A 4-Day Tour of Another Planet

On Sunday morning we left Tupiza in a Toyota Land Cruiser, our bags stapped onto the roof, a great British couple that did the tour with us, and our Guide and Cook in the front seats. We spent the next 4 days travelling through the beautiful and remote south-west corner of Bolivia towards Uyuni, through landscapes that did not feel like they belonged on Earth. The scenery was amazing... barren red sand plains, cappuchino patterned mountains, over 10 lakes in green, turquoise, red, blue and black, volcanoes, geysers and steam and bubbling grey mud pits, flamingoes, green grassy tufts and frozen dark blue streams, llamas with ribbons in their ears.

We quickly rose to 4500m on the first day, and stayed above 4000m for most of the trip, and after I started feeling faint and nauseas just 2 hours into the trip, the thought of chewing on a mouthful of dry bitter coca leaves was a little less repulsive than normal, and in desperation I gave it a bash. Now Coca leaves are used to make Cocaine, but at this stage they´re nothing more than bitter leaves that are most often seen in local´s cheeks, beause they help with altitude sickness, so don´t worry Mom :) It goes like this: you put about 10 de-stemmed dry leaves into your mouth, chew a little to make a ball, put it in your cheek, and hold it there, swallowing bitter garden flavoured spit. When you´re done (15 minutes was all I could bear, but locals chew on the stuff all day long), you get to feel very well-mannered while you try to spit all the pieces out (if you chewed for too long this is a little more of a challenge). It was worse than I had imagined, revolting actually, but it seemed to do the trick and with daily cups of coca tea (much easier to face) that was the last of my altitude sickness!

The last day we drove across the Salar de Uyuni, the world´s largest salt pan, a palette of white and blues. I don´t know who first thought of the idea, but it´s now part of every Salt Flats tour: taking crazy pics using tricks of perspective that a huge open flat are enables you to do. It was actually so much fun...

The trip through wilderness and beautiful scenery, and on a really well organised tour (La Torre Tours) with fantastic driver (Rafael) and cook (Margerita) was an unforgettable experience!