Day 36 saw us rise bright and early in order to set off for our 4-day tour to the famous salt flats. When we booked our tour, the lady at the tour office warned us that the owner of the hostal we were staying at didn’t like them (as he ran a competing tour company), so we should wait for them outside the hostal. Because of this, we were a little paranoid about telling the owner that we were heading off with La Torre tours, but he was actually very nice about it apart from a passive-aggressive “oh La Torre, they’re never punctual so come eat some of my freshly prepared pancakes”. After filling up on pancakes, we were chauffeured to the La Torre office, where 2 4WDs were being loaded to the gills with food, beverages, and a suspiciously bare looking spare type (thankfully, the tires fitted to the actual vehicles looked pretty new and had excellent tread on them). After a few panicked “donde esta la cocinera?!?!” phone calls by the staff attempting to locate our missing cook, a smiling lady dressed in traditional Bolivian gear rocked up with even more food to be bundled into the vehicles, and we were off! In our car, we had the confusingly-Germanically-named driver Helmut, Modesta “no molesta” (don’t annoy her) the cook, and a cool American couple our age who are also doing the “quit your job to travel because wtf else are we gonna do with our lives” thing.
We spent the morning driving through the surreal landscapes outside Tupiza and further up into the mountains on gravel roads, to the soundtrack of one Bolivian folk song repeated over and over (malfunctioning stereo refusing to read Helmut’s thumb drive properly). One of the side-effects of being on acetazolamide for altitude sickness prevention is frequent urination, which was not conducive to sitting in a car for hours on end. I was relieved when we were promised a bathroom and llama break a couple of hours into the drive. Turned out the “bathroom” was “piss wherever you can find a slight bit of privacy on this hill”, and conditions didn't really improve over the next 3 days (kudos to my Asian heritage for giving me the ability to Asian squat like a pro). The llamas did not disappoint. Llama farming is the main source of income for most people in this area of Bolivia, and although the driver told us that there have been less llamas around in the last few years, there was still an abundance of long-necked fluffies for me to squeal over.
This thing is pretty cool
Soz my face is ruining this beautiful landscape shot
Even this cactus has a more realistic head of hair than Trump
LLAMA! Different coloured tags on their ears mark who they are owned by
A rhea! Helmut offered to feed it to us
We stopped in a small village for lunch, where Modesta magicked a hot meal out of thin air within minutes (chilli con carne on rice with nice salad). We napped off lunch while Helmut drove us ever upwards, over barely existent (and sometimes non-existent) dirt paths while navigating seemingly by the shapes of the mountains and rocks around us. Sometimes, what little gravel road there was was only wide enough for one vehicle to pass at a time, and even then precariously close to the edge of steep mountainsides. We may have passed wrecked cars lying at the bottom of ravines on more than one occasion. Luckily, Helmut was an exceedingly careful driver who made sure to take his time, pay close attention to our surroundings, and check up on how the other car (which was having a bit of engine trouble) was doing. I’ll mention now that throughout the trip, Helmut was the best driver/guide that one could wish for. Having to shuttle a carload of gringos with terrible Spanish, he spoke very slowly to us using easy words and many sound effects to communicate effectively. He also checked how we were adjusting to the altitude as we kept ascending, and kept a handy stash of coca leaves close at hand (chewing these helps relieve altitude sickness)
Them landscapes
wtf is going on with my face here?
After a couple hours of driving, we arrived in the ruins of an old town. I was intrigued as to why there was a town in the middle of nowhere, at an altitude of almost 5000m. Turns out (the following account may or may not be accurate, as it was pieced together from what little Spanish I understood, and then third-hand translations of the Spanish from others) Spanish colonists came across some mines worked by the indigenous people of the area, and being the dicks they were, promptly took over. They brought over slaves from Africa to work the mines, but when they couldn’t acclimatise to the altitude, turned to trying to enslave the locals. Through a combination of extreme wealth and extreme lack of knowledge, the Spanish did douchey things like use plants for firewood that were foodcrops for the indigenous, and thus became widely hated. Eventually, they left after depleting the mines of most of the good stuff, and when they couldn’t carry their heavy gold and silver furniture with them, they hid them and killed 3 African slaves so that their vengeful spirits would guard the treasure. Dicks. No wonder the indigenous in certain parts of Bolivia pride themselves on their ancestral heritage of killing (and sometimes eating) Conquistadors.
This would have been such a shit place to live
This place was so high up that there was frost all through the grass
Old church
This tiny hole is the entrance of the mine. I would have hardly fitted down this.
After several hours more driving, we arrived at our accommodation for the night - a hostel in a small village at about 4200m altitude. This was a pretty extreme jump from Tupiza, and a couple of people were feeling pretty bad as a result. Luckily, Modesta the cook knew what to do, and forced a warm cup of coca leaf tea down everyone’s throats. While we sipped our tea and munched on cookies, Modesta whipped us up a delicious soup and some steak and mash Andean style - we thought she was joking earlier in the day when she said “now you’ve seen the llamas, that’s what we’re having for dinner." She wasn’t. I still feel kind of bad. For anyone curious: llama kind of tastes like disappointed beef, so not really worth trying. But being well fed and well hydrated is necessary for keeping altitude sickness at bay, so we went to bed well-stuffed and knackered after a long day. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been sleeping well since we got to Tilcara, waking up a few times each night due to the periodic breathing associated with altitude, and this night was no different. Fortunately, all I have to do for several days on end is chill out while marvelling over cool landscapes!
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