High up but feeling very low....
Good day to you all,
I hope this email finds you well. Lynn and I are currently in the city of Potosi in southern Bolivia. It sits at an altitude of 4,070m and apparently it's the highest city in the world. It's an old, Spanish colonial city and 400 years ago it was one of the richest in the world. The reason is that it sits at the foot of an enormous mountain that was virtually solid silver. Nowadays the silver's all gone and the city survives on the mining of tin and the tourists who all pass through either on their way south to Argentina, west to Chile or north to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia and then into Peru.
We are not in the best of spirits at the moment and I shall reveal why as I get to the end of this email but for now I shall continue where I left off last time.
We left San Pedro de Atacama in Chile on Tuesday 23rd May for a 3 day tour of the extraordinarily beautiful salt flats and 'coloured' lakes of south-western Bolivia before arriving in the afternoon of Thursday 25th May in the small town of Uyuni.
There are a number of Tour Agencies in San Pedro and after talking to a few of them we eventually booked our tour with a company called Pamela Tours. It had a good reputation, wasn't too expensive and, most importantly to us, on the 2nd night of our trip we would get to stay at the Hotel de Sal (The Salt Hotel) which is something that I'd been looking forward to since before we even left England! The Salt Hotel sits in the middle of the largest salt lake in the world and as you may guess is built entirely of salt - in addition to this so are the beds, the tables, the chairs and ornaments. There are also numerous signs asking the visitor to kindly not lick anything! Not all the agencies stay there as some have their own accommodation.
Day 1: We are picked up from the office of Pamela Tours at 08:00 by a minibus that's seen better days and driven to the Bolivian border. Swiftly through we are then ushered to big Toyota 4x4's with our respective company's logos on the side. It turned out that we were the only booking with Pamela Tours that day so without telling us they switched us to another company called Colque Tours. So now we are travelling with Colque Tours. We wouldn't mind but for one small fact - Colque Tours don't stay at The Salt Hotel. We're not happy. If they'd told us in the 20 minutes we were in their office waiting for the minibus to arrive then we could have decided for ourselves what we wanted to do. Colque Tours was actually the most expensive company to go with but that's beside the point. We're disappointed but it's too late now to do anything. As a small consolation, we'll get to visit the Salt Hotel on day 3 of the tour so atleast we can take some nice photos of it. It soon becomes apparent why we're in 4x4's as the 'road' is abyssmal. Actually, 'road' isn't really an appropriate term as there isn't one - only a series of tyre-tracks which we follow up and down the very rocky landscape. The day's sights in order are Laguna Blanca (white lake) which is completely frozen over all year hence it's being called 'White'; Laguna Verde (Green Lake) which is full of copper deposits hence it's amazingly viid green colour; 'Dali's Rocks' - strange rock formations that resemble those seen in many of Salvador Dali's paintings; more geysers like the ones in Chile though these are more bubbling mud than jets of water - the smell of sulphur is overwhelming and we are also over 5,000m above sea level here; Laguna Colorado which is a very weird blood red in colour due to the trillions of micro-organisms that live in it and thus attract great flocks of flamingoes that eat them. Incidentally it's the colour in the micro-organisms that gives the flamingoes their pink colour. The better fed the flamingo the redder their feathers. In zoos they apparently put red food colouring in the food for the same result! We spend the night here in the worst place I have ever stayed. No electric, no water, awful food, no heating... We were warned it would be cold and we survived the -15C night-time temperatures thanks to our lovely sleeping bags which we unintentionally acquired in El Calafate 2 months ago. I knew we'd grow to appreciate them!
Day 2: In the morning we scraped a thick layer of ice off the INSIDE of the window and I would have liked a drink of water for my parched and dusty throat if it hadn't all frozen in my bottle in the night. Sights today were 4 more lakes of various colours and sizes, more rocks including the 'Tree Rock' which is enormous on top but with a thin stem supporting it. How it doesn't break and fall is a mystery as it's so top heavy but it's been this way for thousands of years since it was eroded by volcanic lava apparently. Late afternoon we arrive at the edge of the enormous Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Lake) where we disappointingly spend our 2nd night in their crappy hostal and not the Salt Hotel. Atleast it's a step up from the night before though. The food is again awful and seemingly random in it's assortment of items. Rice, a hot dog sausage, some carrots, boiled potatoes, chunks of cucumber and a boiled egg. I bite into my boiled egg to find it has blood in it. Yeah, I'll give dinner a miss today, thanks!
