The white city and trying to stay away from the office

We were saddened to leave our new found friends, we had a really good time on the trip in Uyuni. We headed out for Sucre on the one lane dirt road. It was a painstaking drive, with little to stop for. We decided to pass by Potosi (although it took us a half hour to find the highway through) and head straight to Sucre as we would be coming back through there anyway. We arrived and found a great hostel and found parking. We weren´t sure the lady at the parking knew what was going on, but she was rather endearing, asking us where we were from quite a few times. Sucre is a great city, with a lot of history. Similar to Philadelphia in the US, they consider it the original capital of Bolivia. There is great colonial architecture and the people are rather friendly. We basically enjoyed walking the city for a few days, and catching up on this and other contacts. Also, Laura began her project. She is collecting textiles from our journey with the intentions of putting them together as a quilt. She wants to collect the stories behind the people who make them to keep with the quilt. I am simply a pawn to photograph the textile with the maker. It hurts to be used! After two days of relaxing, and two rounds of Lasagna from our favorite restaurant, we headed back to Potosi and the land of mining.

Potosi is at over 4100m (13,000ft). It is hard to walk up a flight of stairs, the car was struggling too. We found a secure place to stay with parking, but maybe too secure! The next day we intended to head out to the old silver mines for a tour, however, I became ill. Laura went without me, as I laid in bed all day. As some of you know, the company I worked for for the last few years has a job site in Potosi. A good friend from my days in Nevada works down here, and we met up with him for dinner and drinks. It was good to see him, and he was happy to speak English to some people. The plan was to visit the mine the next day, however, our hostel proved to be a little too safe! I woke up and tried to leave, only to find the gate locked, I pounded on the managers door, nothing! I waited until I figured that Joe had left. By then it was too late, as we wanted to be Cochabamba by night fall. A little disappointed I didn´t get to see any of the mines, but I knew this trip wouldn´t be perfect. Sorry no pictures of Potosi, it is not like me to not take pictures!

The food is a little salty, but good

We woke up in Uyuni hungry for adventure, we were searching for a tour guide to the salt flats and the surrounding lagunas and volcanoes. When we entered a tour agency we met two people who where looking to do a private tour of the area to eliminate big crowds and have a little more freedom. They assured us they were nice, and by their French accents, how could we refuse. We headed to the consulate to get our visas and met back up with them to head out. We found Karina and she decided to join us, that made five, two French (Edward and Amelie) a Portuguesa and the two Yankees.

Day 1:
We left the tour agency in our fully equipped Land Cruiser and our guide Franz, a 21 year old that has been driving on these tours for 8 years with only a couple of days off for maintenance. We would go and pick up our cook, also happened to be Franz´s wife Velma, and their 5 month old, Arlette. She liked the bouncing of the car and was surprisingly quiet the whole trip. Our first stop was in Colchane, a small town on the edge of the biggest salt flat in the world. Here they refined the salt they processed and we got to see some of the local crafts and people, with buildings made completely of salt. We then headed to the flats, where we saw how it is harvested and stopped for a few more pictures with our new found friends. The salt flats are overwhelmingly expansive, and it takes hours to drive across them. We headed north to our first night stop, a small town at the foot of a dormant volcano on the edge of the flats. We watched the sun set from the flats, and took some pictures in the reflecting sand and water, and headed in for dinner and some games (drinking of course). We learned different games and got to know our new found friends. Karina deemed Edward, Frenchy, and it stuck. We later would name them as a couple (similar to Brangelina) as Frenchelie. The lights would quite but we did not, untill the open flame became a health hazard. We headed to bed and laughed and listened to music until we couldn´t keep our eyes open.

Day 2:
We rose early to tea and breakfast and headed up the volcano. Our first stop was at some tombs where they had 4 mummies of over 10,000 years old. I am not sure what the proper etiquette of photographing a mummy is, so I might have 7 years of bad luck. They where in incredible condition. Afterwards we hiked to the vista near the top of the volcano. I thought me living a mile high would help me cope with the altitude, but hiking at 4,600 m will get to you. The view was amazing, it took my breath away! We made our way down, packed our things and headed back across the vast expanse of salt to Isla Pescada, where we enjoyed the only island in the salt with life. We had lunch and relaxed, heading another 2 hours to the southern limits of the flats, and into the surrounding nature. We stopped at the town of San Juan for a night in a hotel made of salt, and some games with a young Bolivian girl. We finished the night with some Ipod Quiz and tried not to freeze under the blankets.

Day 3:
We would rise before the sun, and try not to freeze while our guide would warm his hands under the exhaust of our truck. We would visit many lagunas in this seemingly lifeless land. The lagunas where picturesque, and the flamingos attempted not to be photographed. We would end up at Laguna Colorada, no joke, a red lake. The red algae and the surrounding red earth create a site that I have never seen before. We would drop our gear off at the hostel, and head for the geysers and hot springs. These geysers were rather different than those in San Pedro. I really enjoyed the sight of the liquefied minerals boiling to the surface in such unique ways. We would then stop at the hot springs and have a bubble gum blowing contest. After another 2 hours driving we would come to Laguna Verde, after a long debate on what is green and what is turquoise, we jumped out to take a couple of pictures before our fingers fell off and jumped back in the car, cold, hungry and tired. The night would prove to be interesting. We went to the local store, if you can call a guy selling beer a store, and bought what we thought was rum, wine and beer. The rum proved to be Carmel flavored vodka, with a reapplied label, the wine, rice wine, but the beer, was beer. The drinking games transformed, Frenchy MMMM!, and Bob. We would get shushed by other guests and finally call it a night, trying to keep warm!

Day 4:
The morning started with a slow moving group trying to recall all the events of the night before. We headed out for a long day of driving, most of which included sleeping. It was tough to find makeshift pillows during the rough ride, but some of us managed. We would stop at the Valle de Rocas and enjoy the view. We stopped for lunch, saw a train graveyard and made our way back to Uyuni. In Uyuni, we would share pictures, and of course went back and ate as much pizza as we could. Chris was great, he was nice to watch our car while we were gone, and made us feel at home in a pizza parlor. We said goodbye to our friends, as Karina headed for her bus, and Frenchelie to their train. We crashed for the night, not intending to wake up for anything.

Snow is to sand, as a good skier is to...

Sand boarding, easy right. I have been skiing my whole life, and been snowboarding a few times. Peace of cake. We headed out this morning with a group to the Valle de Muerte for a day in the sand, literally. We arrived thinking it wouldn´t be that hard, and ended up finding the sand to be hard. I was finding sand in various places all the way to Calama, our last stop in Chile before heading to Bolivia. We met some cool people, one being Karina from Portugal. She is traveling around and we found out that we were going the same direction. Her and an American Adria joined us in the car as we headed for Bolivia, not knowing what to expect at the border.

When we arrived at the border, a virtual ghost town, we went through Chilean customs and what we thought was Bolivian customs. I cleared the car and we looked for immigration. It ended up being across the railroad tracks, which had trains on them. We jumped the trains and found immigration, meanwhile, we never where actually entered, for we had to buy a visa once we were in Bolivia, a little backwards in my mind, but we went with the flow. Goodbye Chile, hello Bolivia. We arrived in Uyuni and found the renowned Minuteman Pizza joint. Run by an American, Chris from Boston, it was real American pizza. We ate until we couldn´t move and headed to bed, with a big day of travel agents and the Bolivian Consulate ahead of us.