Flamingos in Bolivia?!?! (Laguna Honda)

One of the Salar de Uyuni stops was at Laguna Honda, a shallow lagoon at a base of a mountain. Jen was shocked to find out that there are actually a lot of flamingos in Bolivia (always assumed they were from hot places like Mexico/Africa), and that many of them even stay around during the winter when the lagoons are half frozen by morning. They were a lot of fun to watch and listen to - they squawk quite a bit as they're eating :). The best thing about this lagoon was that the flamingos are super friendly and not at all shy!


Oddly, we saw a sign indicating that flamingos are not allowed to fly at this lagoon... That being said, we managed to catch several incidents of illegal flamingo-flying on film.. guess they don't enforce the rule very strictly in the winter.. or it's like the random stranger in La Paz told us at the Gran Poder "...you're in Bolivia now, you can do whatever you want - no one can tell you what you can or can't do here!"


Also, you are apparently not allowed to pee at the lagoon (standing up or squatting).

Salar de Uyuni Tour

If you go to Bolivia, you need to visit the Salar de Uyuni - a 10,582 square km salt-flat desert made entirely of salt. Most tours to the Salar start from the North in a city called Uyuni, but after doing some research we decided to take the road-less-travelled and start from the Southern city of Tupiza. Doing the trip in reverse allowed us to keep the best day for last. Our 4x4 trip crossed 1000km over 4 days and 3 nights, through some of the most beautiful and memorable landscapes of Bolivia.

Since we were here in winter, the temperatures were pretty cold. At night, we were sleeping in hostels with no heat or insulation and the temperature was between -8 an -14 Celsius!! :(

Ok, actually that wasn't Jen's breath…..it's the offshoot from one of the geysers that we saw at 5000m altitude... But the ice on the lagoons were definitely real!! :)

Regardless of the cold, we were able to warm ourselves back up by enjoying some time in the natural hot springs.

Since we did the trip in reverse, we left the best part for last: the Salar De Uyuni! This desert is the biggest of its kind - it covers a 10,582 square kilometre area and is about 20 meters deep.

While passing through the salt desert, we also stopped by the Isla de Pescado where you can admire enormous cacti that grow at a rate of about 1 millimetre per year…. and let me tell, you their size would even put some God(s) to shame! ;)

Another advantage of doing the tour in reverse was that we had the opportunity to see the sunrise over the Salar de Uyuni.

After the salt desert we visited a small village near the Salar where they explained the salt extraction process. Since the salt desert is protected by the government, salt extraction can only be done by locals and it must all be done by hand…ichhhh! They also told us that 50 kilos of salt is sold for a meagre 14 Bolivianos (~$2 CAD)!!

Our tour then ended in Uyuni, but a couple more posts on the Salar are still to come your way soon…!!! :)

Tupiza

After a cold 8 hour night-bus ride from Tarija, we ended up in a town called Tupiza (a small city south of the Salar de Uyuni) where we purchased our 4-day/3-night Salar tour (with Tupiza Tours).

We also spent a day in Tupiza and opted to do a 5 hour hike just outside the town which brought us to some very impressive rock formations (Puerta Del Diablo, Valle De Los Machos, El Cañon Del Inca), and made us feel like we were walking through an old Western movie.  The most challenging part of the hike was not the walking… it was finding the trail and finding our way back to the town. Since clearly marked street names are still a fairly unknown luxury to the smaller towns of Bolivia, it took us about 45 minutes to find the right street in Tupiza where we could actually exit the town and find the start the "trail".  And on the way back, we got a bit lost amongst all of the tire and horse tracks and ended up trespassing on a military base… oops… the Bolivian army did not seem to enjoy our company so much, but were nice enough to gently escort us off the base and point us back to town :).

Tarija and the Bolivian Wine Country

We decided to start our Bolivian tour from the South and make our way up, so we took a flight from La Paz to Tarija.  Tarija is mainly know for its wine (and doesn't have much in the way of touristy stuff beyond that) so after a quick wander around the city, we decided to take a wine tour.

