The Salt Hotel

When one is completely surrounded by salt, why not use it as a building material? On our first night on the salt flats we stayed in a hotel made entirely out of salt. It´s not the easiest thing, to sleep on a salty bed, but we managed to catch some sleep thanks to some bad, cheap Bolivian wine.

Here are some photos....

4x4s on the salt

We left La Paz to head south to the Salar de Uyuni, or, to call it by its Gringo name, the Salt Flats. It´s basically 4000 square miles of flat salt plains, formed when a huge prehistoric lake dried up leaving the largest salt plain in the world.

It´s a terribly desolate and remote place. With no roads, and white salt stretching far into the horizon in every direction, it´s dazzling in the bright sunshine and closely resembles snow.

We signed up to a three day tour of the Flats where we would travel by 4x4, sleep in a salt hotel and freezing cold dorms (where the temperature dropped to minus 20c), see the clearest night sky in the world, be whipped by dust storms, witness green and red lagoons and have a bizarre limbo competition in the middle of nowhere with some newfound friends.

But first... here are the token touristy Salt Flat photos of us taken by our friends Dan and Jo, playing with scale and perspective of this odd place...

The World´s Most Dangerous Road

We decided to join a tour with Gravity Assisted Mountainbiking to ride down what the World Bank had named the World´s Most Dangerous Road. It is a trecherous narrow gravel road that stretches from the top of a mountain near La Paz deep down into the valleys, with sheer 400 metre drops from the side of the road and no barriers (see below!).
As we drove to the start of the ride, a signpost informed us that 48 people had died on the road so far this year. An ominous start to our day. The start was easy enough - a high-altitude freezing cold stretch of tarmac road where we could whizz down at our leisure. Then, disaster struck as we set off on our second leg. Amy performed some acrobatics, flying over her handlebars and landing on the ground, resulting in two huge bruises on her legs. A little shaken but determined, she carried on as we reached the gravel and the sheer drops.

The weather took a turn for the worst and we couldn´t see great deal with our goggles on, so we took them off and opted for the better option of letting mud splatter onto our eyeballs as we rode down the rough, wet and slippery road, next to huge drops and a cloudy abyss.

Finally, after about four hours, the weather got better and we were able to see again. All the stunning jungle and surrounding scenery was visible, it warmed up, and we arrived at the bottom of the road covered in mud and glad to have survived.

Happy 27th Birthday to me!

Saturday 20th September: my 27th birthday, and my first away from home.

I wasn´t sure that Bolivia would be the best place in the world to spend my birthday, but I was wrong! Everything is so cheap here you can live like a king for a day. Adrian woke me up with balloons and birthday cards on Saturday morning, and then hurried me out the door a couple of hours later muttering all sorts of confusing things in order to put me off the scent - I honestly didn´t have a clue what he had planned for me.

We ended up eating brunch in the rooftop restaurant of a 5* hotel - the highest in the world - with fantastic views over the whole city (see above, I look pretty content!). After that we spent hours lounging around in their pool, sauna and jacuzzi which was super relaxing. After we´d pruned ourselves sufficiently, we wondered out into the streets of La Paz to eat birthday cheesecake and shop! I am now the proud owner of some very nice hand crafted Bolivian wares, and Adrian even bought a handmade miniature guitar for himself.

That evening we went to a beautiful Swiss restaurant across the city (we very nearly couldn´t find it) and had a fantastic meal. Unfortunately we had an early start the next morning so couldn´t hit the town, but it was definitely a super lovely birthday.

On top of the world

We are now in the highest capital city in the world! La Paz is 3,660 metres above sea level, and to top it off, is on one enormous hill. It hasn´t affected Adrian and I too badly, but we have been known to get a little breathless after climbing a steep street.

The city is surrounded by huge snowy mountains and is actually a bit more cosmopolitan than I was expecting. We spent our first day here doing a walking tour from ´Lonely Planet´which, even though it sounds terribly touristy, actually took us through some amazing little back streets where all the locals do their daily business, selling wares, catching up with friends, etc. The only thing I found a bit disconcerting were the dried llama foetuses that they sell to ward off evil spirits.... I think I´d rather take my chances!

Bye bye mummies, Hello Bolivia

Our mothers´ last day in Peru was an eventful one.

We awoke to a beautiful sunny day in Arequipa and had planned to visit the Santa Catalina convent again, as Adrian and I had enjoyed it so much last time. We spent the morning there (see Diana, Adrian and Mum, above) taking yet more photographs, and eating more delicious cake.

After that we split up for a bit - Mum and I went off to do a spot of shopping and Adrian and Diana went exploring.

Sadly it all went horribly wrong when Mum realised her purse had vanished. We aren´t sure whether it had been lost or stolen, but either way it was a complete disaster, mainly because she´d just put her memory stick full of photos in it. The Peruvian police were amazingly helpful, but of course we didn´t get very far. Spent an hour struggling to make ourselves understood for a police report, and then didn´t have long to catch a cab and get off to the airport.

Adrian and I waved them off, sincerely hoping they would get to New York and then London without having any more problems.

We spent our last night in Arequipa and said goodbye to our favourite town in Peru very early on Wednesday morning. We nearly missed our bus because our stupid taxi driver thought ´bus station´actually meant ´airport´, but very luckily for us, the bus waited and we were on our way back to Puno. After a night there, we got another bus over the border to Bolivia and into La Paz, which is where we are now.

The second deepest canyon in the world, and condors!

After our day on the lake Adrian and I took our mums on the bus to Arequipa. We loved it there so much we wanted to return and show them around, and also spend a couple of days exploring the Colca Canyon and surrounding area.

The Colca Canyon is the 2nd deepest in the world - twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and only beaten by the Cotahuasi Canyon (also in Peru) by a couple of hundred metres.

On our way to Chivay where we would spent the night, we stopped off to see herds of llamas and alpacas, and reached our highest point yet - 4,800 metres above sea level. Apart from feeling a little short of breath, we were all surpringly fine! We stayed in a cute little hotel in the middle of nowhere with fantastic views, and our own personal alpaca who likes to come indoors.

We had a short trek, visited the thermal springs, and the following day we went condor spotting. Over an hour passed without us seeing a single one of these magnificent birds, but our patience was rewarded when an enormous one swooped very low and circled the crowd several times just before we left. It´s a huge bird - it stands at just under one metre high and is alegedly the largest bird in the world. It is also the national bird of Peru.

After a short trek around the canyon itself in the baking heat, we had lunch back in Chivay before returning to Arequipa again, and that evening had a delicious joint birthday meal for Adrian and I!