Day 3: Up at 05:30 for sunrise on the salt lake. No hot water and no electric. We pack our stuff in the dark. It's not as cold as last night thankfully as it's only about -5C. We drive out into the middle of the salt lake for sunrise. A horizon of salt in all directions, it's spectacular but also very strange. When the sun peeps over the horizon at just before 07:00 our shadows go on for miles and miles with nothing to obstruct them. Next stop is to an island of coral in the middle of the lake - a remnant of the days when all this area was under water. Now the island is full of cacti and small birds which are stuck here because of the miles of salt in all directions. They live off small insects that also live on the island. Afterwards we make a stop at the Salt Hotel and we get to see where we should have spent the night. It's really good inside and we wander around taking photos of all the rooms. Afterwards we visit a couple of small communities that sell souvenirs made of salt including, to my amusement, a salt pot. It's not refillable, once you've emptied it of salt I guess you grind up the pot and sprinkle that on your dinner instead! Next up is a deserted village - deserted of people that is as it still contains the token pack of stray barking dogs that every village, deserted or not, seems to have. We brave the threat of rabies to take a few pictures and then drive off, barking dogs snapping at the wheels of our 4x4! Lastly is the 'Cemetario de Trens' - The Train Graveyard. It is a vast area of land full of the rusting skeletons of trains and carriages dating from the early to mid part of the 20th century. They make wonderful photos as do many of the places we've been on our tour and by the end of the 3 days I have 400 more photos!
We finish up in the small town of Uyuni by mid-afternoon. After the less than luxurious 3 day tour we decide to check in to Uyuni's top hotel - Hotel Tonito at 240 Bolivianos a night (about 16 quid, so 8 each). The hotel is owned by a really nice Bolivian family whose daughter has married an American guy. The American, Chris, and his wife run the adjoining Minuteman Pizza Restaurant. Uyuni is not the sort of place you'd want to go for a holiday. It is a desperate town of very poor people and high unemployment. We decide we'll stay 2 nights though before we head on to Potosi as we need a rest. Chris's Minuteman Restaurant is a real oasis in the desert. We eat there breakfast, lunch and dinner for both days and the food is exquisite - he goes back to America for many of his ingredients so we get proper American pancakes for breakfast with real Canadian maple syrup, pizzas that are to die for, with proper pepperoni instead of some South American pork substitute. Lovely chocolatey, hot chocolate and home-made chocolate-chip cookies fresh out of the oven!
Saturday morning and we have a 6 hour bus journey to Potosi at 10:00. I buy a Minuteman Staff t-shirt from Chris as a souvenir and I get Lynn to take a few pictures of us behind the bar in the restaurant. We say our goodbyes and go to the bus-departing road (there's no station).
This is where our spectacular holiday takes a sudden and equally spectacular nose-dive.... To cut straight to the point - I had my camera bag containing my camera and all my photographic equipment stolen from the bus whilst we were waiting to leave.