The wine tour started with a visit to the Kohlberg industrial wine facility where we saw the machinery involved in making and bottling wine.  We then drove out to the country for our first wine tasting at the Kohlberg estate, where the company was started and the grapes are grown.  Strangely, the wine tastings here operate a little differently than what we are used to at other wineries in North America / Europe - our guide actually brought his own bottle of Kohlberg wine from Tarija to the Kohlberg vineyard where he opened it for us to taste… 

The Bolivian wines are generally more fruity and sweet tasting (apparently because most Bolivians prefer sweet wine and none of the Bolivian wines are exported except Kohlberg, and even they export very little).  We then went to Las Duelas (a small shop that offers local wine-related products), where we tasted our second wine - a sweet white Muscat.  

On our way from the Kohlberg vineyard to Las Duelas, we stopped by Cañon de la Angostura. According to our guide, Tarija and the surrounding area used to be covered by water.  At some point an earthquake caused this canyon to open up so the water ran out leaving us with what is now the fertile region of Tarija and the Bolivian Wine Country.

Lastly, we visited one of the first wineries in the region, La Casa Vieja - an artesianal winery where they still make wine the old-fashioned way (ie. by stepping on the grapes).  Here we tasted 2 dry wines, 3 sweet wines, and a local grape-based hard liquor called Singani (the Bolivian equivalent to Pisco).  The wine-tasting tradition at this vineyard is to only use 1 glass per wine, and share it amongst all of the tasters.

We enjoyed the sweet wines at La Casa Vieja so much that we asked to buy a couple of bottles. Being an artesianal handmade wine, we expected that it might cost a bit more.. to our surprise we picked up 2 bottles for only 50 Bolivianos (~7usd)!  Yum!!

In the afternoon, our tour took us for a quick visit of some other sites in the Tarija region.  We visited a man-made dam in San Jacinto, the waterfall of Coimata, and a small village called San Lorenzo.  We where happy that we booked a tour to see these sites as they were fairly far, and.. not that interesting.  Overall, we still enjoyed the afternoon part of the tour - the best part was tasting the local sweet empanadas and peach juice in the small San Lorenzo mercado (market).

Animal Sightings in the Madidi National Park

Any trip to the Amazon would not be complete without seeing animals and insects!  Although this was not the primary reason of out trip, we still managed to see a lot of wildlife.  However the 2 main things that we will remember are:
  • You can easily recognize the wild pig by their smell (which smells a bit like liver pate).  We learned to recognize their stench from quite a distance (WELL before you even hear/see them)!
  • A trick for getting a tarantula out of its lair:  just put some saliva on a stick and wiggle it in the tarantula hole.. 
Here are some the animals we saw:

And a few insects - look how our guide draws the tarantula out of its lair:

They also had an observation platform where we could sit and watch animals come to a water hole.  The strange thing here was that the animals came here to eat the clay mud.

We didn't manage to spot any pumas or jaguars, but we did see some fresh jaguar paw tracks ;)

Weaving Roof Panels

One afternoon, instead of exploring the jungle we decided to help our guide with hand-weaving roof panels…. we're not sure we were that much help but we managed to finish one full panel, which he will use to build a structure near the kitchen to house a clay oven.  The process is time consuming, but not that complicated.  You just need to know which leaves to use, and have a lot of patience.  The nice thing is that these roof panels will last for the next 20 to 30 years!

To help us, our guide made us a coca leaf ball to chew…. this is commonly used by locals because it keeps you awake and cuts your appetite.

Fishing and Cooking in the Jungle

On our trip back from the community, we were offered the opportunity to fish for Pacu (Giant Piranha) using local fishing techniques.  We first had to fish sardines from a little stream so that we could use them as bait to catch the bigger fish.  We set out by rubber boat to find a spot where we could fish for the Giant Pirahna.

It seems that neither of us have a fisherman's instinct - even with our guide's help, we both still came up empty-handed.  Fortunately for us, the American couple that we were with managed to catch 2 Pacu and a Trout.

