Sucre to San Pedro de Atacama

Week 5 & 6: More roadblocks!

20.10.2011 - 29.10.2011

So my parting shot of La Paz was the wanking man outside my hotel!
The nightbus south to Sucre was relatively uncomfortable, but considering I didn't sleep much the fourteen or so hour journey seemed to pass pretty quickly. At least being awake also meant that I could see some of the rather lovely mountain scenery en route and the occasional village. Checked into a pretty luxury hotel (4 stars no less!) on arrival, which I was pretty pleased about as you can imagine Sucre was a really lovely city to hang out in and far more civilised than its rival La Paz!
Just as well it was as we ended up in Sucre for longer than anticipated. The miners farther down south in Potosi had started a protest about taxes, which involved setting off dynamite willy nilly and blocking the roads, so in order to carry on with our travels the 15 of us in our group had to charter a 15 seater twin prop to fly down to Uyuni....not really what my emergency fund was put aside for! Plus was really disappointed we had to miss out Potosi and our mine visit.
Anyway not to be discouraged by striking miners, we put our time in Sucre to good use and went activity mad!
Day 1: mountain biking tour of the countryside, a mini trek, and river swim in a secret canyon. Highlight was traveling on a bus back along a mountain path that was about 10cm wider than the bus!
Day 2: Rode like a cowgirl on a very frisky horse.
Day 3: Helped out for a few hours at a local orphanage.
Day 4: Decide to conquer my fear of heights by going rock climbing.... not sure what I was thinking! I was scared enough sitting on the ledge below the rock we were meant to climb, but rather chuffed with myself for getting to the top. Have some rather impressive pictures which give the illusion I was
actually rather good!!
Sucre was followed by a 3 day adventure across the Bolivian salt flats in 4x4s. Bloody chilly at night but the scenery was amazing; loads of lagoons and flamingos, mountains, geysers, and thermal mud pools, and of course llamas... the tandoori type llama we had for lunch one day was also rather delicious. We stayed in a salt hotel one night and a really basic lodge on the second.... electricity only runs from 7 - 10pm, so it was drinking by head torch only after that!
Our last morning in Bolivia was spent relaxing in a natural thermal pool on the edge of a lake and by 10:30am we were crossing the boarder into Chile and our first stop there, San Pedro de Atacama.