Archive | August, 2013

Samaipata – celebrating the Inca New Year

30 Aug

We looked at the time – it was 12.20am. We looked down at our jeans and shoes – they were caked in mud. We looked all around us – 500 people were drinking, dancing and singing as they prepared to welcome in the Inca New Year with the party to end all parties.

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Sucre – The White City

23 Aug

We decided to rest our weary traveller’s bones and spend a week in the wonderful Bolivian city of Sucre taking some Spanish lessons. Frequently described as Bolivia’s most beautiful city, Sucre couldn’t have been a nicer place to relax and unwind and after just a few days we really found ourselves falling under its spell.

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‘The mountain that eats men’ – Potosi

16 Aug

Potosi, the world’s highest city (4,068 metres) holds a terrible secret…it’s citizens have made a pact with the devil and they are literally working themselves to death. Fathers, husbands and sons work in the Potosi mines endlessly enduring dangerous, appalling, medieval-like conditions all for a few precious metals they may be able to extract and sell for a small profit. Continue reading

Ride ’em cowboy – Tupiza

13 Aug

The president waved and gave us a generous smile – two white faces in the front row, waving madly with excitement in a sea of Bolivians – we certainly stood out from the crowd! It was our fifth day in Bolivia and we’d arrived in a small town called Tupiza to find a beautifully decorated plaza, locals dressed in their Sunday best and an infectious hubbub on every street. It was so nice of them to give us such a warm welcome!

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Salar de Uyuni

9 Aug

The ‘Salar de Uyuni’ or ‘Salt Flats’ tour is one of the most fabled and talked about experiences on the Gringo Trail and we’d been looking forward to it for as long as we could remember. Whisperings of the blindingly beautiful landscapes we’d see had stirred our imaginations and tales about the remote and sparsely populated areas we’d need to cross, flared our excitement. We were about to encounter the biggest salt flat in the world which blankets 12,000 square kilometres, in addition to coloured lakes, bubbling geysers, snow-covered volcanos, thermal pools, a host of Altiplano animals and anything else that the trip, undertaken in a four-wheel drive, might throw at us.

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