We loaded our big rucksacks in the luggage bay under the minibus and Lynn waited outside on the pavement with our small packs whilst I nipped off to get a couple of drinks for the journey. When I got back Lynn was being hassled to get on the bus by one of the bus company workers. She waited for me though as I had the ticket. We showed him the ticket and then he showed us to our seats which are numbered and also written on the ticket. We put our locked bags on the parcel shelf above our heads as there was very little room on this knackered and cramped bus for even our feet and we could keep an eye on them from where we were sat anyway. Another Bolivian gets on and puts his bag on the parcel shelf next to ours and starts phaffing around with it. The guy who showed us on suddenly leans over us and bangs on the window trying to attract someone's attention. We look out of the window as you do in these instances and the guy who is messing about with his bag, grabs mine and leaves the bus followed by the bus worker who, by being in our way, was blocking our view of our bags for this brief period. We didn't think anything else of it at the time - The bus worker has gone off to catch up with the person who attention he couldn't attract and the other Bolivian had found what he was looking for in his bag and had gone off for a wee or to get a drink or something. A few more people got on the bus and 5 minutes later we left. It was then that I realised that the Bolivian who was fiddling with his bag didn't get back on the bus before we set off. I looked up, his bag was still there (but had been empty all along) but mine was gone. And that's when I realised how my camera bag and all my photographic stuff had been stolen. At this stage I couldn't have felt any more sick had Mike Tyson hit me in the stomach with his hardest punch. The more I think about it (and believe me, I've thought of little else for the last 96 hours) the more obvious a scam it seemed. Why wasn't I aware of it when it was happening? Why didn't I figure something was up when the guy leaned across me to bang on the window even though the seats infront were empty? I am so paranoid about having something stolen that half the time I miss the scenery because I'm too busy keeping an eye on our stuff. The truth is that it happened so quickly that I didn't have the time to realise what was going on. But why didn't I check our bags were there as soon as the two guys got off? I don't know. I really don't know? Maybe I was looking out of the window to see who the worker was trying to reach and so my mind was elsewhere? I really just do not know. By the time I noticed we were on our way and it was another 2 hours before the next stop and we could get off. We wrote down the details of what happened; we took descriptions of the two men from the other couple who were on the bus when the robbery happened; we wrote down the bus details and made an inventory of what had been stolen. We got off and waited 2 hours for the next bus going the other way and then had a 2 hour journey back to Uyuni.
We didn't know where the police station was or what to do first so we went back to Hotel Tonito where Chris was surprised to see us back. We told him what happened and his wife, Sussy, took us immediately to the police station to report the theft.
We were in Uyuni for a further 3 days. On the first visit to the police station the sergeant took our details and wrote down our account of what happened and took our description of the thief and then told us to come back tomorrow and he would have someone from the bus company here also to see what they could tell us. We returned at 10:00 but no one from the bus company turned up. After 30 minutes the Sergeant went and got someone. The bus company denied everything. They didn't know this bloke, he doesn't work for them, we couldn't have been on the bus at that time we said because they only open the bus doors 10 minutes before departure (he showed us on 25 minutes before departure), the thief couldn't even have been on the bus if he didn't have a ticket unless he worked for them and apparently he didn't. We were told to come back at 10:00 the next day when he would have the driver and his helper here to answer questions. We turn up at 10:00 but nobody from the bus station is there. Again we wait 30 minutes and then the sergeant sends one of his officers up to the bus company to drag them down here. 30 minutes later he comes back and says the bus company is closed, there's no one there. We are told our report will be ready tonight at 18:00. We leave and head to the bus road. The bus company is open. They're all open. At 17:30 we go to check on the bus company again. They are open still. We go back to the Police station and tell the sergeant that the company was open all day. He shrugs, not his problem, his officer said it was closed and that's the end of the matter. No he won't come with us so we can prove it's open. The matter is CLOSED. Here's your report now get out of my sight.
On the way back to the hotel Sussy explains to us about Bolivian 'justice'. The man who stole my bag almost certainly works for the bus company which is why they weren't anxious to come down and clear their name at the first opportunity. The police know what happened because it happens all the time. That's why the officer came back and said the bus company was closed when it wasn't. The bus company 'encourages' the police to turn a blind eye. At the end of the day, they know I can't hang around for ever, that I'll soon lose hope for any justice. I'll take my report, tell the insurance company and get some money back and try to put it all behind me. In a couple of days, another unsuspecting tourist will get caught off-guard and the whole cycle will happen again. The bus company has another goodie bag to sell, the policeman gets a bit more cash... and so it goes on.
Chris and Sussy were so good to us for the 3 days we went back to Uyuni. They spent many hours helping us try to get some justice and I'm so thankful to them for that. Chris joked that if I'm lucky I can probably buy my camera back in La Paz next week. I don't hold out any hope though. Do you know what the worst part is about the theft? It's not the camera but the 500 odd photos, my memories, that I've now lost forever. I think back to all the wonderful places I've been recently and the photographs I took and was so pleased with and it makes me feel so sick to know that I'll never see them or be able to show them to any of you.
Well, that's it for now. Sorry to leave this report on a sad note but that's the way it goes. Maybe I can buy a cheap camera in La Paz to keep me going until New Zealand but I don't think I'll be able to get a good one like before until I leave South America. Looking for the perfect photo is what travelling is all about for me. Without a camera I'm still wandering around but now I'm wandering blind.
