Uyuni and Sucre- Salt, Spanish Lessons and Dinosaurs

Now for our second night bus in a row, to uyuni! This one was more comfortable than the previous night but still not a decent sleep, especially after being woken up at 4.30am when the bus arrived. We attempted to see if we could check in to our hostel, but the gates were closed. Luckily, a few cafes had spotted a good business opportunity and were open from 4am, housing groups of bleary eyed travellers for the 6 hours until the tours left the town. After more coffee than is sensible but necessary after a night bus, we went to find the tour agency we had booked with.
Most people choose a 3 day tour of the salt flats, which also includes desert and lakes of various colors, but we had already seen a lot of desert in the north of Chile and we didn't much fancy 3 days in a Jeep, so we went for a shorter one day trip instead. The company we went with was very popular with Japanese people, some of who were doing a whirlwind trip of a week in Peru and Bolivia before heading back to Japan. We were bundled into a Jeep and before long we arrived at our first stop, the train graveyard. This was a slightly surreal area with rusting trains and crowds clambering on and in them, some very sharp jagged parts dripping with tetanus. Of course we had to play too and managed to avoid being impaled on anything.

I like rusty trains

A field of quinoa

Then, onto the salt flats. We had been taken to a building at the beginning of the trip to try on wellies, and now we found out the reason. For half of the year, the salt flats are covered in water, which gives it a very other worldly look as the high salt content is very reflective, but would equal soggy feet without the right footwear. Most of the deepest parts were navigated by the Jeep, but various points we got out for pictures and a paddle. Lunch was served in a salt hotel, before going to a few more locations for pictures. The guide had come prepared with props- a dinosaur and Pringles containers, so we could have a go with perspective shots. We then drove to an area to take pictures with the reflections, and saw the most incredible sunset (you know it's impressive when even Jonno said it was a good place for sunset). Here are some of our pictures to enjoy...

Frolic

Frolic

Frolic

... not entirely sure...

Salty hotel

Eek!

I couldn't resist

Ka-pow

Having fun with the reflections

Birds

Saaaalt

The sun has moved, time to frolic again

And the genius videos directed by our guide, who took great delight in telling us we were 'bura bura' (apparently a Japanese term for wandering without purpose/ uncoordinated)

After a well needed sleep in an actual bed after 2 consecutive night buses, we were up early to get the bus to Sucre, which involved a 4 hour bus then another 2 and a half hour bus. We got to sucre at about 4pm, and went to find the Airbnb apartment we had booked. This didn't turn out to be as easy as we expected, as the address on the booking wasn't a real address, and when we deduced which building it was we had no idea which number apartment it was. Since we had no sim card we could not get in contact with the owners, and when we started asking people if we could borrow their phone to make a call they just looked at us blankly. Eventually we found someone who agreed to make the call, and about an hour after we started looking we were met by a woman with her 3 children who owned the apartment. It turned out it was a brand new building, they had it for a month and we were their second guests. It also turned out they were the most thoughtful and sweet people, we had about 4 messages a day from the husband checking everything was okay, and even though we rinsed their WiFi credit as they had not got an internet package, he still insisted he topped it up and to use as much internet as we liked. This apartment was also amazing as it had floor to ceiling windows in the bedroom with an incredible view of the city, and even better it had a washing machine and tumble dryer- we had not had chance to wash our clothes that had been in the Amazon river and trust me, the smell wasn't pretty. The washing machine was not going to let us off lightly though, and protested in the form of going completely mental every time it started spinning, so much that both of us had to mount it and pin it down to stop it from smashing into the shower or flinging itself away from the wall and coming unplugged.

The beast needed taming at least 3 times per cycle

Doll and offspring with unnervingly long eyelashes

Lovely pottery

The dude who takes the miniature offerings

A museum with the miniature items from the festival, here is the grocery section

Mini bread lady

Mini laptops and ipad

Mini money

We had heard there was a traditional dance show with dinner that was highly recommended in Sucre, which we went to the following evening. We arrived at 7.30pm, the time it started, and were slightly concerned that there was only one other couple there, and there would be more dancers than audience. We later discovered there was a non dinner option and about 2 minutes before the show started they let in the masses so the pressure wasn't on us so much.
We were treated to an array of different traditional dances with some very interesting costumes, including a massive fuzzy abominable snowman looking thing who bounced around the room, and creepy hunchback men who lurked through the audience. At the end we were both dragged up to dance, probably to highlight how uncoordinated foreigners can be.

