completely distort your sense of perspective and allow you to take some crazy photos.

Now if this doesn't get your creative juices flowing you must be an IT specialist...

Using real-life props, you can pretend to be eating your travelling companions off a dinner plate, be on the verge of crushing them underfoot or even hanging off the side of a Pringles can.

It makes King Kong atop the Empire State Building look so last century. Of course the downside is that you may spend ages shuffling round in the gritty sand on your stomach to line up the perfect shot only to find that it looks likes the efforts of a two-year-old.

Or you spend an eternity hovering on one leg exhibiting the type of co-ordination an Olympic gymnast would be proud of only to lose your balance at the crucial moment.

At the centre of the salt flats, the sudden appearance of the cactus-covered Incawasi Island gives you sufficient grounds to think your water bottle has been spiked with hallucinogenic drugs or you've been miraculously teleported to the set of a Mad Max film.

However, trek to the top of this rocky oasis and you will be rewarded with a blinding view of the sea of hexagonal salt tiles below - and if you're really lucky you can get up close and personal with a ten metre cactus - a slightly more prickly experience than hugging a hoodie.

Another long, slow, bumpy and downright painful bus ride later, and the bright lights of Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4,090 metres above sea level swam into view.

Back in the days when the Spanish were in charge and the mines were churning out tonne after tonne of silver on a daily basis, the city was one of the largest and wealthiest in South America.

Today its winding cobbled streets and colonial buildings are less packed but life in the mines is still going strong -not that there's much silver left in Potosi now although the conditions seem to have changed very little since the days of the Spanish.

After donning a very attractive yellow suit and saying a fond farewell to daylight you find yourself groping a rock as you stagger deep into the belly of the Cerro Rico where the miners are hard at work digging, chipping, chiselling and finally heaving carts full of rock through claustrophobically narrow tunnels.

It's not a particularly pleasant experience, killing off your few remaining brain cells by repetitively knocking your head on the low tunnel roofs and developing a temporary hunchback that would give Quasimodo a run for his money.

How the miners manage to stand this job until black lung carts them off to a better place beggars belief with the dust, the odd bit of noxious gas and the altitude all combining to

make it feel like a boa constrictor is giving your lungs a friendly squeeze.

Maybe the 96 per cent alcohol they drink and the wad of coca leaves stuffed permanently in their cheeks go some way to compensating for their miserable existence but it really makes working in an abattoir seem like an attractive career choice.

On the upside you get to play with dynamite - which rather alarmingly you can just buy at the local stores - and squirm through some impossibly-tight tunnels that a small child would have find a tight squeeze.

Still, there's nothing like removing most of the skin from your knees while battling a morbid fear that you're about to be buried alive.

You have to be crazy or just severely impoverished to do this job - and no prizes for guessing why so many people in Potosi still brave the mines.

Rhian Nicholson