Bolivia (Uyuni, La Paz, Death Road, Copacabana)
Finishing our second part of the Chile trip, we took a three day tour from San Pedro de Atacama through the area around the Salar de Uyuni to Uyuni. The trip (with Cortillera´s safe, Michael Schumacher-like and very funny driver Javier) was a combination of some very unique wonders of nature. Within a very short time we got to see green, red and white lakes, saw Flamingos, drove by unique rock formations and took pictures of hundreds of picunas, lamas and the like. During all this we could always enjoy the panorama of sometimes multi-colored, somtimes snowy mountain-tops and volcanos. The “Salar de Uyuni” tour was already a highlight before we even reached the highlight of the tour itself: the Uyuni salt flat. This former lake is now a desert-like area of nearly 12´500 km2 completely covered with plain white salt (and at least one very small island somewhere in the middle of nowhere). You can barely see some of the mountain tops at the horizon as you drive through this area – it is again something that cannot be described with words. It´s wonder of nature that has to be experienced (and is very, very cold in South American Winter!!!).
The town of Uyuni didn´t have anything special except for the spooky train cemetery to offer. So we wanted to move on quickly to Potosi, which the mine workers didn´t want us to do and decided to strike for better working conditions. Finally we had to go straight to La Paz where we spend a calm day in the internet and watched some Eurocup. The Highlight of our stay in La Paz was a mountain bike trip (64km in total) on the “Death Road”, which got its name from the fact that 200-300 people used to die on these mighty 34km every year and many still die. Apparently an unnamed American insurance company assessed this road as the “the most dangerous road of the world”.
The first 30km could be speeded down until the beginning of the real 34km “Death Road” (our agency was Downhill Madness and I can highly recommend them because of their attitude to safety, their excellent bikes and their well-trained guides). From there the street gets narrower, collections of crosses indicate that many people died along the way and the guides keep telling stories about the most recent deathly accidents along the way. From time to time one can see rusty left-overs from cars that fell over the corner of the road. It´s fast, it´s fun and it´s safe as long as you do exactly what the guides tell you to do and as long as you keep 99.9% control of your bike. One guy from another group lost control of his bike and fell off the road near the “Israelian Corner” just as we were passing the place. Being very, very, very, very, very lucky this guy could hold on to some bushes and managed to climb back to the road without any serious injuries. Generally speaking, this trip was another good and very fun adventure.
After another calm day in the town of La Paz we moved to Copacabana at lake Titicaca where Adrian had to recover from his sickness and Flo and me could enjoy our hostel´s hammocks, a walk around the calm and very little town centre, as well as a trip to Isla del Sol. Lake Titicaca doesn´t look like a lake at all. It rather looks like an ocean (8´500 km2) on 4000m above sea level :-). The next step was to move to Peru (Puno) to see Germany lose the Eurocup final.