The following day, we opted to help our cook prepare the fish for lunch.  But first, we needed to find some Bamboo in the rainforest and bring it back to camp.

With our cook's help, we prepared the Pacu in 2 different ways:  some in Bamboo, and some wrapped in giant leaves.  The recipe was quite simple - marinate the pieces of fish in lemon and salt, stuff the fish into the bamboo / wrap in the leaves, and then cook the fish over the open fire for a couple of hours.  Despite the marinade being the same, the taste/texture actually varied quite a bit between the 2 different preparations.  The results of both were really good - juicy, light, and very tasty!

Community of San Jose

As part of our Madidi National Park tour, we had the option to go visit the village that the founder of Berraco del Madidi (Pedro) came from.  The community of San Jose de Uchupiamonas is located an additional 3 hours up-river (by boat) plus a 30 minute hike from the shore.  It was founded about 400 years ago when some Franciscans came to South America to covert the indigenous people to Catholicism.

The community village was really nice.  Their biggest problem (and probably their biggest advantage) is that they are so far from any other cities/villages that it's hard for them to sell anything they grow.  The community is fairly self-sustaining and they educate and work hard to keep their village clean and very well maintained.  Their main source of revenue is from their 2 amazon tour projects that are located on the land they own: Chalalan and the new Berraco del Madidi.

There is also no prison here, but beware - if you conduct yourself badly you may spend the night in this contraption

They even have a tractor but unfortunately, they have not been using it for a while now because they do not have the money/resources to change the tire that went flat.

Exploring the Jungle

During the 5 days, we went on several hiking trips in the jungle where we learned about the various trees, plants, and animals, and what we can do with them:

  • Garlic Tree: There is a tree (not a plant) who's bark taste exactly like garlic (strong garlic).  Similar to the garlic bulbs that we are used to, the garlic tree bark is used to flavour food or can be made into tea for medicinal purposes.
  • Water Vine:  There is a special vine that when cut, pours out clean drinkable water.  This water also has medicinal properties.
  • Palm Heart:  We learned how to identify and extract a palm heart from the palm tree….FYI, the palm heart tastes AMAZING when fresh :)
  • Balsa Tree:  Used to make local rafts.
  • The bark of a certain tree can be used to make very strong ropes.
  • Purple dye bush:  When the LIGHT-GREEN leaves of this bush are ground up, they produce a permanent DARK-PURPLE dye (didn't believe it till we saw it!).
  • Perfume Tree: There is a tree that has a very fragrant sap that indigenous women use as a perfume.  
  • Tooth Brush:  There is a plant who's stem tastes like cloves, which they use these to clean their teeth.
  • Ant: There are ants that can be used as stitches for large cuts.  You can pick up the ant and let it bite the wound closed with its large mandible, then you remove the remaining body of the ant and leave the head clamped on the wound until it's healed.
  • Bullet Ants: Highly venomous, but some indigenous people used it to cure arthritis.  Apparently they allow the bullet ant to bite them in the area that is aching (ie. the knee).  They then get very sick and suffer from fever for 4-5 days, but after that the arthritis is completely gone!

 

Madidi National Park

We decided to visit the Amazon from the Bolivian side with a new company called Berraco del Madidi (www.berracodelmadidi.com).  They're a smaller agency (max capacity of 8 tourists) that is more remote and geared toward sustainable eco tourism.

The adventure started with a 45min flight in a 19-passenger plane that flew right next to Huayna Potasi of the Cordillera mountain range, and brought us to the town of Rurrenabaque.  From there, we took a 6 hour boat ride up-river to the Berraco del Madidi camp, where we would spend the next 5 days.

The camp was really pretty with rock paths, brand new wood panel floors, and everything was super clean - surprising considering we were 6 hours into the middle of the Amazon jungle! 

Over the next five days we did a bunch of activities and had a lot of fun…..we decided to split our experiences into multiple posts, so stay tuned...! :)