Day 192 - Thursday 30th March 2006

Close by the town of Tupiza there were a few opportunities to spendan afternoon hiking,and in keeping with my idea of getting out of the town more often, that is exactly what I decided to do. The six of us all decided to hike to a place known as El Cañon, and with a name like The Canyon we supposed it must be impressive. Or maybe it was just that the locals lacked imagination.

Before we made our way to the hiking, I needed to make a pretty essential purchase, hiking boots. The Hi-Tec squash trainers just wouldn’t cut the mustard out on the trail! After finding a decent enough pair for the bargain price of B$80 (B14=£1) I was ready to hit the path running. Or walking.

Despite not knowing much about the trail or El Cañon it didn’t really make a difference as we set out. Although it had a small town centre, the outskirts of the town stretched for a good few miles and it took us the best part of an hour to actually reach the barren countryside which consisted of cacti, sand, rock and dried up riverbeds.

We followed one of those dried up riverbeds which we assumed was the trail due to the numerous horse hoofprints. Even at almost 3,000m ASL the early afternoon sun was beating down and as we walked along the arid riverbed our own water supply was diminishing rapidly as we consumed more and more of it. Climbing up and over one hill led us to El Cañon, a huge rocky edifice with another dried up river squeezing between.

Satisfied with getting out of town for the afternoon, and facing a growing thirst and a lack of water we headed back to the town, cheating a little by hopping on a bus when we reached the outskirts of the town. My hiking boots had stood up to the tests of the trail, but unfortunately my feet hadn’t stood up to the test of the hiking boot and a few blisters had emerged.

Not wanting to be groggy for the first day of the Salt Plains tour we all had an early night after a street food dinner of chicken and rice for about 50 pence.