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“from tupiza, we went on a five hour horse trek in fantastic wild west scenery shouting geronimo all the way!” |
arrived to tupiza in the south of bolivia and checked into an ensuite room with tv in hotel mitru which has a pool for $6 each – a deserved splurge after the 13 hour train and 3 hour bus journey from la paz! tupiza is a small town with a really nice vibe, set in fantastic rock formation scenery straight out of a wild west movie. brigette dempsey from fermoy joined myself and anne for this leg of the trip and it was really nice to have additional company just to change it up a little.
from tupiza, we went on a five hour horse trek where i couldn´t help shouting geronimo and it just didn´t seem right not to be wearing cowboy hats! it was anne´s first time horse riding and she was galloping (albeit inadvertently) after an hour! the scenery included amazing rock formations called the devil´s door, the inca valley and penis valley (see picture for explanation!)
we got back in time to rest the bones by the lovely hotel pool in the afternoon sun.
next day we left on our four day salt plain tour sharing a 4x4 with 2 girls and a guy from the lake district in england and our driver and cook (8 of us in all in a 4x4 travelling 1200km on bumpy tracks over 4 days!). on the first day we saw a spectacular valley of rock formations very similar, anne said, to those near the grand canyon, and not much else as there was a lot of driving to do to get to the remote southwest of bolivia for the rest of the out-of-this-world attractions.
the second day we saw lots of lagoons and geysers and bathed in hot springs. the lagoons are of various colours due to different minerals present. so we saw the green lagoon, the red colorado lagoon and a few others. most had huge flocks of pelicans hanging out in them except the green lagoon which is poisonous. the lagoons were really pretty against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains and red craggy hills.
i found the geysers fascinating. they were basically venting holes for the earth to let off a bit of steam – literally. there was bubbling and spurting sulphur in these holes, heated by the earth´s core underneath. definitely not somewhere you´d want to fall into!
the hot springs, which were next to a lagoon, were a lovely 30 degrees. much appreciated since the accommodation on the tour is very basic with no showers for 3 nights!
animals surrounded us for the whole trip and outnumbered the humans we saw by hundreds to one! tons of llamas which are the main agricultural livestock in the area, all with little coloured ribbons tied to their ears – a much nicer method than the plastic tags at home! thousands of flamingos of various varieties, a few condors, vicunas which are a deer-like relative of the llama, a wild fox which came up to us for food, an animal which looked like a rabbit but had a squirrel´s tail, an emu, and a little domesticated baby lamb!
roll on day 3 & 4!
previous travel blog entry
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