Habemus vuelum! The bus fills up and we start heading to the airport... then turn around and head back to the office!!! We're already contemplating the same shit show as yesterday but it's only two idiot who could not show up in time for a 24h delayed flight... We don't leave on time but we make it to La Paz so it's good enough. Not time to linger in La Paz, we catch a bus to Copacabana. For the first time in Bolivia we use a local bus (not a tourist one). It's rougher clearly but still much better than any of the bus we had in Africa. The journey is not event-less with one exploded tire and an interesting ferry crossing.
Welcome to the jungle
Our guide was right about the weather. In La Paz, one can have 4 seasons in one day. Deluge, sunny, drizzle,... Surely they'll have snow later in the day. We don't want to know and have a flight to catch to Rurrenabaque anyway ;) We meet Marie at the airport, her flight is late. We met her at our hotel and did some of the activities in La Paz together. The boarding time comes and go, the departure time comes and go and all of that without it any news from the airline. In the meantime Marie had left but she's back in the airport. Her flight turned back after 10 minutes, pressure indicator problem.
La Paz and Tiwanaku
It's 6:30am when we arrive at Lo alto. La Paz is in the valley below and it's quite the view; A sea of red buildings climbing out of the valley all the way to Lo alto. Half an hour later we arrive in La Paz. We drop our luggage at the hotel and go find a place open to have breakfast. They are clearly not early birds here and the only place open for breakfast is in a nearby hotel. Once that basic need satisfied, we take care of the second order of business: tour shopping! We need to buy the planes tickets for our expedition to the jungle, book some ice climbing in one of the nearby glacier and visit Tiwanaku.
Sucre
Our guide is weird. When we get to the 4*4, he doesn't seem to understand our objections about it. Why would we complaining about having to ride in the back of a pickup truck on steel benches while him and his colleagues get a real seat inside the cabin; it's not like we're paying for this right? Not to mention it's not exactly what was described to us yesterday... Eventually, he does us a "favor" and we're upgraded to cabin seats.
Potosi
Bye bye Uyuni, Hello Potosi! It's a short bus ride away and even higher in the altiplano. The bus ride is extremely scenic. We were over 2000 most of the time in Ethiopia but 3500-4000m is a different story. We even go over 4200m during the bus ride. The road is good and we make it in 3h30, once again on schedule ;) Potosi is around 4050m; carrying our luggage to the 3rd floor leaves us panting for an embarrassingly long time. The city has many things to see. It's build at the bottom of two hills filled with silver.
Salar de Uyuni
It's a ritual, we start our stay in a new place by the mandatory tour shopping. They have way too many agencies in Uyuni and we read lots of horror stories about these tours. It seems to be the equivalent of the Russian roulette. We're tempted to do the tour in reverse but the only offer we get for that comes from someone who approached us in the street. When we decide to check out that person's office, it happens to be in a insalubrious building that's not even supposed to host offices... Not a good omen so we decided to go for a safer plan.