Well we have been on the road for a full week now and are taking a few days in Sucre to rejuvinate...and do some laundry. After Sucre we are headed to Peru to enjoy our last few weeks there. So much has happened in the past week that would take forever to type so I will go over some of the highlights.
Salar de Uyuni
We spent one day in the massive salt flats and the other two days of our tour in Southwest Bolivia visiting a national park and the other amazing sights. It is one crazy mountainous and dusty place. I am pretty sure it is almost all dirt but incredibly beautiful. It is for sure high plains and desert. We were in a jeep with our driver and tour guide Enrique and four others. Three South Koreans who are spending two years volunteering in Paraguay and also a guy from Switzerland. It was definitely an ecelectic group but we had a great time sharing stories and learning from each other. I will try and share picture soon so you can see the amazing sights and get a picture of it. Our companions on teh three day journey were definitely a highlight for me....and they invited us to South Korea as well! Highlights of the southwest....the hot spring, the salar, and the people. Riding in the jeep was great but very bumpy and dusty.
Bikers
I saw seven people biking through the mountains...presumably on the Pan Am trail. I was able to talk to three of them. They were biking from Ecuador all the way to the south end of Chile. Driving on these roads was terrible so I can´t imagine how they did it on bikes. Very inpsiring to me though and made my little dream of wanting to bike the pan am trail a little bit more of a reality.
Road to Potosi
We arrived back in Uyuni were we started our three day trek through the Salar and national parks. We stayed the night and hit the road the next morning for Potosi. It is about a 6 hour bus ride on some of the most terrifying roads I have ever been on. I thought our first bus ride was bad...that one paled in comparison to this ride. It was paved sometimes and otherwise just dirt. We gained over 500 meters of elevation on the tiniest of mountain roads with construction...seriously I stopped looking out the window and just listened to music to distract me. No less than 10 times did my heart jump out of my chest. We made it though...thank you god...Potosi is at 4000 meters which is probably the highest elevation I have ever been.
Elevation Issues
I am doing just fine with the elevnation other than not sleeping well. I have read that insomnia can be a side effect and I have definitely been struggling with that. I have probably only had two good nights of sleep the whoel time I have been here. Bridget has more troubles than I but we are making it. Just have to slow down and take things easy.
Hacienda Cayara
In Potosi, we stayed in the Hacienda Cayara. I still think it was in my imagination....something like Narnia. It is about 9 miles outside of Potosi in this beautiful valley with farms and amazing scenery. We were welcomed by Coca and Arturo who run the hacienda. They asked Rene to accompany us. Rene is I think 21 and lives there but isn´t from there. Wonderful young man. He took us on a tour of the whole grounds and a waterfall in the back of the valley that feeds the entire valley with electricty. We climbed up the side of the waterfall and walked back down on a long winding dirt road. We got caught in a rainstorm and hid under a tree for about 10 minutes. Rene also took us to the Lecharria to see the cows. These cows supply milk for the whole area which also makes cheese and ice cream...which we tasted all of it. While we were there, we met Eduardo who was the veternarian for the animals on the hacienda. That morning he helped deliver a new baby cow and showed us the little guy. So cute...we got pictures with the cow which we will hopefully share later. The milk man, which I like to call Eduardo, was great. He took us on a tour of the farm and answered all our questions. Bridget and I both walked away with crushes on him. Again if I can figure out how to post pictures I will...
They served us an amazing dinner at the Hacienda with wine made on site. Arturo is a historian and the hacienda is a little piece of Bolivian history. Potosi was pretty much the center of the world in the 1600s because they found silver in the mountains. The city quickly grew to 200,000 people including many slaves. They mined silver for a few centuries and still do but the production is much much smaller than it was...The hacienda was owned by very rich people from Spain way back in the 1600s and has only changed hands three times. It is now owned by the Aitken family of which Arturo is a grandson (I think). He has perserved the Haciendia as best as he can with orginial furniture, paintings, books, etc. I literally was staring at books there were 300 and 400 years old in their library. He gave a long tour and I was so impressed by the amazing history preserved here. The whole place was amazing and beautiful but the people were probably the best part. Arturo and Coca were incredibly hospitable and Rene accompanied us for most of the day. He taught us a Bolivian dice game which is a lot like Yahtzee. We have amazing pictures from our time here to be shared soon.
And Now
We left Potosi and are now in Sucre which is really the cultural capitol of the country. It is very colonial looking. We have only been here 1 day and are going to stay until Tuesday probably. So far we are having a good time and enjoying the history.
Our travels are going well and we have met a lot of interesting people. I am getting to the point of being able to understand some basic conversations and can even order and pay for my own food. Bridget is a great teacher.
More to come soon and I am sure I have left out so much. I am convinced all should travel to South America at some point.
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