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

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