Bolivia - Part II

After about 5 minutes of waiting, a collectivo (taxi that takes several passengers), asked us where we were going. We said Valle Grande, and he ushered us in. We thought it was just too super easy. And it was. We stopped in the next town, the end of the ride. We asked him how to get to Valle Grande, and he said there was a bus across the street in 2 hours. We settled down on the sidewalk and waited. The bus finally came, half an hour late, and as we were about to get on, a taxi driver asked us if we were going to Valle Grande and we said yes. He said he'd take us for 30 Bolivianos. So we went with him instead. It took about 2 hours to get there, winding through the mountains. I still didn't feel well from food poisoning the night before, so I just laid in exhaustion in the back seat. 

We got to Valle Grande, and Jesse found a hotel. We went to see about Che tours, and were told we could have one the next day. So I found a packet of soup and had them cook it for me at the little cafe we went to for lunch. Then we rested. The next day we had our tour to the Che memorial, on the edge of town. You can only go with a tour guide. It was the place where Che's body was found in 1998. The military had buried him, along with 4 other combatants, under the airport runway, near the village graveyard. In 1996 an American journalist had asked the military where they buried him, and they told him: in between the airport and the graveyard! So a team of people from Argentina and Cuba started to search. The memorial is huge, and has pictures of Che throughout his life. But his body has since been moved to Cuba. Then the tour guide took us to another spot, where more bodies had been found, including the body of Tanya, the only female combatant in Bolivia. Then the tour was over! Pretty short. We had to walk back to town, where we went to see the hospital washing room where Che was laid out after he was assassinated, so the press could see he was dead. Most of the townspeople didn't know who “the Che” was, but they went to see him anyway. Then we went down to the Che museum in town, which was really good. There were accounts from some of the nurses at the hospital and journalists about the days after his death. Very interesting, too, to read why Che was in Bolivia, and what his plan had been.

We left Valle Grande and went back to Santa Cruz. We were on a tiny, rickety bus, which became totally crowded. At one point and old man got on and sat on the steps right in front of us and put his arm across Jesse's legs! Huge personal space cultural gap!

In Santa Cruz we stayed another night with Katie, and Jesse made Sheperd's Pie and her boyfriend came over. Then we headed to Sucre on a 13 hour overnight bus, which was about 5 hours of backtracking for us, but we hadn't wanted to bring all our stuff with us to Samaipata and Valle Grande. The bus to Sucre was awful. The people behind us smelled so bad of body odor, that we had to keep our window open all night. The bus stopped at this truly awful restaurant in the middle of nowhere, so we were starving, and the bathrooms were absolutely disgusting. The only other time the bus stopped was when it got a flat tire. For about 6 hours there was a man lying on the ground next to me, and his feet where poking into my bags. But, when we got to Sucre we felt better, the sun was out and Sucre is a really lovely town. Jesse found a decent hostel, and we took a much needed nap. Sucre had lots of restaurants catering to tourists, which was great! Bolivian food had quickly gotten boring for me. We booked a ticket on a tourist bus to go up to a mountain town, Tamabuco, for their annual dancing festival, which Evo Morales was supposed to be at. We had met a girl, Savannah, in our hostel and she decided to come with us. She was an ex-model from London who had been traveling on her own for 8 months! The festival wasn't that great, as we couldn't see much due to the crowds, and the dancing is not really dancing, but more of shuffling feet around. The costumes were cool though, and the town was very interesting. While we were there we ran into our friend Katie, who had lived in Santiago and taught English as well. It was very random! THEN we also ran into a German couple we had met in Chile Chico months before. And we also ran into a French couple we had met in Ihla do Mel in Brazil! All in the same town, in the same day! It was very random. We met up with the Germans and their two German friends for dinner. We've met a lot of Germans on the trip, and they are always really fun. We ate at the local market, which was really cheap and unhealthy!

The next few days we walked around Sucre. One day we went on a hike with a local guide, to a waterfall in the mountains. He could speak Quechua, the local indigenous language, so I filmed him speaking it.

We met up with the Germans and Katie for two more nights.

We finally left Sucre on a bus to Potosi, which is the worlds highest city. So, on this trip we have been to the worlds southern-most city and now highest! It was definitely hard to breathe there! Jesse didn't feel well at all. I felt okay, just out of breath and almost nauseous at times. Jesse spent two days in bed mostly, and I walked around town. We didn't go to the mines, which is the thing everyone does in Potosi. They take you into active mines, where you are supposed to give presents of coca leaves, dynamite or alcohol, to the miners. Apparently, it's really hot and cramped in there. I'm a huge wuss, so I wasn't down with it, and Jesse decided not to go after not feeling so well.

After Potosi we left for Uyuni, where we were going to go on a three day tour of the beautiful surrounding nature, including a massive salt flat. It was a long, cramped bus ride through the desert. At one point a guy got on with a bag that had a baby vicuna (like a llama) in it! We rolled into town about dinner time, and it was crawling with tourists. We found a decent hostel, ate, went to bed. The next day we shopped for our tour. There were dozens of tour outfitters. We found one that was offering the tour for 750 bolivianos, and said we'd get to stay at a hotel made entirely of salt. This sounded cool to us. But we went to a couple more places to check out their tours. We found a place that was offering the same tour for 700 bolivianos. We went back and told the first guy about it, hoping he'd drop the price of his tour, but he said he wouldn't. He also said the other tour agency was lying, that they didn't really stay at the salt hotel. So... we went and told the second tour agency that the first one said they were lying. The owner, a woman, told us it was in the contract to stay at the salt hotel. So we booked it. 

We left about 10am the next day. There were two Bolivians, one Chilean, a guy from Utah, and us, in an SUV. From the minute our driver got in the car, he was awful. He was not interested in us at all. And he kept saying the salt hotel was really far away.

Our first stop was the train graveyard. It was a bunch of rusting old trains, and was actually really cool. All the other tour groups were there too, which is slightly annoying, but that's traveling! Then we stopped briefly at a small town in the desert, where people were selling all the usual local crafts and junk. Our next stop was the salt flat, and it was really cool. We took lots of visual-trickery like photos, ate lunch, and then left for the salt hotel. Or so we thought. Our driver, Jimmy, took his time, dallied, stopped off back in Uyuni (we had to go back the same way because there was too much rain to drive over the salt flat) at several places, while we waited in the car. Then he told us that the salt hotel might be full, and we should go to this other town, to a normal hostel. We all argued with him and said we wanted to go to the salt hotel. So he took us. But he let another car pass us, and when we got to the town the salt hotel was in, he didn't go straight there. He stopped at some other place he pretended was the salt hotel. Then we went to it, and of course, it was full. So he drove us 3 hours in the dark to another hostel, which was awful. When we got there Jesse heard the lady say to him “Why are you so late?” Which pretty much confirmed for us that he was scamming his boss and us. I was so livid!

The rest of the tour, Jimmy was the same lame person, but the scenery was beautiful, and we enjoyed it as much as we could. At least all our tour mates were cool, and we had fun hanging out with them. The second night we stayed at a really really bare bones place, and it was freezing. There was no electricity, and our dinner sucked. We had to get up at 5am in order to get to the geysers. It was sooo cold. But then we went to a hot spring, and sat around in it until Jimmy came running over yelling at us to hurry up. Hahah.