This is a shot of the town of Oruro. We left Cochabamba early on a Wedesday morning and traveled 4 hours in a bus to arrive in Oruro. We had some time before our train left for Uyuni so we saw some of the sights in Oruro.
This mural depicts the story behind the National holiday of Carneval which has its roots in Oruro. It has to do with lizards and frogs and snakes coming upon the city (miners mostly at the time).
A woman, The Virgin, came to the rescue and delivered the city from the plagues.
This is a giant slide outside a church we visited. Yes I went down the concrete slide and I have the bruise on my tailbone to prove it!
Inside the church there is this mural the depicts hell, the world, and heaven.
Close up of a demon
Close up of the world
Below the church is an old mining cave. People there believe that hell is underground and have made statues of what they call "tio" a name for the devil (though literally it means "uncle"). People bring coca leaves, cigarettes, and other things to these idols to appease them.
This is another "tio"
Finally we boarded our train to Uyuni to begin out 3 day tour there.
We rode for 8 hours and arrived in Uyuni at 3AM
This is the group that I traveled around southern Bolivia with. The SUV was provided by our tour agency and is a must for most of the travel is off road (there are no roads!). Our driver was very cool, played english music for us, and often refered to us girls as "mis chicas (his girls)" or as his "beautifuls"
Our first stop was to the train graveyard in Uyuni. I actually red the graffiti after I had this picture taken. Feliz Viage para Todos, rougly translates to our phrase, Happy Trails to everyone.
This one says, This is the life. Underneath someone wrote "no"
This one made me laugh too. It says "an experienced mechanic needed" below and not in the picture it said "ugently"
This is the group of 15 of us. I still can't believe I climbed up on top of that thing!
We stopped at a place where there are a lot of natural rock formations. I could have spent hours there but we didn't have time as this was near the end of the trip and we had sick people we needed to get back into the city. Can you see the face in this picture?
Can you see the eagle?
Can you see the baboon face?
This is a sunset over the moutains
This is a volcano that is on the border of Bolivia and Chile. The chile side is active.
In the middle of the salt flats (pictures coming up next) are a few islands. There are a lot of cactuses there and we spent several hours climbing around and eating and resting on the island.
This is a view from the top of the island looking out over the salt flats.
Hug a tree, though at this altitude there aren't any trees, its way too high. So I hugged a cactus instead, ouch.
Watching the sunset from the island.I'm sitting on the salt flats
This is from earlier that day when we had a tour of how the process the salt to make it edible. This is a mountain waiting to be taken to the small town to be processed. Looks like snow huh?
The salt flats of Uyuni cover over 4,000 sq miles and goes down 5 meters. When your standing there it seems like it never ends. It just keeps going and going in all directions. It also contians 80 percent of the worlds lithium reserves. It is mostly untouched.
We stayed at a motel made compeltly of salt. The floors, chairs, tables were all made out of salt.
The walls too
And even the bed frames and end tables. The doors were made out of cactus wood.
This is a close up of a gyser.
The gysers from farther away.
This area is semi volcanic. The dirt/clay is liquid and is boiling with steam coming up from it constantly. I literally felt like I was on the moon of something, it was so other worldly. It smelled like rotten eggs though.
This is our time of swiming in the hotsprings. That was a nice treat!
A little piece of heaven.
Me and some new friends just chillin while we observed the afore mentioned volcano.
This is the red lake. Its red because of the mineral that it contains. When the wind is blowing stongly as you can tell by my hair in this picture, the lake water is bright red. The white part of not water.
More of the red lake, it was one of the coolest parts of the trip for me.
This is the green lake. Also contains a mineral causing it to turn green.
This is the stinky lake. So called because it contains sulfur. It stinks! But the flamingos like it. 3 different varieties of flamingo live in this area.
This is the sign for the lake, roughly translated, The Stinky Lake
This is how you fill your gas tank when you are out in the middle of nowhere.
Most of our meals were on the road and provided for us by our tour guide agency. Considering the available resources, the food was really good!
Our cook and her stove.
There were signs that made me laugh along the way. This is roughly translated says " only the wind runs here, all other must drive 5Kmh"
this is one just says "No peeing"
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