A Shitty Town Full of Shitty Hostels

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Tuesday 26th October

We’d spent a week in La Paz and had a hell of a time but it was time to move on. We had intended to go to Trinidad, a city in the North, and then a boat down to Santa Cruz. However we discovered that getting a bus to Trinidad would be 29 hours which was not on the cards. We decided instead to get a bus to Uyuni and check out the Bolivian salt flats.
There were two buses to Uyuni - the tourist and the local bus. The tourist bus was B$240 and the local was B$120. Though always keen to save a bit of coin, we decided to get the tourist bus because we’d caught a local bus from Arequipa to Puno and spent six hours with our knees on our chins. However the tourist bus was full so, promised that the only difference between the two was that the tourist bus got dinner and breakfast and the local just stopped so you could buy your own, we sprung for the local.
Checking out at 12PM and storing our bags at the Cactus, we got some final photos of La Paz and then walked the ten minutes to San Pedro prison to get some photos of it from the outside. Most of these have since been published in my San Pedro blog but it was a pretty interesting experience to walk the prison’s perimeter. There was a side entrance that we saw open and a mother and child walked in - I guess it’s how family members who live in the prison access it during the day. On the far side of the prison wall were a series of stalls, most of which predominantly sold alcohol. Though they can’t access it themselves, the prison populace’s connection to the outside world through family members would mean that the stalls had a guaranteed 1300 customers within spitting distance (if you can spit high enough to clear the walls).
Our bus was at 7PM, so at around 5:30 we went back to Cactus to pick up our laundry - dropping it off at 12PM they had put it through their express service for B$10 per kilo - pack our bags and make our way to the bus station. However before leaving we bumped in to Rod and his girlfriend, who were also going to the bus station for a 7PM bus to Uyuni. Agreeing to share a cab, we noticed that they both looked a little worse for wear. They explained that the day before they had cooked up two cactuses and spent 18 hours on a San Pedro trip.
“Would you do it again?” The Boss asked.
“Not tomorrow,” Rod replied.
The bus to Uyuni had plenty of leg room which was a welcome surprise. However the bus company’s cost for added leg room appeared to be paid for by not purchasing suspension. The 12 hours to Uyuni were reminiscent of my childhood in Newcastle, particularly one day in December 1989. The constant rattling of the bus made sleep near impossible and so arriving in Uyuni at 7AM the next day, we were absolutely wrecked.

Wednesday 27th October

We found a hostel called El Viajero next to the bus stop for B$50 a night and climbed straight in to bed. I was ready to nod off when I felt a strange lump sticking in to my ribs. I fished down and found a lump of fatty, gristly meat in my bed. Grossed out but too tired to care, I threw it across the room and crashed out.
Waking at 3PM, we took off to see what we could find in the way of a three day tour of the Salt Flats. However the Boss was in a mood (she maintains she wasn’t) so after being snapped at I told her that she could go her way and I would go mine. A little time apart would do us good. I spent an hour on the internet at a cafe run by 7 year olds, where the little girl told me off for having five windows open, “Amigo, no cinco. Solo tres.” I didn’t have the Spanish to explain to her that two web pages don’t make a difference to a monthly download bill or that I was paying so she could go to hell. Walking out of the internet cafe I bumped in to Kyle and Tahlei, who had just returned from a three day Salt Flats trip. We organized to meet up for dinner and drinks in an hour.
I returned to El Viajero and the Boss walked through the door not five minutes later. She had found a decent sounding trip for B$650 that left at 10:30AM the next day. We had an hour to kill before heading off to a pizza place where we met up with Kyle and Tahlei. They showed us their perspective photos from the Salt Flats and filled us in on the essentials of the trip - mainly that the third morning was a 4:30AM wake up and it was freezing, so to pack plenty of warm clothes. After a few drinks we decided to order dinner but Tahlei was feeling below the weather. She took off to go to bed, leaving Kyle and I to share a family sized pizza that wouldn’t have fed a single mother who was home alone (the Boss, having had pizza for lunch, had garlic bread).