Rich
I hope this email finds you well. Lynn and I are currently in the city of Potosi in southern Bolivia. It sits at an altitude of 4,070m and apparently it's the highest city in the world. It's an old, Spanish colonial city and 400 years ago it was one of the richest in the world. The reason is that it sits at the foot of an enormous mountain that was virtually solid silver. Nowadays the silver's all gone and the city survives on the mining of tin and the tourists who all pass through either on their way south to Argentina, west to Chile or north to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia and then into Peru.
We are not in the best of spirits at the moment and I shall reveal why as I get to the end of this email but for now I shall continue where I left off last time.
We left San Pedro de Atacama in Chile on Tuesday 23rd May for a 3 day tour of the extraordinarily beautiful salt flats and 'coloured' lakes of south-western Bolivia before arriving in the afternoon of Thursday 25th May in the small town of Uyuni.
There are a number of Tour Agencies in San Pedro and after talking to a few of them we eventually booked our tour with a company called Pamela Tours. It had a good reputation, wasn't too expensive and, most importantly to us, on the 2nd night of our trip we would get to stay at the Hotel de Sal (The Salt Hotel) which is something that I'd been looking forward to since before we even left England! The Salt Hotel sits in the middle of the largest salt lake in the world and as you may guess is built entirely of salt - in addition to this so are the beds, the tables, the chairs and ornaments. There are also numerous signs asking the visitor to kindly not lick anything! Not all the agencies stay there as some have their own accommodation.
Day 1: We are picked up from the office of Pamela Tours at 08:00 by a minibus that's seen better days and driven to the Bolivian border. Swiftly through we are then ushered to big Toyota 4x4's with our respective company's logos on the side. It turned out that we were the only booking with Pamela Tours that day so without telling us they switched us to another company called Colque Tours. So now we are travelling with Colque Tours. We wouldn't mind but for one small fact - Colque Tours don't stay at The Salt Hotel. We're not happy. If they'd told us in the 20 minutes we were in their office waiting for the minibus to arrive then we could have decided for ourselves what we wanted to do. Colque Tours was actually the most expensive company to go with but that's beside the point. We're disappointed but it's too late now to do anything. As a small consolation, we'll get to visit the Salt Hotel on day 3 of the tour so atleast we can take some nice photos of it. It soon becomes apparent why we're in 4x4's as the 'road' is abyssmal. Actually, 'road' isn't really an appropriate term as there isn't one - only a series of tyre-tracks which we follow up and down the very rocky landscape. The day's sights in order are Laguna Blanca (white lake) which is completely frozen over all year hence it's being called 'White'; Laguna Verde (Green Lake) which is full of copper deposits hence it's amazingly viid green colour; 'Dali's Rocks' - strange rock formations that resemble those seen in many of Salvador Dali's paintings; more geysers like the ones in Chile though these are more bubbling mud than jets of water - the smell of sulphur is overwhelming and we are also over 5,000m above sea level here; Laguna Colorado which is a very weird blood red in colour due to the trillions of micro-organisms that live in it and thus attract great flocks of flamingoes that eat them. Incidentally it's the colour in the micro-organisms that gives the flamingoes their pink colour. The better fed the flamingo the redder their feathers. In zoos they apparently put red food colouring in the food for the same result! We spend the night here in the worst place I have ever stayed. No electric, no water, awful food, no heating... We were warned it would be cold and we survived the -15C night-time temperatures thanks to our lovely sleeping bags which we unintentionally acquired in El Calafate 2 months ago. I knew we'd grow to appreciate them!
Day 2: In the morning we scraped a thick layer of ice off the INSIDE of the window and I would have liked a drink of water for my parched and dusty throat if it hadn't all frozen in my bottle in the night. Sights today were 4 more lakes of various colours and sizes, more rocks including the 'Tree Rock' which is enormous on top but with a thin stem supporting it. How it doesn't break and fall is a mystery as it's so top heavy but it's been this way for thousands of years since it was eroded by volcanic lava apparently. Late afternoon we arrive at the edge of the enormous Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Lake) where we disappointingly spend our 2nd night in their crappy hostal and not the Salt Hotel. Atleast it's a step up from the night before though. The food is again awful and seemingly random in it's assortment of items. Rice, a hot dog sausage, some carrots, boiled potatoes, chunks of cucumber and a boiled egg. I bite into my boiled egg to find it has blood in it. Yeah, I'll give dinner a miss today, thanks!
