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Published: January 25th 2009
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Hola
We last left you at the bus station in La Paz, ready for our 3 hr journey to Oruro - Well, the journey turned out to be 5 hrs in the end and resulted in a sprint to the train station once we arrived (The plan was to arrive and be lucky enough to get train tickets for that evening to Tupiza)....20kg pack, and 3500m altitude made things a little difficult, so it was more of a demented wobble than a sprint! Anyway, (inevitably only 45mins before departure) all the tickets were sold out. The clerk was insistent that the only tickets left for the following day were in 3rd class and we couldn´t buy tickets until the morning, but somehow in my pigeon Spanish I managed to convince him to sell them to us there and then - he must´ve felt sorry for how wrecked we looked!
Dan - Oruro itself is just a typical Bolivian town, markets etc, so we pretty much wondered the streets soaking it all up for the day until we could catch our train at 7.00pm. I said to Nic previously about the 3rd class tickets ¨How bad can it be? surley
we´ve had worse journies in India?!!!¨ when we first got in the coach and found our seats it didn´t seem so bad, padded seats plus a window seat, ok we thought, we even got a lovely few Argentinians sitting opposite us for company. So the train rattled on, and out came the ´Charanga´ (Miniature guitar with 10 strings) at first it was cool, nice easy listening but then it was passed to me ´To try´ Natuarally I was crap and pissed the whole carriage off, but this just seemed to make the girl (bless her) more determined to teach me!!! I was bored and ashamed and still she kept trying to teach me along with another guy who could play. I just wanted to say ¨Please leave me alone I´m bored now¨ but they were too nice to offend.......that is of course until the Flute came out!! and 2 hours later we were trying to decide which orafice to shove it up!!
So feeling tired now and desperate for sleep people just seemed to pile on the carriage leaving no space to even turn your head let alone leg room!!!
Nic - Our nice cosy seats were inceitably
shared with another guy and I was squished between Dan´s broad shoulders and a rather large local!...For hours I tried to lean away from him until in a moment of dropping off I hit my head on his shoulder and then gave up and left it there, it was the most comfortable I´d been all night!
So another delayed journey and instead of 13 hrs we ended up sitting on that crammed cattle carriage for 16hrs!!
So, the reason for our hellish journey??.....to visit a landscape far more stunning the ¨The Wild West¨and the area where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their makers. Of course it wouñd´ve been nice to treck around and see it all, but with such scenery it would´ve been rude of us not to throw a leg over a couple of horses and yell ¨Yeeeee haaaaa, ride em cowboy!¨
Dan wasn´t particularly keen on the idea (is really quite nervous of the beasts and hasn´t ever been that close to one, let alone sat on top of one!!) but he graciously obliged as he knew it was something I really wanted to do. 10 mins into the treck I was starting
to think it wasn´t such a good idea and wasn´t sure we´d make it to the end, the concentration on his face was immense!!
Dan - What added to it was our guide just told us to get on and with hand language said pull to stop kick to go and pull left, right to turn...!!!! plus at first he kept disappearing!! when he did this Nic just said to me ¨Just pull on over here next to me¨ .....¨WHAT!! What do you mean just pull on over here!!!, it´s not a flipping car!!!¨ I can´t just park it like it´s a flipping machine!!!! very nervous at this point!!!!
But then I don´t know what came over me I just seemed to start enjoying it and got better and better!!!! before I knew it I was, tapping as much as I could to go faster!!!!!!! Yeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaa
Nic - Ha ha, Dan seemed to understand when I told him that the horsed could smell his fear and so began to get a bit macho, and after a while the two of them bonded (despite Dan insisting that it didnt really like him!) After a couple of hours
Dan was like a different person, and I could tell he was feeling more confident and at ease when he wouldn´t shut up with the cowboy lines...."Git dowwn aff you´re horrrse and drink ya milk bwoy"....and....."I´m the sherrif of this town".....and of course his personal favourite "I´m the fastest gun in the west"..........(No comment on that one!!) he says his Dad will back him up, that he´s one hell of a shooter!!..Is that right Mick???!!!
It was a fantastic day, and the scenery was absolutely stunning, rock formations that defied gravity and looked like they´d collapse at any moment alongside huge cactuses, with a backdrop of mountain ranges that were ever changing colour due to the intermittent sun and approaching thunderstorm......Dan even asked if we could do another horse treck before we return - how about that ey? (He must take after you Pippa!) So 5 hrs later, we returned to the stables, wishing that we´d had a break between sitting on the train for so long and then climbing into the saddle.....We don´t think we´ll be walking properly for a while!!
Dan - Time is of the esscence, so with that in mind better start heading North,
next on the list is the Salt plains of Uyuni.
More soon
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