Lauren and Gareth get high

This blog post may well be a bit longer than usual as I'd like to get up to date so we can do a "Live blog update" on Christmas Day to wish you all a really Happy Christmas.

Also, if any of you are around and can spare 2-5 minutes for a quick Skype chat or FaceTime on the 25th to make us feel less homesick, we'd love to hear from you! Please comment on this post or email me and we'll arrange a time. Remember we're 4 hours behind the UK! It will all depend on our Wi-Fi connection which can be a bit slow!

Sunday started with a trek to Santiago airport and a flight to La Paz, Bolivia.

As we stood in the long queue we reminisced about the 4 countries we's explored in the last 6 weeks. America, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. It would definitely be hard to pick a favorite as we've made life memories in each.

La Paz is the world's highest capital city standing an impressive 3600 metres above sea level.

We'd done our research about altitude sickness and decided we'd deal with it if and when it happened. Altitude sickness is the perfect gentleman; It doesn't discriminate whatsoever. Old or young, fit or fat, man or woman, you can be absolutely fine, have a small headache or you can end up in hospital with serious problems. The best way to avoid the sickness is to acclimatise slowly by accending slowly over a few days.

However, we had no choice but to fly from sea level to 3600 metres in one foul swoop as we couldn't change our flight!

During the flight I mentioned to Lauren that I thought a fair chunk of altitude sickness could be in the mind.  However, as we walked off the plane, both of us looked at each other and laughed as we were both properly wobbly on our feet and felt as if we'd had 4 or 5 pints! Strangely, this time we hadn't! Altitude sickness had struck!

We staggered around the airport looking for some cash and upon completion of our mission we jumped in a taxi and made our way into La Paz city centre.

We reached our guest house and checked into our room and were so happy to see they'd given us a small apartment instead of a double room. We had a bedroom, kitchen, hallway, lounge and bathroom! Perfect for our Christmas stay!

We got ourselves sorted and went for a walk to find the local supermarket and a restaurant for dinner.

A typical La Paz street 

We walked through the central park area and could not believe the difference in the sky in front and behind us.

These 2 photos were taken 5 seconds apart and 180 degrees apart

We eventually found a restaurant, ate and retired to bed, Lauren still feeling slightly under the weather from Santiago and me with a small headache.

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I awoke Monday morning with nausia and the mother of all headaches. Altitude sickness had struck hard and no amount of Anadin or Nurofen would touch it (other over the counter pain killers are available).

Being at 12,000 feet means that you're breathing 40% less oxygen molecules than you are at lower altitudes. Everything happens slower here, even for the locals, as just walking down the street can make you short of breath.

Lauren made me 4 mugs of Coca tea (local altitude sickness remedy) which is literally leaves from the Coca plant, in hot water. It tasted good and eased some of the headache but before I drank a fifth cup I made the mistake of reading online that even after 1 cup, you can fail a cocaine user test! We had a huge jar of Coca leaves in our kitchen provided by the guest house owner so either it was completely fine or we were about to be busted any minute!

I tried to sleep the headache off but knew I needed some proper medication so we headed to downtown La Paz and before we had even reached a pharmacist, we'd booked ourselves a trip to Uyuni for that night, where we would visit the world's largest salt flats!

We eventually made it to a pharmacy where they dispensed some over the counter tablets which started to work within about 30 mins.

We needed to go back to our guest house to pack for Ayuni but first took a leisurely stroll through downtown La Paz.

It completely blew us away that there were so many women in traditional Bolivian dress. They're known as 'Cholitas'.

Most of the older women wear long, colorful skirts called polleras and undersized bowler hats. Apparently, in some localaties, the positioning of the hat can determine her marital status!

We also noticed a huge amount of beggars and even children as young as 3, dancing non stop for hours to earn money for their family. 

Down one street, a man was lying on the ground with a small box in front of him. He was wearing a balaclava and he looked really scary. As we carried on, every few hundred yards were other young men & boys in old clothes and balaclavas polishing people's shoes for between 1 and 3 Bolivianos (between 10-30p).

We found out later that this is a group of young boys/men called 'Lustrabotas' who make their living from shoe shining and selling a newspaper called 'Colectivo' which acts as a voice for them. 

They wear balaclavas or masks, not to look sinister but to hide their identity because it's seen as a social stigma to shine people's shoes. 

We both felt so sad at hearing this and we have since pushed a door with a local charity who support the Lustrabotas, who are the poorest of the poor, to see if we can do anything to help them over the Christmas period.

For obvious reasons I didn't take a picture but have found this online to show what they look like

We eventually made it back to our apartment, packed for Uyuni and headed out to the bus station.

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Uyuni is a city in the south west of Bolivia and best known for being the hub for all the tourists who want to visit the world's largest salt flats. About 60,000 tourists a year pass through to view the amazing phenomenon.