Thursday 28th October

I awoke at 10 and watched a couple of episodes of the West Wing on my iPod before the Boss awoke. With half hour to check out, we went to the bathroom to brush our teeth, packed our bags and then moved to the Hostelling International building around the corner. We had been told that it was B$80 per night but upon checking in we were given the revised amount of B$90. For the sake of a kitchen, we hoped it would be worthwhile. We soon realized that it was not.
Hostelling International Uyuni was the worst hostel we had been to. Along with a lack of access to the showers, there were no electrical outputs either - there were large holes in the walls where they had clearly had an electrician come in and remove them all. There was a TV room which had a large sign on the door saying that the TV room was for watching TV or reading books - no eating and no using it to charge computers, cameras or other electrical goods. The beds in the rooms were vortexes, sinking down in the middle and holding up around the edges. To top it off, the woman who ran the place was a sour bitch. We were her only customers for most of the day (one other couple ended up checking in later in the afternoon) but she treated us as a hassle rather than her only income. She didn’t smile or attempt to engage us in conversation even though she spoke English. The front door to the hostel was always locked and her answering it took a lot of bell ringing and even more patience. And to top it off, the kitchen - AKA the only friggin reason we were staying there - didn’t have utensils or even running water.
Later that night we decided to go visit Kyle and Tahlei. They were staying at the Hotel Avenida around the corner from us. I had visited Kyle and Tahlei earlier in the day and had found that Tahlei’s illness from the night before had not been a figment of her imagination. Kyle had returned from dinner to find her violently ill and half an hour later he had started vomiting as well. They had both been up most of the night with what they thought was food poisoning from eating chicken lunch as their final meal on the Salt Flats trip.
When we arrived in the early evening they were both feeling better, having slept most of the day and got the garbage bin full of vomit (which had spent the night wedged between Kyle’s side of the bed and the wall) out of the room. We spent the evening looking at each others' photos, Tahlei's hard drive having photos dating back to my older brother's 21st on it. Eventually we said our goodbyes, hopefully to meet up again in Buenos Aires just before Christmas, and headed back to our hostel.
The streets were quite busy with people - mostly groups of drunken teenagers - and I could hear loud music coming from a large building a block or so away. Having not really been on too many nights out, we returned to the hostel, got dressed and headed for the front door to check out all the commotion. It was after 11 o’clock and we knew that we were going to have to wake up the woman who ran the hostel to get back in but for B$90 a night and no access to water or electricity, we figured the least she could do was open the door for us.
It was only a short walk to the building and there were dozens of people on the streets coming and going from it. We went inside to find what appeared to be a high school basketball court, surrounded by bleachers complete with the cool kids hanging out underneath them. In the centre of the court was a stage with three young girls wearing gowns, crowns and make up under a banner declaring the event - “La Reyna De Las Floras 2010” (Queen of the Flowers 2010). Soon after arriving a group of 12 boys and 12 girls in traditional dress started some traditional dancing. We enjoyed it, even though we sat on the bleachers and were laughed at by the cool kids. With greased up hair and matching sneakers (down to the way the laces were tied and the tongues positioned), it was a high school experience I had missed out on at the all boys boarding school.
We returned to the hostel determined to get the camera. The woman who ran the hostel’s husband answered the door and I waited while the Boss went to get the camera from the room. I decided to try and engage the husband in a little small talk, so I attempted to ask him if he was going to the festival. His response was to call out to his wife.
“What do you want?” She asked me.
“I was just asking if you were going to the festival,” I replied, feeling awkward.
“No, I have to open in the morning. It is nearly 12, we close the doors at 11,” she said, clearly hinting. “The festival is over now anyway.”
“No, it’s still going,” I replied. Luckily the Boss arrived at that moment and we departed. We got to the basketball building to discover that the festival was over. I bought a couple of beers from a nearby store and we returned, ringing the bell not five minutes after leaving. The husband opened the door and we went straight to our room. I would have felt guilty but of all the hostels we had stayed at it in Bolivia it had cost the most and delivered the least. Fuck ‘em, if I can’t charge my computer or have a shower, I can go out to see the town’s only event.

Friday 29th October

The alarm went off at 9AM and I got up to have a shower but, of course, they were all locked. I found the woman in the office and asked her if I could have a shower.
“Did you have one yesterday?” She asked suspiciously.
“No,” I replied. I also could have pointed out that the sign said “One shower a day” so it wouldn’t have mattered if I had had one yesterday. The bathroom I was sent to was at the front of the hostel - as far away from our room as was possible, which was decent of her considering there was only us and one other couple in the whole place and there were showers at the end of the corridor we were staying on.
After packing for the three day trip to the Salt Flats, we made our way to the office. There was a sign saying that there was a left luggage facility but that it cost B$10 a day - the first time we had seen a hostel charge for the privilege in all of South America. This joint was really out to get every penny they could. We decided to take our chances leaving our bags at the office of the travel agent we'd booked the trip with. However, with us determined to pay for our night and never come back, the woman was nowhere to be found.
We called out, rang the front door bell and checked the courtyard all with no response. We only had a B$100 note to pay with and, in any other circumstances, we probably would have left it and called it even. But this bitch wasn’t going to get a cent more than the B$90 she charged. So we left a note saying we’d be back to pay on the Sunday night. Really, if you’re going to be so tight with money that you don’t allow people to shower, use your electricity or water, it makes sense to be in the office at check out time when you expect them to actually pay.

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Photos

The lump of meat
In my bed

Hostelling International
The photo doesn't do true justice to the bed's v-shape

The most Awesome bus company in the World
Actually, Kyle and Tahlei said they're shit, but my birthday is their name

Comments

[Tahlei]

cant belive that hostel
I hope you didn't go back to pay at all - they don't deserve your money!