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Published: November 6th 2009
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After leaving Sarah in Santiago Airport it was back to slumming it on my own around South America. Just my rucksack and a stomach full of red wine and steak. For two weeks, we had dined on some of the best steak and drank some fantastic red wine. No more steak for me, no more red wine, I was going to be heading back to Bolivia where the staple diet wouldn’t consist of the any of the above. I had two items on my list left to do in Bolivia which were Salar de Uyuni and the silver mine tour in Potosi.
From Santiago I caught a 24 hour bus to the town of San Pedro de Atacama which is in the north of Chile, about an hour from the Bolivian border and the gateway for anyone who is wanting to do a tour of the Salt Flats. San Pedro de Atacama itself only exists because of tourism. There is no other town, except for maybe Cuzco in Peru that survives purely for tourism. Every shop in the town is a restaurant, a tour agency or some form of accommodation. I was there for 1 day whilst I arranged my
trip to leave for the Salt Flats. As it turned out I was on the same tour as a friend of a friend, who we had realised that we had met each other over a few beers back in London some time ago, so it was good to be in a group were I knew someone and also the group was quite young, all except for Maria, a 50 year old from German. She was to provide some ‘entertainment’ over the next 3 days whilst we visited the Salt Flats.
On the tour of Salar de Uyuni you spend 3 days, 2 nights exploring the area. On the first two days you visit the different Laguna’s and salt rock formations, with then the final day is the best as you visit the actual Salt Flats. In our jeep there were six of us. Four Australians, one Pomme (moi) and Maria from Germany. After crossing the border from Chile into Bolivia, one of our first stops was some hot springs. Some of the group hopped in, including Maria, but it was cold and although the springs were warm, I didn’t fancy getting out of the warmth back into the cold,
so I stayed at the side taking some pictures and talking to some of the other people from other groups. Maria from our group hops out of the water and stands about 3 metres away from where I am talking to someone from another group. She then proceeds to get out of her swimming costume, straight in front of me. Now under normal circumstance if a woman chooses to get undressed in front of me, especially when there were changing facilities only 20 metres away, I wouldn’t complain. Not one bit. This however was different. On this occasion I wasn’t thinking that it was my lucky day. On the tour itiniary there was nothing about 50 year old woman coming out of hot springs and then proceeding the bear all in front of me. If that was the case, I would have asked if Sharon Stone was on our tour group, if she wasn’t then I would have gone with a different company. Out of everyone in the group, I was the only one that saw her getting changed. After driving around some Laguna’s we stopped at out base for the night.
The first night, everyone shared a dorm,
and because of the altitude no-one slept a wink, except Maria. She slept like a baby, and at points during the night, when she wasn’t snoring she sounded like the Tasmanian devil making strange noises. She also had her iPod on full blast so we could all hear until one of the girls walked over and turned it down. At one point I am sure I heard a David Hasselhoff song, but I wasn’t quite sure.
The following morning after no sleep and hearing David Hasslehoff being played on Maria iPod I felt terrible. After some breakfast I headed back to the dorm to get my bag packed as we were heading off shortly. I walked into the dorm, and Maria was the only one in there. I started to pack my bag whilst she was finishing off doing whatever she was doing. I was sleeping next to Brett, a guy from Oz and he had already packed his back and put it on his bed, which partially blocked my view of Maria. Thank god he placed his bag there otherwise I would have seen everything that I saw the previous day again. I was just finishing off putting
my toiletries in my bag when I heard this sound which makes me look up. Low and behold that crazy woman is getting changed again. So I begin to cough, just to let her know that I am in the room, just in case she didn’t see me come in. This did nothing. Without a care in the world she was getting changed whether I was in the room or not. This was too much for me. Twice in two days, so I got up and walked out. I walked back to breakfast to tell the guys, again, I was the one who got the abuse.
The second day consisted pretty much of what the first day entailed, except for the hot springs (thank god). It didn’t help that Maria took a picture of anything and everything. Every time we were able to get out of the jeep to take snaps, she was always the last one back in the car, or she would be chasing some random flamingo through a bracken pond to get a good picture. After the amount of flamingo ponds we saw, the group thought she would have enough pictures, but alias no; she loved taking
a picture of anything and everything.
It was a hostel made of Salt blocks which was our hostel for the final night before we saw the ‘real’ Salt Flats. No dorm this time, twin or double rooms. Now this scenario had played its way into my mind from the first day as the amount of people in our jeep came to six, which included two couples. This meant that it was going to be Maria and I sharing a twin. I started to get some grief from the couples about this, and I thought to myself that there was no way I was sharing with the snoring, birthday suit loving Maria. I would rather sleep outside in the desert where the temperature drops to -15C. Luckily the man upstairs was looking out for me on this occasion and there was a spare room which allowed both Maria and myself to have our own rooms. This was very lucky as I would have taken my chances sleeping with the cacti and sub zero temperatures than sharing a room with that woman.
The following day we visited the Salt Flats which were spectacular, as there is nowhere in the world
quite like it. Just miles and miles of Salt. As far as the eye can see. In these conditions you think that nothing can possibly live out there, but on several occasions you see animals grazing. Truly spectacular. By early afternoon we had arrived in Uyuni and were sat having a beer and thinking about how much entertainment Maria had been. From Uyuni I was going to be heading to Potosi to get my hands dirty down silver mine
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