After spending several hours in Uyuni we boarded a new jeep with new passengers. This time it was us, a new driver, a French couple and a Bolivian Sergent catching a ride to the border.
We had about a three hour ride before arriving at the place we would stay the night. On the way we made two stops. One was a town funded and built by foreign countries (most notably the US) to house foreign and Bolivian workers that worked at a nearby uranium mine. The other was a tiny village where they seemed to be having a festival centered on tagging their llamas.
Some llamas we saw on the way to the first town.
The uranium funded Bolivian town.
More llamas.
This was our last stop of the day a village celebration centered on the llamas.
This guy needs to see an orthodontist.
The babies were so cute.
They corralled them all together into this adobe-walled pen, so that they could tag them with these colorful strings in their ears.
WARNING not for the faint of heart! The following three pictures show the process by which the llamas were tagged and the results of the tagging. If you're sensitive to what could be construed as animal cruelty then please skip the next three photos. I include these pictures in an attempt to show all the aspects of this trip with out sugar coating it. This is an endorsement or condemnation of this practice.
Several people hold down the llama, while someone punctures their ear with the equivalent of a large threading needle. It has the brightly colored yarn that is used to tag the llamas.
The llamas do scream out, which seems to have an effect on the other llamas, but it is not particularly shrill or shattering, or even that loud. It was definitely difficult for us to witness this, but this was a celebration to the locals.
Some of the llamas end up covered in blood as do all the human participants.
The cute young llamas aren't tagged.
Along with the cute llamas there was this cute baby.
"Hey watch out you're going to squish me."
"Huh?"
A mothers kiss.
This little girl didn't seem to have any particular supervision. She was really friendly, trying to get us and another group of people that seemed to be their to watch the events to help her blow up this balloon.
It seemed like an integral part of this celebration was the consumption of alcohol.
We asked this man, why they tagged these llamas, and he said "because we love them." He was continually chewing cocoa leaves which he retrieved from the pouch around his neck.
More drinking. The cocoa leaves apparently don't exit the mouth even while drinking.
The mood was festive overall, even from those who did not drink the alcohol, so this was clearly a celebration of some sort.
They also kept sheep which were not tagged.
Here you can see the jeep we had for the journey back, it was older and the interior was in poor shape. In fact at one point in time Sita and I made a game where we tried to out do each other by counting the flaws we could see from inside the car. Each tear or whole in the upholstery, crack in the mirror, or broken radio nob counted separately. Sita had a final count of 27, but I found 52.
Sita next to the llamas, she was afraid to touch them at first...
... so I showed Sita how it was done.
Leaning in to touch one of the cute little ones as they turned their backs to me apparently afraid of the new comers.
The little ones were so cute and soft.
I finally convinced Sita to touch them, but as was touching one it made a fast motion and Sita recoiled.
Tentatively going for a second try.
I said "Come on, there's nothing to be afraid of, get close to the animal."
Sita finally got close to the llamas and seconds later, one of them sneezed all over her. I didn't have any napkin or anything to offer her, so I stood their taking pictures of her reaction. At the end she was laughing and gave me permission to put these photos on the blog.
The whole village can be seen this is shot. It was very small.
Bye llamas.
"Hi from Bolivia."
Sita was talking to the French couple while having breakfast outside our jeep. The man spoke fluent English and a bit of Spanish but the women only spoke French.
They closed the toad on the Chilean side because of the snow, so we had plenty of time for photo ops while waiting at the border.
This is the same viewpoint as the photo above with much of the snow melted.
"Welcome back to Chile."
There were road signs on the Chilean side of the border.
Standing in both Bolivia and Chile.
This mound extended a couple hundred feet from the border station and represented the border between Chile and Bolivia.
Taking a picture of ourselves. As you can see I got slightly sunburned. At first I couldn't figure out how, with sometimes cloudy weather and having spent all day in the jeep. Following the stream of thought about how sun could've reached me inside the jeep, I realized it reached me as it reflected off the water as we drove across the salt flats the previous day.
We waited an inordinate amount of time for the Chilean border to re-open, so I filled my time by walking up part of the mountain in the background of this photo, and by walking up an down in a zig-zag across this mound of dirt. Sita thought I was being juvenile, but, with nothing better to do, I thought it would be cool to be able to claim that I'd been in and out of Chile and Bolivia a hundred times. As the first vehicles of the day approached the border from the Chilean side, signaling the reopening of roads, I finished the task I set for myself. "I've been in and out of Chile and Bolivia a hundred times."
