Uyuni, Bolivia - Final Day

Early Day
I slept from 8pm to midnight until awakened by the sound of someone vomiting violently.  Our room was at the end of the hall near the toilets.  I slept off and on from there as the vomiting continued for hours.  I imagined that a whole group of people were sick but later learned it was just one poor soul.  We got up at 4am, had a quick breakfast and were on our way to the geysers.

Uyuni, Bolivia - Lagoons

Islands of Life
Once you leave the salt flat and climb into the high desert, you begin to see lagoons.  The first was so colorful that I ripped off my sunglasses to look.  A swirling white cloud passed over and Karine asked our tour guide Eddie about it.  "Salt cloud?"  "Nope" he replied.  "Borax."

Uyuni, Bolivia - Deserts

Cold and Dust
I am dressed in every layer I have but I've not felt this cold in decades.  It's the wind, forty and fifty miles an hour with no let up.  The cold gets me in the ankles, the weak point of my gear - I'm wearing sneakers and short athletic socks.  Everyone else has hiking boots and long wool socks.  When we pull over to take photos, I am slow to get out of the truck, sometimes opting to outsource the photo taking to the Dodo.

Uyuni, Bolivia - Perspectives

Trick Photography
I didn't understand why our guide Eddie kept asking us about our "props."  He said the best size is 15 centimeters and he alluded to taking photos.  I finally got it when I saw him set up for his first shot with Erica, the young lady from Norway.  Since there is nothing on the horizon to give away relative distances, you can do trick photography.

Uyuni, Bolivia - Salt

Taking Off
The guide threw our bags up to the driver who packed them on top of the 4x4 under a thick tarp.  There'd be seven of us in total - we were joined by a Swiss couple and a young lady from Norway.  We were warned to buy everything we needed: water, toilet paper, snacks.  With every mile into the desert, the prices would skyrocket.

Uyuni, Bolivia - Desert Crossing

A Trip of Superlatives
We took a 45 minute flight from La Paz to Uyuni,  a small town in south-central Bolivia known for salt.  We signed up for a three day, two night desert tour.

La Paz, Bolivia - Food

The Usual Routine
The day we arrived we went straight to the central market, which in La Paz is a sprawling maze of buildings and street stalls perched on a steep hill.  We walked the market looking for a food stand or makeshift restaurant but didn't find any.  Dodo stopped at a street vendor and ordered something unknown.  It turned out to be a deep-fried potato that had been stuffed with onions and veggies.

La Paz, Bolivia - The Teleferico

High Above the Gridlock
The teleferico lines are differentiated by color.  We planned to take the yellow, which was close to our house, to the green towards the south side of town.  The ride costs 80 cents - I bought a handful of tickets to cover the line change from yellow to green and the return ride home.

La Paz, Bolivia - Magic Realism

Landing on Another Planet
Even if you were possessed of unlimited creativity and time, you could never draw up a city like this.  La Paz is 14,000 feet up, with terracotta houses sprinkled amongst dry shards of mountain, pink and grey.  It's like no city I've ever seen - as if we'd landed on the first city erected on Mars.

Peru-Bolivia Border - Bureaucracy Defined

It's Hard Getting into Bolivia
I admit it. I was too lazy to get a visa in advance.  I'd heard that you could buy one at the border and didn't give it a lot more thought.  When we purchased our bus tickets from Puno to La Paz, the ticket seller asked me if I had a visa.  She told me I'd have to pay because I was American.  "What about her?"  She glanced at the Singaporean passport and shook her head no.  On our bus ride we were given a bunch of forms to fill out.  We bounced along the western shore of Titicaca towards the border town of Desaguadero, where we'd have to get out, walk into the middle of the town, get our Peruvian exit stamp, walk across a bridge over a small river that separates Peru and Bolivia and into Bolovian immigration.