Measuring 10,582 square kilometers, the Salt flats or 'Salar' was formed as a result of transformations between several ancient lakes. It is covered by up to 30 meters of salt crust, which is extremely flat with the average altitude variations within only one meter over the entire area of the Salar! The crust serves as a source of salt and covers a pool of brine which is exceptionally rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, which is in the process of being extracted. 

The first amazing fact we learned is that the the large area, clear skies, and the exceptional flatness of the surface make the Salar the perfect object for calibrating the altimeters of Earth observation satellites! You learn something new every day!

We knew our bus ride was going to be about 10 hours long which is why we chose to do it at night with semi cama seats (recline to about 155 degrees). However, nothing could've prepared us for the bumpy ride we experienced for the last 6 hours of the journey.

Imagine a farmer has his tractor stolen in the middle of a rainy winter and the thief then joyrides it through 731 kilometers of adjoining wet, muddy fields until Summer when all the tracks turn rock solid. Now imagine sitting on a National Express bus being driven over the aforementioned fields for 6 hours..... You get the picture! Oh and don't forget, we were also trying to sleep! This was our room for the night!

Seriously, the Americans could learn some great torture techniques from this dusty desert road! It would've been less bumpy if we'd travelled on a pneumatic drill! On 2 occasions, all 56 passengers were literally bounced out of their seats, some narrowly missing bumping their heads on the bus ceiling!

Bleary eyed we arrived around 7am and ducked into a cafe for some breakfast and Coca tea. 10 hours on a bus had done nothing for my headache!

At 10:30am we were collected along with 4 others (all friends from Thailand but studying in Boston) and left for the day trip into the Salt flats in our 4 x 4 jeep.

First stop was the train cemetery. Uyuni served as a destination hub for trains carrying minerals on their way to the Pacific Ocean between 1888 and 1940. In the 1940s the mining industry collapsed and many trains were abandoned there.

From there we visited a salt museum including sculptures made entirely of salt

After lunch we went out into the middle of the Salt flats. The enormity is hard to describe. As far as the eye can see in every direction is salt, salt and more salt!

The great thing about having a vast flat area is that you can take some really interesting perspective pictures as you have no other solid reference points!

We took 30 minutes, a few props and a shed load of pictures. Here's a few!

You'll see that the salt is covered in millions of different hexagons. I could bore you with the complex, scientific reason but a) I don't understand it myself and b) If you are actually interested, please Google it as you'll learn a lot more that way. It is seriously fascinating though! The other alternative is to ask Stuart, Lauren's Dad who I'm sure would take great pleasure in explaining it to you in great detail for a small fee!!

After all the photographic fun our last stop was Fish Island. The only island in the world to be completely surrounded by salt. As there's little water around, Fish Island (called so as it looks like a fish from a distance) is populated by thousands of huge cacti!

Our tour guide didn't realise (so he said) we had to be on the 8pm night bus back to La Paz so we had to negotiate with a different driver to take us back early. This cost an extra 100 Bolivianos but I got it back from the very grumpy tour operator later!

Then, dinner and another 10 hour grueling, bumpy ride back to La Paz which is where we are now at 1pm (5pm GMT) Christmas Eve.

This is the first time we've felt homesick since we've been away and it's mainly because we love spending time with our friends and family over Christmas and South Americans don't really do Christmas like we do! They celebrate today, Christmas Eve and have a huge meal and open presents at midnight tonight! Weird! The children are allowed to stay up and see it as a challenge to stay awake!

We've booked to have Christmas Dinner at a local hostel tomorrow at 4 pm our time and they've also invited us to join them for a Christmas Eve celebration tonight so we may well pop along to that too.

Wi-Fi permitting we'll update the blog tomorrow and if any of you fancy a Bolivian Christmas Skype, please let me know asap!

Loads of South American Christmas love to you all. 

Don't forget the reason behind the season. 

Lauren's thoughts:

Both Gareth and I weren't particularly excited about Bolovia, we had heard we were going there in the rainy season and the food wasn't great but when we stepped off the plane, a little drunk due to the lack of oxygen, we walked passed so many cholitas and I realised that this may but be the place for great food and weather but we were going to experience a place so different from home and that we have. We have a lot more to see but I really feel like we are in South America now and glad we stopped off here. 

The last week has had to be quite slow as not only have we suffered from altitude sickness (certainly not in its worst format) but I've had a cold and sore throat throughout, not helped by the lack of sleep on the bumpy night buses. That said, after facetiming Dad to wish him a happy birthday at 6am this morning when we got off the night bus, I slept for four hours and feel a bit more human now. So it's Christmas Eve today/Dad's birthday (Happy birthday Dad) and feeling a little home sick, which will hopefully pass after Christmas, but looking forward to what the rest of Bolovia will bring.