Day 3: Up at 05:30 for sunrise on the salt lake. No hot water and no electric. We pack our stuff in the dark. It's not as cold as last night thankfully as it's only about -5C. We drive out into the middle of the salt lake for sunrise. A horizon of salt in all directions, it's spectacular but also very strange. When the sun peeps over the horizon at just before 07:00 our shadows go on for miles and miles with nothing to obstruct them. Next stop is to an island of coral in the middle of the lake - a remnant of the days when all this area was under water. Now the island is full of cacti and small birds which are stuck here because of the miles of salt in all directions. They live off small insects that also live on the island. Afterwards we make a stop at the Salt Hotel and we get to see where we should have spent the night. It's really good inside and we wander around taking photos of all the rooms. Afterwards we visit a couple of small communities that sell souvenirs made of salt including, to my amusement, a salt pot. It's not refillable, once you've emptied it of salt I guess you grind up the pot and sprinkle that on your dinner instead! Next up is a deserted village - deserted of people that is as it still contains the token pack of stray barking dogs that every village, deserted or not, seems to have. We brave the threat of rabies to take a few pictures and then drive off, barking dogs snapping at the wheels of our 4x4! Lastly is the 'Cemetario de Trens' - The Train Graveyard. It is a vast area of land full of the rusting skeletons of trains and carriages dating from the early to mid part of the 20th century. They make wonderful photos as do many of the places we've been on our tour and by the end of the 3 days I have 400 more photos!
We finish up in the small town of Uyuni by mid-afternoon. After the less than luxurious 3 day tour we decide to check in to Uyuni's top hotel - Hotel Tonito at 240 Bolivianos a night (about 16 quid, so 8 each). The hotel is owned by a really nice Bolivian family whose daughter has married an American guy. The American, Chris, and his wife run the adjoining Minuteman Pizza Restaurant. Uyuni is not the sort of place you'd want to go for a holiday. It is a desperate town of very poor people and high unemployment. We decide we'll stay 2 nights though before we head on to Potosi as we need a rest. Chris's Minuteman Restaurant is a real oasis in the desert. We eat there breakfast, lunch and dinner for both days and the food is exquisite - he goes back to America for many of his ingredients so we get proper American pancakes for breakfast with real Canadian maple syrup, pizzas that are to die for, with proper pepperoni instead of some South American pork substitute. Lovely chocolatey, hot chocolate and home-made chocolate-chip cookies fresh out of the oven!
Saturday morning and we have a 6 hour bus journey to Potosi at 10:00. I buy a Minuteman Staff t-shirt from Chris as a souvenir and I get Lynn to take a few pictures of us behind the bar in the restaurant. We say our goodbyes and go to the bus-departing road (there's no station).
This is where our spectacular holiday takes a sudden and equally spectacular nose-dive.... To cut straight to the point - I had my camera bag containing my camera and all my photographic equipment stolen from the bus whilst we were waiting to leave.
