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Published: December 26th 2012
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So the last day, not only for our great big trip but also for the world according to the Maya calendar and this is how it unfolded for us:
We all woke up at around 7 to at least try and leave earlyish and having done most of the packing the night before all we really had to do was take the things down to the car for the final load up and then finish of minimal cleaning up. But I think the feeling of tiredness and sadness made everything a lot slower than usual so we still only ended up leaving around 9:30am.
The first part of the journey home was a climb from sea level to about 15000 feet in only a couple of hours so from previous experiences we were expecting plenty of altitude sickness, and inevitably it hit. I personally don’t really have much problem with altitude so whilst the rest of the family were drugged up on Sorochi pills all I felt was a mild headache but poor Ben and Nady suffer the most. As we arrived at the border with Bolivia Ben was barely alive and we had already stopped several times for
Nady to be sick, but fortunately none came out YET. Thankfully the border wasn’t any difficulty as we were all fighting the thin air as much as possible I’m glad there were no problems. However we were a bit naughty because in the final part of the crossing some man asked mum for a copy of some sheet we had given in to the Chileans and we didn’t have another so mum said she would go and talk to ministration but meanwhile they had already let the car and the rest of us through so mum just jumped in the car and we drove of thankful for the lack of Bolivian border intelligence (now I hope no Bolivian authority reads this).
The rest of the way home had the rare feeling of being on familiar roads that we had all been on plenty of times in the past. After an hour or so of driving down we all felt better from the altitude so we had a quick lunch of fruit cake and tea, by the way still no signs of tsunamis or meteorites hitting us. So for the next 7 hours to get home we drove along remembering
the usual crazy Bolivian driving, windy roads and broken down lorries of the country where we live. Once we cross the altiplano the road takes us up some more so all of a sudden Nady started feeling bad again and it turns out fruitcake doesn’t go down well with altitude so unfortunately we had to stop a couple of times for her to be sick, one of the times a stray dog (lots around up there) came along and happily licked it up. When we got going properly again we came up to a crash scene which was pretty nasty we believe one of the big coaches had crashed into a small taxi and then hit the mountain side but the worst was the taxi which had blood dripping down the side, not very nice.
We arrived home just before 7pm Bolivian time, all feeling tired and hungry but dad insisted on a photo of us at the finish line. We dumped the stuff in the hallway then ordered a chinese. Then one by one went to bed and I think I speak for all of us when I say we slowly went to sleep taking in the sensation
of accomplishment of what we had done. Also a bit disappointed in the Mayas.
Joe xx
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