Salta, Chile
So its been a while and i guess we have some stories that need to be told. Lets start at the begining...
The mines at Potosí were very good and we successfully made it out of there alive. Probably wasnt such a good idea waiting to write the last blog entry since we kinda left you hanging last entry but oh well. The mines were a good way to see how people in Bolivia make a decent wage under horrible working conditions. The mines there employees about 20,000 people and usually about 15,000 of them work in the mine daily in small cooperative groups of about 5 to 30 miners. The mine is no longer state run so these individual groups just pay taxes on what they produce and the government gives them nothing in return. All and all it was a great experience but i dont think i need to step foot again in a mine anytime soon.
After that we headed off to Uyuni to find ourselves a salt flat tour. We have been traveling with Roland and Katalin for most of Bolivia but we hooked up with 2 Belgium kids to fill up our jeep. Uyuni itself is a town that's sole purpose to host travelers while they wait to leave on a tour or catch the train leaving town. Allthe residents in that town know that there is no need for them to provide any nice accommodations since travelers only spend a night or two actually in Uyuni. We ended up going for a 4 day reverse tour of the Solar de Uyuni and it was awesome. On the tour the first 3 days you see different colored lagoons, flamingos, geysers, active volcanoes, and plenty of other things (see the pictures... if they ever get up). The last day we drove out onto the salt planes which are nothing more than a huge flat deposit of white salt. There are a couple of islands in the middle and we visited on of them with was extremely interesting because it was its own eco system. Since the back drop is all white on the Solar you can take some interesting pictures as well (again they will need to be posted before you can actually see the sweet pictures). All and all the trip was amazing; the scenery felt more like the Moon and Mars at times than Earth. We also did get up to our new highest altitude of just shy of 5,000 m!
So after the 4th day we were dropped in Uyuni to wait for the train to Tupiza which left at 3:00am so we had some time to kill. Im going to vent about our train experience so if you dont care skip this paragraph, but looking back on it, it was pretty funny. Before leaving on the Salar Roland and I tried to buy tickets for the train because we knew it be difficult to get them once we got back Sunday night. The Uyuni train station is a very special place that only has one worker and he has 2 posted hours for the morning, 2 for the afternoon, and on the nights of the train the hour before the train arrives. Of the possible 5 hours he works he only serves customers for about 1 or 2 hours a day and when the shift is up he kicks everyone out and tells them to come back. Ive come to the conclusion that he isnt really interested in selling tickets or making money period since i think he´s secretly on salary for the bus company. So Roland and i tried to buy tickets in advance because that seem to be the logical thing to do. We got there 30 minutes before the window open to didnt get a number until 15 minutes after the place was supposed to open. They used to not do numbers and the line for getting tickets was very similar to a Royal Rumble you might watch on TNT at 3:00 in the morning during the week. Anyways once we go to the ticket counter we told the ticket guy we like to buy tickets for the Sunday train. All he said was "no es possible" (you dont need to speak spanish to figure that out). We tried to explain to him that we were leaving and wasnt going to make it back but he really didnt seem to care, advance ticket sales just didnt exsist you can only buy them the day before. We ended up having our tour agent buy them for us but she was only able to get the lowest class. Usually this isnt a problem since were on a budget but 3rd class, popular class, didnt have reclining seats and its packed with people, and on overnight travel we usually splurge since we dont need a hotel room. Anyways we get to the train station in hoping that we can upgrade our tickets right before the train get in. The only problem is at night they dont have number and its like a Royal Rumble and Roland and I didnt feel like taking a beating from people who werent as lucky as us to have any tickets. We were also told by several employees that the train only had 3rd class so we werent that upset. The train rolls in and to our amazement we see cars full of reclining seats and think to ourselves that 3rd class doesnt look so bad. But as the train stops and we look waaaaayyyyyy down the platform we see third class in all its glory. So we realize that there are empty seats on first and second class and ask the conductor of one of the nicer cars if we can get an upgrade. He says to go to the ticket counter, and we explain to him that the guy at the ticket counter has a girlfriend in Hong Kong and the only reason he took a job as a ticket seller is so he can sit on instant messenger at 3 am to chat with her. Well, we didnt exactly say this, but he came in with us to the ticket office and saw that this guy was basically refusing to sell tickets to both foreigners and locals. So we didnt get an upgrade and took our third class seats and got hardly any sleep on a 6 hour train journey, and still have no idea why he wouldnt sell tickets.
The train did take us to a gorgeous town in the south of Bolivia surrounded by mountains that reminded us of Arizona. We stayed at a pretty nice hotel (the last nice cheap hotel we will probably see for awhile) with a pool and went on a horseback ride through the area. Check out the pics once were up.
Now were in Argentina and I said Jess once we got here that "we´re not in Bolivia anymore." Salta looks a bit like a European ciy and the prices are starting to reflect that too. But it is a welcome break from the chaos of Bolivia. We´re looking into hiking or a horse trip soon.
Hope everyone is doing well,
Justin
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