Salar De Uyuni ("Lake Titicaca")

Incan Ruins and impending lightning.

 This weekend marked the 200th anniversary of Cochabamba's independence (from what, I'm not too sure). To celebrate we were given Friday off from the normally rigorous schedule (ha), and so we decided to use our long weekend to try and go to the salt flats at Salar de Uyuni - the famous tourist attraction of miles and miles of mesmerising and hypnotic flat, white salt.

However, due to bus and train difficulties, our trip to Uyuni ended shortly after it began, when we arrived at the bus station. Undeterred by this, we made some last minute plans to go instead to La Paz, and from there on to Lake Titicaca, straddling the border of Bolivia and Peru, and claiming to be the highest navigable lake in the world (this depends on what you want to navigate I guess).

We took an overnight bus to La Paz, arriving early on Saturday morning. From here it was another 3 hours on the bus to Copacabana, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and from here another 2 hours on the boat to an island called the Isla del Sol, where we decided to spend two nights.

Incan Ruins on Isla del Sol

The Incans liked to claim that in the Isla del Sol the sun itself was born.
The Lonely Planet like to claim that it is still going strong.
And it does shoot up as if on a piece of elastic at 6 in the morning, before hanging overhead angrily and lazily for the next 11 hours before dropping suddenly back down on the other side of the island. But once it's down, it seems like other weather elements have free reign..

On Saturday once we arrived we 'checked in' to one of the hostels at the north end of the island - paying the equivalent of £2 for a bed (with 4 blankets) and little else. Then we walked for a couple of hours to explore some Incan ruins, enjoying the warm weather. Once at the tip of the island we watched the sun go down before noticing some ominous dark clouds heading our way, accompanied by lightning. We began to head back to the village, but were too late. The hail began to fall when we were halfway back, stinging the back of my neck and my bare arms, until eventually it looked more like Scotland at Christmas with a thick snowfall than Bolivia in September! We were glad of the multiple blankets that night (as well as wearing whatever dry clothes I had left).

Local Llama

Cocaine in a cup. Disclaimer - not actual cocaine. This is
Coca leaves, the natural plant grown and used in Bolivia
to make drinks or to be chewed to help with altitude,
sickness, sore head, basically anything that  hurts. Only
once it's mixed with kerosene, acids, petrol and other
chemicals..

Sunday we walked from the north end to the south end, enjoying amazing views over both sides of the island, getting through copious volumes of water and being overtaken by herds of cows, donkeys and llamas. It took pretty much the whole day until we got to the south village, where we stayed another night. Another lightning storm came this night as well, thankfully only once we were safely ensconced in our rooms (going to bed at 8.30 proved very wise on our part).

Taking a break looking over Lake Titicaca.

No cars are allowed on the island (there are no roads anyway) so the only sounds are of birds and animals. The little restaurants and shacks scattered over the island serve fizzy drinks and delicious fresh fish. A very peaceful weekend!

We arrived back in Cochabamba at 6am on Tuesday after another overnight bus back from La Paz. Just in time for the 8am ward round in the hospital..


Sadly Tuesday night was a disappointment. The local football team in Cochabamba is called Aurora, and this season they qualified for the sudamericana cup (kind of like the europa league in Europe). They played 'Quito' from Ecuador in the 3rd round, and had to overcome a first leg deficit. Neco (our Bolivian host here) is a season ticket holder and took us along to the game. Sadly, despite investing in some high quality Aurora merchandise to show my solidarity with the team, they lost 3-1 and bowed out of the sudamericana cup for this year.

Intese game

Riotous atmosphere