October 18, 2018 – October 19, 2018

We camped for a night outside of Tupiza near the Canon del Inca.  We didn’t know much about the area before we arrived, other than it was near to here that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed.  Until we read about this, I had always assumed they were largely fictionalized characters.  But no, they were real, and they are generally believed to have died in a gunfight with the Bolivian army in San Vicente in 1908, close to Tupiza, while planning to rob the payroll for a rich mine in the area.

We drove through Potosi and past the famous Cerro Rico mine, where millions of men have lost their lives aver the last 5 centuries, extracting primarily silver, most of which went to Spain.  Potosi to this day is still a mining town.

We drove through the dusty town of Tupiza, and then for a few kilometres on a road along which the town’s garbage had long been dumped.  We were quickly losing our enthusiasm for our planned camping spot.  We then drove past a guide and a couple of tourists on horseback, and the guide pointed us down a sandy track.  We turned a corner, and suddenly there was no garbage, and the scenery was incredible.  Things were looking up!  It was beautiful, but we were a bit nervous about camping in the riverbed of a canyon, so Derek left the truck parked facing out, in 4 wheel drive with an idea for a trail up which to crash in the event of a seasonally unlikely storm.

You can see the track that we followed to get to our camping spot.

Piper, who now wants to be known as “Bitch Cassidy”, exploring the canyon.

Derek, a.k.a. The Sunshine Kid (vs. Sundance Kid, that nickname has already been taken), boiling water for morning coffees.

A few groups of tourists on horseback went by, then we had the place to ourselves for the night.

We packed up the next morning.  Driving out of the canyon we were met by two men with a clipboard.  They informed us that camping was not allowed in the canyon….whoops.  There were absolutely no signs indicating such but we apologized and assured the men that we had practiced “no trace” camping.  Derek sweet talked them about how beautiful Bolivia was and soon we were on our way.  We had a long, high altitude drive ahead of us.  We would loop back to the town of Uyuni to resupply, and then head to a remote corner of Bolivia that we had been dreaming of since we started planning this trip.

The country side reminded us of Arizona and Utah.

The road to Uyuni took us up well over 13,500 feet above sea level.