We loaded our big rucksacks in the luggage bay under the minibus and Lynn waited outside on the pavement with our small packs whilst I nipped off to get a couple of drinks for the journey. When I got back Lynn was being hassled to get on the bus by one of the bus company workers. She waited for me though as I had the ticket. We showed him the ticket and then he showed us to our seats which are numbered and also written on the ticket. We put our locked bags on the parcel shelf above our heads as there was very little room on this knackered and cramped bus for even our feet and we could keep an eye on them from where we were sat anyway. Another Bolivian gets on and puts his bag on the parcel shelf next to ours and starts phaffing around with it. The guy who showed us on suddenly leans over us and bangs on the window trying to attract someone's attention. We look out of the window as you do in these instances and the guy who is messing about with his bag, grabs mine and leaves the bus followed by the bus worker who, by being in our way, was blocking our view of our bags for this brief period. We didn't think anything else of it at the time - The bus worker has gone off to catch up with the person who attention he couldn't attract and the other Bolivian had found what he was looking for in his bag and had gone off for a wee or to get a drink or something. A few more people got on the bus and 5 minutes later we left. It was then that I realised that the Bolivian who was fiddling with his bag didn't get back on the bus before we set off. I looked up, his bag was still there (but had been empty all along) but mine was gone. And that's when I realised how my camera bag and all my photographic stuff had been stolen. At this stage I couldn't have felt any more sick had Mike Tyson hit me in the stomach with his hardest punch. The more I think about it (and believe me, I've thought of little else for the last 96 hours) the more obvious a scam it seemed. Why wasn't I aware of it when it was happening? Why didn't I figure something was up when the guy leaned across me to bang on the window even though the seats infront were empty? I am so paranoid about having something stolen that half the time I miss the scenery because I'm too busy keeping an eye on our stuff. The truth is that it happened so quickly that I didn't have the time to realise what was going on. But why didn't I check our bags were there as soon as the two guys got off? I don't know. I really don't know? Maybe I was looking out of the window to see who the worker was trying to reach and so my mind was elsewhere? I really just do not know. By the time I noticed we were on our way and it was another 2 hours before the next stop and we could get off. We wrote down the details of what happened; we took descriptions of the two men from the other couple who were on the bus when the robbery happened; we wrote down the bus details and made an inventory of what had been stolen. We got off and waited 2 hours for the next bus going the other way and then had a 2 hour journey back to Uyuni.
We didn't know where the police station was or what to do first so we went back to Hotel Tonito where Chris was surprised to see us back. We told him what happened and his wife, Sussy, took us immediately to the police station to report the theft.
We were in Uyuni for a further 3 days. On the first visit to the police station the sergeant took our details and wrote down our account of what happened and took our description of the thief and then told us to come back tomorrow and he would have someone from the bus company here also to see what they could tell us. We returned at 10:00 but no one from the bus company turned up. After 30 minutes the Sergeant went and got someone. The bus company denied everything. They didn't know this bloke, he doesn't work for them, we couldn't have been on the bus at that time we said because they only open the bus doors 10 minutes before departure (he showed us on 25 minutes before departure), the thief couldn't even have been on the bus if he didn't have a ticket unless he worked for them and apparently he didn't. We were told to come back at 10:00 the next day when he would have the driver and his helper here to answer questions. We turn up at 10:00 but nobody from the bus station is there. Again we wait 30 minutes and then the sergeant sends one of his officers up to the bus company to drag them down here. 30 minutes later he comes back and says the bus company is closed, there's no one there. We are told our report will be ready tonight at 18:00. We leave and head to the bus road. The bus company is open. They're all open. At 17:30 we go to check on the bus company again. They are open still. We go back to the Police station and tell the sergeant that the company was open all day. He shrugs, not his problem, his officer said it was closed and that's the end of the matter. No he won't come with us so we can prove it's open. The matter is CLOSED. Here's your report now get out of my sight.
On the way back to the hotel Sussy explains to us about Bolivian 'justice'. The man who stole my bag almost certainly works for the bus company which is why they weren't anxious to come down and clear their name at the first opportunity. The police know what happened because it happens all the time. That's why the officer came back and said the bus company was closed when it wasn't. The bus company 'encourages' the police to turn a blind eye. At the end of the day, they know I can't hang around for ever, that I'll soon lose hope for any justice. I'll take my report, tell the insurance company and get some money back and try to put it all behind me. In a couple of days, another unsuspecting tourist will get caught off-guard and the whole cycle will happen again. The bus company has another goodie bag to sell, the policeman gets a bit more cash... and so it goes on.
Chris and Sussy were so good to us for the 3 days we went back to Uyuni. They spent many hours helping us try to get some justice and I'm so thankful to them for that. Chris joked that if I'm lucky I can probably buy my camera back in La Paz next week. I don't hold out any hope though. Do you know what the worst part is about the theft? It's not the camera but the 500 odd photos, my memories, that I've now lost forever. I think back to all the wonderful places I've been recently and the photographs I took and was so pleased with and it makes me feel so sick to know that I'll never see them or be able to show them to any of you.
Well, that's it for now. Sorry to leave this report on a sad note but that's the way it goes. Maybe I can buy a cheap camera in La Paz to keep me going until New Zealand but I don't think I'll be able to get a good one like before until I leave South America. Looking for the perfect photo is what travelling is all about for me. Without a camera I'm still wandering around but now I'm wandering blind.
Rich
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