The devil dance with the strange fluffy thing

Jonno demonstrating the traditional British 'Dad dance'

Another thing that Sucre has to offer is the largest collection of dinosaur footprints in the world, which were discovered when a cement company started digging into a mountain and unearthed them, although they didn't move too far away so the venue was also shared with trucks and diggers. We were first given a brief explanation of what kinds of dinosaurs lived here, with some excellent hand puppetry of the walking styles of each dinosaur, and were then given hard hats and walked to see the footprints at a closer range. The bizarre thing was that the footprints were on an almost vertical surface, which the guide explained was due to the shifting of the land to create mountains. Either that or the dinosaurs were excellent abseilers- nobody was there to witness it so can't prove either way.

This was flat land at some point

Big feet.... big dinosaur

Not the easiest shaped foot for flip flops

Rawr

Almost as big as Ruby

Toothysaurus

Trumposaurus

While we were in Sucre we also discovered there was a harvest festival happening in a town about an hour away in Tarabuco so we decided to see what it had to offer. It took about an hour and a half by trufi, and when we arrived we followed the crowd of people walking to the main plaza of the town. There were food and souvenir stalls set up, and a few groups of dancers in traditional costumes, but it all seemed fairly low key and we sat on a bench watching what went on. It was only when we went looking for a place for lunch we realized the crowds continued through the streets and ended up in a huge dusty area, with big crowds of dancers dancing in circles, playing instruments and kicking up as much dust as they could. It wasn't long until the crowds and the noise were overwhelming, and we retreated back to the quieter atmosphere of the plaza.

Funny little hairless dogs

Other small fancy animals

A few more people than in the square

We had initially planned to get through Bolivia in 2-3 weeks, leaving us a month in Brazil before our flight to Cuba, but we were enjoying Bolivia and Brazil would definitely be harder on our bank accounts, so we decided to cut down our time in Brazil to 2 weeks to allow us more time in Boliva. We had spoken a few times about wanting to improve our Spanish, and Sucre was one of the recommended places to take lessons. So we decided to go back to school and take a week of lessons.

Sucre- nice buildings...

...and pups!

Bolivia has a few supermarkets in the main cities, but the most common way people get their food shopping is still in marketplaces. The central market had the most selection, so we ended up going there most days for fresh fruit and vegetables, and would nearly always come out with more than we had planned as the fruit was so good and so cheap. On one visit we went to one stall to ask for 4 peaches, to which she put 15 in a bag, and even when we insisted we only wanted 4, she took half of them out and then put another 3 back in. Then when it came to paying, we didn't have the right change and instead of giving us change she insisted on giving us carrots to make up for it. Not really what we wanted, but we didn't feel we could argue with this fierce looking woman.
We were reluctant to leave our lovely apartment, but it was already booked for the following week to someone else. We told the guy who owned the apartment we were thinking of staying another week, and 15 minutes later we got a message back asking us if we wanted to stay with his mother in law instead. This was not at all what we were expecting, but we agreed to go and see the apartment and meet the mother.
The apartment turned out to be in a much better location, only a 10 minute walk from the school we were looking into, and was in another new build. His mother in law, Eddmy, had only been living there 2 months after her recent separation from her husband, and was impossible not to like. The only difficulty we had was that she liked to talk, a lot, and very fast. If nothing else this would be good practice for our Spanish understanding. So we took them up on the offer, and moved in the next day. And after visiting the Spanish school and taking a test to assess our levels, we were to start school in group classes on Monday morning.
For the next week we had lessons for 4 hours a day, starting at 8.30am, I was in a beginner class of initially 6 people, and Jonno was in a higher class with only one other student. Unfortunately during our stay Jonno ended up having 2 migraines, which meant most of the afternoons he spent resting; the lessons were using up most of his energy. Eddmy worked long hours but came back at lunchtimes and we would chat to her, she got a lot better at speaking slower and checking our understanding and she would also correct our grammar and pronunciation. She would also often leave us notes telling us to help ourselves to extra fruit or other foods. It turned out to be such a great experience, we were sad to leave and again were amazed by the friendliness and generosity of people we have met. When we left she came back from work to say goodbye with her son in law, and they had brought us chocolates and told us we had to message to tell them when we had got to our next destination safely.
Seeing as we had some more time in Boliva, we decided to go to another place recommended to us, which involved another night bus, our favourite.