Buenos Aires and the Bolivian Salt Flats

Wow, we arrived into Argentina yesterday, and the bus trip from the Buenos Aires airport to the hostel was quite an experience, not least because our bus driver forgot to tell us where Plaza 11 was so we could catch a taxi to our hostel so we made the trip all the way to the bus depot and then back about another 20 mins or so.

The things I noticed right near the airport were the big open spaces next to the road of mowed lawn. I haven´t seen that since Melbourne! And it actually reminded me a lot of Melbourne - expensive looking houses with lots of space around them and with green verges. It really emphasised that we have entered a country that is _much_ richer than any of the others we´ve been staying in. We passed parks, green areas in the middle of road triangles where people were playing soccer on a mini field, and of course scatterings of eucalyptus trees. It looked like some were mini plantations (we´re talking small plots of land here), just back from the road.

Sturdy eucalyptus

I´ve heard from Australian foresters working at Burnely that eucalypts are a great plantation tree in South America because they grow quickly with the plentiful rain in the wet season, and the varieties selected grow quite straight which is great for using the trunks for structural purposes like holding up rooves and holding up rocks in tunnels in the mines. They also don´t have the same pests and diseases as cucalypts do in Australia, so they are quite healthy. The leaves are used by indigenous women as a dye for the alpaca and llama wool – it produces a grey-green that is then used in weavings. And the branches and twigs are used as fuel for cooking in the countryside. Cool, huh?

The gang of girls

So our other exciting adventure in Bolivia was going to visit the Salt Flats near Uyuni in the far south west of Bolivia. Pretty much at least 6 hours on a bumpy bus to get there from any direction. Jordan met a friend in Sucre, Ankea from Holland, and she joined us, along with 4 students from Brazil on the 3-day treck. Here we all are on the blinding snow. We took some really cool pictures of optical illusions, but they were on Ankea´s camera so you´ll have to wait to see those ones.

Salt bricks

We visited a salt hotel and just outside this is the construction of another building. They have to use rooves with big eaves to prevent the bricks from getting washed away! They said the rain doesn´t come sideways much, so they´re pretty much ok.  Not sure how much upkeep they have to do, and how often. But the bricks are kept in place by a finer kind of salt.

A salt llama

Inside the salt hotel, where we could have stayed if we chose, on salt bed bases in a salt bedroom, they also had salt statues.  There are chunks of salt that are quite big and able to be carved. If you look at this picture carefully you will see that there are a number of smaller blocks of salt balanced on top of each other to create the llama. The stripey look is because the salt gets layers of dust blown in on the wind from the surrounding mountains.

Salt and sky

I´m quite  proud of this photo. We had a storm brewing and I was so taken with the clouds. You can see that the salt is quite clean at this part of the salt flats. Maybe the mountains are further away.

The next blog, which might be a few weeks away, will give you a sneak preview of Carnivale in Oruro in Bolivia – _the_ place to be in Bolivia for Carnivale. I´m a bit sad we won´t be there, but we´re heading to a tiny place in the north of Argentina which is meant to be good. In a few days we´re flying down to Patagonia and doing an ¨End of the world¨ tour. Hopefully my body is healthy enough and well adjusted to the altitude to cope with the walking. Of course! It will be great!

Ciao for now.

Anna

I´m well again!

Phew! Feel like I´ve been sick more than I´ve been well on this trip! OK, not actually, but it´s not fun. But I found some probiotics that have acidophilus (or however you spell it) as well as a bunch of others and it was like a magic potion! And the last few days I´ve even been feeling hungry!

OK enuf boring info about my health. What have we been up to since our last blog? Sadly Kate has left us, but she hasn´t left South America yet. I think she´ll either be trekking to get to Machu Pichu (on a different trail to ours) or she´ll be in the jungle being eaten by mosquitos. Jordan and I have been travelling together again for a bit, but tonight we parted ways again for the next few days – she wants to do more walking and I most certainly do not! So she´s on a bus to La Paz and I´m here in an internet cafe at 9.30pm and I have to wait until 5 minutes past midnight to catch my train to Oruro. So plenty of time for tapping away I´m even being optimistic and trying to upload some pictures to add to this.  See how we go.

So, first things first. We travelled from Sucre to Potosí which is an old mining town. In Spanish times it was a booming town in more ways than one. The Spaniards mined Cerro Rico – Rich Mountain – until it was no longer profitable. Apparently 45,000 tons of silver were extracted between 1556 and 1783. Dynamite was used to extract the silver, and the indigenous people were used as the miners. There were many accidents and many deaths during this time but from what I understand this was not seen as a problem – there were always more men to work the mines, and African slaves were brought in once the indigenous population diminished.  Many of the deaths were apparently from mercury poisoning as the workers mixed the silver ore and the mercury with their feet.

Miners do it tough

The main cause of death now is silicosis from the dust in their lungs and miners rarely live past 40. There are children as young as 10 working in the mines now, mostly because their fathers have died and they now need to support the family. The miners do it tough, hauling trolley loads of rock and minerals by hand on old wooden tracks that badly need repair. Makes the work even tougher as the trolleys constantly come off the rails.

