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Bolivia - day 3

On the third day, we went to the Salar... Unfortunately, we did not have time to make it to the salar itself for the sunrise (we missed it by about 5 min due to the guide and a slowly-packing person) so we had to stop slightly before. It was still amazing.
The salar de Uyuni is about as big as one third of Belgium... Despite being also flat, there is still a major difference. The salar is all made of (white) salt. A big jeep is therefore needed for all displacements on the salar.
Basically, the salar looks like a sea (or a frozen Swedish archipelago). Gustav was even tempted to check the thickness of the ice layer before stepping. Just like in the archipelago, there are islands as well. On the fisher's island, one can see cactus measuring from a meter to about 12 meters...

And indeed, we spent about two hours taking stupid pictures with the white background...


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Bolivia, day 1 and 2

We started out early in the morning, by minibus up to the Andes and the bolivian border. There we switched to jeeps after some 5 minutes of border formalities and stamping of passports. From the first meter the change was very notable as the tarmac turned into rocks and mud and it became obvious why we had left the minibuses. After 20 minutes of bumpy jeepride we reached our first stop was "the white lagoon".

After having seen the marvelous view and taken some photos we continued past the "green" and "red" lagoons, full of flamingos and surrounded by peculiar rock formations. We tried to get close to the flamingos but they kept running away, thus they could be seen as a general pinkish mass, but there were so many of them that the effect was quite impressive!

That night we stayed in a little village called "Villamar" ("Seavillage"), funny name for being in the middle of the dessert, but they clamed that there was river there during rainy season and I guess that for bolivians (who are landlocked since the war opf 1870) that is enough!!

The next morning we went to see the "Llama paradise" where we saw plenty of lamas and a valley deserving the name!

We continued through some other small villages, one of which looked like a classic western town, complete with a railroad from the ninetenth century, a cementary and several abandoned houses!

From there we continued to the brink of the saltflat, where we stayed overnight in a hostel that actually had hot water and a great view of the tremendous flat!

Recent Events in Bolivia...

I have not had time to read carefully the news, but I heard that Bolivia's situation is going down... So far, we are considering to go to La Paz, which should remain safe. The situation is quite bad in the east of the country (Santa Cruz,....) so we might fly directly from La Paz to Brazil.
Apparently, the Swedish embassy does not "not recommend" to go to Bolivia yet. If you have some suggestion or news we might not be aware of, please comment on this post...

Picacho?

Here is a small description of a place where we will probably stay two to three weeks :
Picacho is in the north east of the tropical part of Bolivia, close to the Brazilian border and the Nation Park Noel Kempff Mercado. The closest villages are Remanso (16km), Cafetal (Puerto Villazon, also 16km), Piso Firma (40km) and San Simon (15km).
The closest town, Santa Cruz is about 750kms... It sounds like a lot of fun to get there!


Formerly a cattle farm, Picacho has now been renovated as a small-scale organic animal farm with horses, cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, ducks, cats and dogs. Surrounded by the Bolivian jungle with nearby waterfalls, lagoons, hills, rivers and natural wildlife, it's an ideal place to get away from civilisation (there's no phone nor internet, and it's often difficult to reach neighbouring villages when the conditions of the road are bad).
The perfect place to take a break then...

And, regarding to Lionel's comment on the "Milestones" post:
If you're coming or going from Brazil be aware that there's no official border crossing into/from Brazil, as despite being 16km from the Brazilian border, there is no immmigration control (which means you can't get an entrance/exit stamp and will not be legally entering or exiting either country). The most common way to arrive in Picacho is by air or road from Santa Cruz.