According to Lonely Planet, Tupiza is a little slice of the Wild West in Bolivia, just the place to sling up your saddle. So before we headed off on our tour of the Salar de Uyuni (the world's biggest salt flat), Tess and I decided to go horse-riding in the sandy-scapes around the town.
We were up early the next morning to meet our 16 year-old tour guides and our horses. We would be riding through the desert-land Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid spent the last of their days.
Today we were cowboys – fully fledged, straw-hat-toting gauchos – so we threw our legs over our horses and set off down the unpaved, dusty road at a slow plod.
The first few minutes were a bit touch and go; the horses weren’t paying a whole lot of attention to instruction and I ended up galloping off at an alarming rate away from the group. It emerged that my horse, Maximum, was not so fond of our guide's horse, who was the menace of the Tupiza horse scene.
Eventually though, our attention switched to admiring the immense beauty of the surrounding countryside: deep, sandy gorges, menacing cacti and our striking half way point - a towering, sandstone altar of Wild West scenery.
Happy and just a little saddle-sore, we survived our cowboy experience and sidled back through the dusty town to our hostel, on horseback.
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| The cowgirls |
Today we were cowboys – fully fledged, straw-hat-toting gauchos – so we threw our legs over our horses and set off down the unpaved, dusty road at a slow plod.
Eventually though, our attention switched to admiring the immense beauty of the surrounding countryside: deep, sandy gorges, menacing cacti and our striking half way point - a towering, sandstone altar of Wild West scenery.Happy and just a little saddle-sore, we survived our cowboy experience and sidled back through the dusty town to our hostel, on horseback.
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