Cool minerals

The mines are still working but at a much smaller scale, owned by cooperatives of miners now, where they make their money only from the profitable veins they find.  There are a number of minerals that are currently being mined by groups of 2 to 10 men, including tin and zinc. I can´t remember the name of this mineral but I really liked the look of it. Each group or cooperative has their own area of the mountain that they mine, at many different levels where it gets hotter as you get lower. Air is pumped in via big pipes with valves at intervals, as is water to be used when drilling. Most work is done by hand including the dangerous work of making and setting the dynamite. Some miners use drilling machinery, but mostly it´s done by hand as this keeps more miners employed.

El Tio (uncle)

This is El Tio, or Uncle.  Each mine has one of these.  He protects the miners and assists in finding profitable minerals. He does have horns like the devil (or diablo) but he is _never_ called diablo. He has a large penis, where the green is, to assist in the fertility of the mine. On the last Friday of every month each miner comes here, near the entrance to the mine, to give offerings to Tio for continued protection.  Two cigarettes are placed, lit, in his mouth, coca leaves are spread over his head, on his lap and at his feet. Alcohol (¨Bolivian rum¨ at 96% proof!) is also sprinkled around el Tio. I believe that at the time of Carnival in February he is also decorated with the coloured streamers you can see. Once a year an offering of a llama´s blood is also made, and this blood is splattered at the entrance to the mine and around the wall behind el Tio. The llama is then cooked and shared by the miners and their families.

Protector to keep el Tio in the mine

This is another protector in the mines. I can´t remember the name of it – it was not as easy to remember as el Tio. The main purpose of this shrine is to keep el Tio inside the mine. I think it´s connected to the church because once a year it is taken outside, I think at Carnival, because this is the time that the devils create havoc in our world, the world above the mines. Similar offerings are made here.

It´s tough, hot, dangerous work in the mines, but this is the way many families make their livelihoods. A new way of making money by ex-miners is taking tour groups inside the mines, explaining the processes and a bit of the history. Makes for a strange but memorable tourist activity.

Happy New Year!

Well, 2010 already, huh? I remember thinking how anything past 2000 was _so_ far away, and I couldn´t even imagine it.  And we don´t even have use of any of the amazing things that the ¨Towards 2000¨ or ¨Beyond 2000¨ shows would have us believe.  Whatever happened to those robots that were going to do our housework for us?!

New Years Eve in Sucre

I hope your New Years Eve was a fun one. There were 5 of us celebrating in Sucre, Bolivia – Kate, Jordan, Kate´s friend Staja, Staja´s friend Nicola and me. Unfortunately for this holiday it was me not feeling so well again.  What is going on with my body?! I was however well enough to go out for dinner and eat plain carbs and sit around drinking hand-made limonada until about 11pm. We all headed to the central plaza – the 25 de Mayo that every Bolivian town and city seems to have. I think it´s related to one of the revolutions…but I´ll have to check on that one.

The square was packed, with a band playing. There were plenty of little stalls selling confettii or fireworks or food or grapes.  The significance of the confettii passed us by, but everyone threw it all over everyone else at midnight. We even had a few girls throwing it over us so we wouldn´t miss out on the action. The significance of the grapes is that everyone needs to have 12 grapes – one for each month of the year – so that on the strike of midnight you eat the grapes as quickly as possible, whilst making a wish as you eat each one. Your wishes should then come true as each month rolls around in 2010. Another Bolivian New Years tradition we all followed was that if we wanted love in 2010 we had to wear red undies and if we wanted money we had to wear yellow undies. Not telling which colours we wore!  You could even wear a pair of each if you wanted!

The Bolivians believe that whatever you do on New Years Day will be what happens for the rest of the year.  So Nicola chose not to eat sugar, all the others went for a walk, Kate and Staja ate home-made chocolate balls and Jordan felt a little seedy from the night before! It appears that my 2010 will be characterised by lots of sleep (and therefore less tiredness?), good times with friends and good food.  Sounds great to me!

Kate and her craving

One of the highlights of being here in Sucre with Staja and Nicola has been the food we have been cooking.  Staja is a vegetarian, like Kate, and has found that cooking is easier than finding good vege food in any of the restaurants. Fortunately the hostel has a 2-burner cooker we can use.  So the day starts for most of us with yummy porrige with bananas, saltanas and nuts and soy milk. Jordan´s more of a Fruit Loops girl. Then a cup of tea with soy milk (such a luxury!). Luch has been yummy brown bread rolls Staja and Nicola have found with a variety of yummy toppings, and dinners have been amazing. Kate has been craving chick pea curry with brown rice for the last 3 weeks, and finally she got her wish! Last night was a dhal and I think tonight red bean tortillas have been planned. Eating out has not been nearly as good, so we´ll stick with cooking.

We will now all be in Sucre until Tuesday when I think we all disperse to different parts of Bolivia and Peru, except for Staja who we hope will not feel too lonely. Kate heads to Peru for the start of her Machu Pichu and jungle adventure, Jordan and I head to the silver mines in Potosí and then on to the Salt Flats near Uyuni for 3 days, and Nicola heads north to do some WWOOFing – Willing Workers On Organic Farms – in an indigenous community. It´s been a real treat to be all together in the same place for quite a few days.