Early morning, still above 4000 m of altitude. This is when we think today will get an easy day. Only downhill, down to 3500 m, to the town of Putre
The very sandy ground brought us a good nights sleep. We later met the 3 French again who had tried to sleep up here, too, but didn’t succeed and had to go down to Putre and get a hotel there. We on the other hand were used to this high altitudes as we’ve been cycling above 3800 m since Lago Titicaca.
I was in a nice photo shooting mood, so I went around the campsite and took these pictures. Up here on the altiplano there’s basically no media, no trouble, just a few people and a few more animals living mostly in peace, not like in the latest James Bond movie with all the violence.
Straight down towards Putre. That’s what this sign suggests, when the road in front of us is diving down into the valley. But fast we couldn’t go because of a steady strong headwind blowing towards us from the coast. What we had hoped that it would get an easy ride took us hours!
The internet or ciber coffee in putre (note, coffee, not cafe!). The signs are actually made from wood, not just cheap painting. But they should have rather put some more time and money into the hardware as I got so upset with the slow computers that I didn’t go there again the second day and especially not the third day, when we had found out that the public library has much faster computers and internet and even for free!
We were forced to spend some time there because the bank was closed over the weekend. We had arrived on a Saturday. All the hostels and hotels were booked out. Strange, no tourist season.
Elections, that’s what brought the people here from very remote areas. So on Sunday the roads were crowded with indigenous people and also more Western looking locals.
“HAY PAN” indicated that they had bread. Sometimes self made but also very often only bought from a bigger bakery.
In our hostel, which we had found after a 3/4 hour search we could negociate a good price and had some friendly company from many French, Swiss and even Ozzies and Kiwis. But nobody stayed for the same period as we did. And everyone was surprised that we had just been there to relax, not to explore the area with salt lakes, volcanoes and national parks.
We were surprised by the fast speed with which the other travelers went out to explore and came back from exploration. Too fast for us. We want to experience the size of a big salt lake by riding slowly past it. How big appears a 40 km wide area covered with NaCl for you if you’re passing at 80 km/h. Can you really appreciate it?
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