The Amazing Horrible Tour


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Published: November 11th 2006
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I am in Bolivia, entering my last month of travels. I crossed the Chile-Bolivia border through a tour of Salar de Uyuni. I had read about different tours, finally decided that they're all actually the same, and hopped on a tour with Estrella del Sur--- who set me up with a group who had paid Cordierra tours. Basically, we were driven to the frontera by the company where they contracted a driver to do the next three days of our tour.

I had spent the previous day sick, so I was a bit nervous taking off in a vehicle for a few days. Luckily, I felt better throughout the first day. My soon-to-be German friend wasn't so lucky. It was her first day getting sick and she spent the majority of the tour barfing.

There are no roads that guided us through the Salar de Uyuni or surrounding areas, just paths that have been driven on more than others. We saw amazing lakes, mountains, and rock formations. The pure silence and vastness of the area was perhaps the most impressionable part. There were flamingos perched in the shallow areas of La Laguna Rojo, occasionally eating the red algae that makes the lake so brilliantly red. We stopped by a turquoise lake, strange rock formations that stood in the middle of the desert, and drove through the enormous Salar de Uyuni. Salar de Uyuni itself is a huge lake of salt that looked like a mix between snow and ice. I felt as though we could have fallen through at any moment. It would have been the last of many hilarious, unbelievable events that happened on our tour.

Our car appeared to be entertaining its last days. It died many times and the right front tire had a tendency to go flat. Our driver spoke very little, described the sites with two or three sentences, and decided to drink a bottle of wine himself our last night of the tour. He stumbled into the dining room area after many attempts by most members of our group to wake him. Then he proceeded to head to the bathroom to take care of being sick before he drove us again today. I kept watch in the rear view mirror to make sure he stayed awake. We managed to keep him on course as his head went toward the wheel and our car drifted off the path. The evening before we had picked up a hitch-hiker, an interesting addition to our already cramped vehicle. At the first stop today, he tried to pick up more amigos who appeared to be moving their entire house to the next town over. We stopped at one hitch-hiker, purely because there was no more space, unless we piled people on top of one another. Among the incidences that are fresh on my mind today, the tour involved a mini-cyclone (I'm no scientist, but that was my diagnosis), sharing a room with six people, a cactus island in the middle of the Salar de Uyuni, and a great group of people with a collective amazing sense of humor.



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12th November 2006

erin o! this sounds ridiculous and wonderful! you know you're travelling right when the stories amassed in a 10 hour period are too many to recall. hahaa! the pictures of cusco stole my breath. enjoy your last month! i love you...sebastopol is entering into its beautiful winter wear. can't wait to see you.

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