Road to the Salt Flats: Day 2

Geysers were an impressive start to the day (or geezers as Ben and I jokingly refer to them, thanks to someone we met who repeatedly called them that).  They were all the more impressive being set in the lunar landscape of the desert.

Ah, health and safety strikes again

A short distance down the road Mario kindly let us out for our first sight of flamingos!

Flamingo patrol, not quite synchronised

Five minutes later we stopped at the hot springs.  A welcome stop as there were no hot showers until the third night of our trip and we were well covered in dust by this stage.

Where else in the world can you have a soak and watch flamingos and nearly 4,000m above sea level?

The hot water exiting the pool allowed interesting plant life to grow

Onwards, through the Dali Desert

Laguna Blanca
If we'd kept going in this direction we would have ended up in Chile

Vicuñas, related to llamas

Flamingos!  Flying!
We did ask ourselves why we'd been so excited to see four in the distance in the Galapagos . . .

. . . when here they were everywhere.  Three different species!

Laguna Colorada: famous for the incredible red colour and obviously, the flamingos

The different colours in the land and lagunas is caused by different chemicals; particularly borox, copper and some others I forgot to write down.  All explanations given by our driver, Mario, were in Spanish, so sometimes we were a little baffled by what we were seeing.  But, to be perfectly honest, it didn't really matter.

We arrived back at the hostel just before 5pm, glad to have some time to relax out of the car.  The four of us were peacefully reading in our room when Mario rushed in, telling us something urgent.  Turns out the kitchen was on fire . . .

Luckily everywhere here is built out of mud bricks, so there's not that much to burn.  Everywhere was filled with acrid smelling smoke but the fire was quickly put out.  Much to our surprise dinner was still on time and one of the better meals we had :-)

Road to the Salt Flats: Day 1

The gear was all loaded on top of the 'jeep', we'd met our travelling companions; Emily and Vincent from France, Isobel the cook and Mario the driver and finally we were off on the four day tour of South West Bolivia, finishing at the famous salt flats.

The road wound through some of the spectacular scenery around Tupiza

Cactuses, they're everywhere here

The first day involved a lot of driving to get to the more interesting sights.  Mostly it was just the vast Bolivian landscape under the perfect blue of the sky.

There were plenty of llamas to be seen, most with colourful wool 'eartags'

Tiny mining ghost town where we stopped for lunch.
Most of the people are out at the mining camps, returning just for holidays.

Deserted silver mining town

The first laguna, so high and cold

After nearly 10hrs driving we were all very pleased to arrive at the village we were supposed to spend the night at, though it looked pretty barren.  There was, however, a slight snag.  There was no accommodation.  We drove round for half an hour, Mario and Isobel knocking on doors, but there were too many jeeps and not enough beds.

So on we went, for another hour and a half, slightly concerned that there would be no beds at the next place either. The good side to this was being able to watch the sun set and see the colours run through the sky.  Later a thin sliver of moon hung in front of us.

Delicate colours transform a stark landscape

Much to our relief there was plenty of room at the purpose built rough hostel we arrived at in the dark.  The stars were phenomenally bright and everywhere, including our room, was very cold.

Torotoro: more footprints and a multicoloured canyon

The last day of our visit to Torotoro dawned sunny and clear.  Victor started the morning with even more dinosaur footprints; herbivores and carnivores, including velociraptors.  It is extraordinary that such delicate things can last 80 million years . . .

Big herbivore

Mid sized carnivore

Compelte with model

Another carnivore

The walk to Torotoro's large canyon started down past rock amphitheatres, stone bridges and more dinosaur footprints.

Only four of us elected to walk down into the canyon to see the waterfall; only 1000-and-something steps!

Anna and model next to the diplodocus footprints; truly enormous

The beautiful colours and textures of the canyon

Refreshing canyon pools

Less than 100 steps to go!

None of us were particularly looking forward to the trip back - another five bumpy hours.  Eventually we made it back to Cochabamba, only to be hit with a slight snag: none of the hostels had rooms!  It was Friday night and everyone seemed to have come into town.  Eventually we found a room, thanks to help from Kristoff and Caroline and managed to be eating dinner by 10pm - phew!

Despite the long bumpy road, the average food and all the explanations being in Spanish, Torotoro National Park was well worth the visit.  It is incredible to stand next to dinosaur footprints and walk where they walked.  The landscape is full of amazing examples of plate tectonics, laid out under the sun for us to see.

Torotoro: rocks, a flat tyre and a cave

As the little van valiently climbed up and windy rough road the clouds closed in and the view disappeared entirely.  Ben maintained that this was a good thing as we couldn't see just how much of a drop it was off the side of the road . . .

More geology at work; the far side of Torotoro valley

After an hour we had arrived . . . somewhere.  Visibility was very poor, but Victor knew exactly where he was going and quickly led us to some rock formations.  After scrambling around for a while the clouds started to lift and gradually we could see more of our surroundings in La Cuidad de Itas.

Cathedral like caves, carved out by water dripping down the sides

Waiting for the sun

This cave had bats hiding in the back

Finally the cloud was starting to lift

Anna free soloing a tricky pitch.
We were the only two in the group who climbed it.

Waiting for the others to go around

The strange South American viscacha; related to chinchillas

Apparently delicious eating

Back to the van and lunch, watched from a distance by the skiniest dog we've seen on our travels.  Dogs are everywhere in South America, some in poor condition or with obviously old injuries.  This one was pathetically skinny, but we did give her all the leftovers - rather a lot from 8 people's lunches.

There was a slight hiccup after lunch - the front tyre was flat.  No problem, there's a spare.  Tito whipped out the spare but surprise (not) it was also flat.  After a debate in Spanish, Victor set off to who knows where.

We were 21km from Torotoro village, there was no other traffic on the road and we were supposed to be visiting a cave in the afternoon.

Over an hour later Victor returned - with a bicycle pump.  After an initial problem with the pump falling apart, ably fixed by Ben, the tyre was pumped up and we were on our way again.

Caverna Umajalanta gaped like an open mouth at the bottom of the valley, disgorging groups of other tourists.  One good result of the flat tyre was that we had the place to ourselves.

The enormous entry cavern

The cave system is a loop, the right hand side is dry and the left still has the river running through it.  We headed off down the right hand side, scrambling over boulders and into the first proper cave.  Sadly, many of the easily reached stalagmites and stalagtites have been snapped off before the area was made into a park.  However, the caves are still very beautiful.

The higher formations were untouched

After a few different caverns we came to the toboggan slope.  Kristoff and Caroline, the French couple who had joined us that morning, tried it first and it looked fun, though a little slow, so off I went.  Victor had sprinkled some fresh dust on it and I don't know if it was that or the soles of my boots but I built up some speed rather quickly.  I was just thinking how fun it was when I realised the bottom was rapidly approaching but I couldn't really make it out due to my ridiculously dull headlamp.  Splat!  Luckily I was fine, though my knees were a bit scraped and bruised.  Ah, well.

Further in there was a choice to be made; retrace our steps or do two crawls and then return up the underground river.  Ben and I were keen to keep going and the others decided to as well.  The crawls were great - not so tight as to be uncomfortable and with a soft, dust covered floor - so much fun.  Ben found that  pushing the camera gear through was a little tricky and we all ended up with dust in our pants.

The crawls led to an underground pool, complete with blind cave fish.  From there it was a scramble back up the river.  When we emerged under the sky again it was dark, the stars just beginning to show.

The underground river carving out beautiful pools