43.11-15th March. Swapping all my clothes for a pair of red speedos in Bolivia?!

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11-03-09
We arrived at the border town of La Quica by 6am. We knew we were arriving early in the morning but we were hoping it was going to be after sun rise. So you can imagine the look on our faces when we got woken up, looked out the window and realised it was still pitch black..great! Within seconds of stepping out of the bus to collect out backpacks we felt unsafe. The fact that there were loads of dodgey looking lads hanging around didnt help. We found a place in the so called bus terminal and met a couple from Belgium. I dont know who was happier to see who. We decided to wait till it started to get light before heading to the border cotrol which was suppose to be a ten minute walk away. We sataround for about half ana hour feeling quite nervous but the chances of something happening when your in a group of four is so remote. Se set off around 6.30am and eventually found the border control after getting lost for a wee while. I dont think i have ever seen Mike so scared. When we were getting our passports stamped for leaving Argentina the guard doing it took a disliking to Mikes passport for some reason and started shouting at him in Spanish. Not having a clue what he was saying Mike just turned round and looked at me with pure fear taking over his facial expressions!ha After a worrying five minutes (which felt like five hours!) he let us through. Once we crossed the Bolivian border to the small town of Villazon we headed straight to the train station hoping to get a train to Uyuni. The train station was a good twenty minute walk away an Mike and I both felt affected by the high altitude. At the tme we mentioned how we didnt think we could run a hundred metres feeling the way we did. So guess what happened when we arrived at the train station? Speaking very basic Spanish to the guard we thought he said the train left at 8am They did not accept Dollars and we had no local currency on us and being 7.30am we were running out of time. Mike wasnt feeling well so i left all the bags with him and ran back to town to change our Dollars. I managed to get there and back within half an hour but i did think i was going to die!ha I have never felt so out of breath! Come 8am we realised that the guard meant they start selling tickets at 8am. The train wasnt till 3.30pm!ha Typical!ha Feeling exhausted we slept on the train station floor till around midday before heading back into town. Many of the guide boos say this border town has no ATMs but let me just say...it bloody does!ha After asking many people we found one and the feeling of having money in your pocket in a strange place is almost unbeatable! We grabbed some lunch and some snacks before jumping on the train. he train itself was great. Very comfy and the views were awesome. At times it felt like we were in the Grand Canyon or taking the first train journey on Mars!ha We were suppose to arrive at Uyuni around 2am so we were looking to the stops before that to try and get a feel for the place. Niether of us were that keen on the idea of arriving at 2am and i now all the guide books strongly recommend you dont do so but in the real world its impossible some times to avoid it! So we pulled up at the first stop whislt it was still light and it looked...mmm...very dodgey. I wouldnt have felt safe walking around that place during the day!ha We arrived at our second stop late in the evening when it was dark but this place seemed a bit safer which eased our worries a wee bit. I was sat at the window at the time when i looked out the window to see two faces plastered on the window staring at me. Im not going to lie, it scared the hell out of me. I even jumped! Everyone else on the train laughed as when we left the two ladies started blowing kisses at me standing on the platform. We had Argentinian girls in front of me and they laughed saying, ¨looks like love!¨ Mmmm...i dont think so some how!ha Straight after this small town though you pass a cemetery. Its so close to the train track you feel like you can reach out the window and pinch out one of the many lit candles that are placed near one of the stones. The cemetery expands all the way up the surrounding hillsides and at night it was a breathtaking sight with all the lit candles. I slowly drifted off to sleep.

12-03-09
We arrived dead on 2am as planned. Mike and I had already singled out which hotel we wanted to stay at, Hotel Avenida. It was suppose to be located only two minutes away from the train station. My body wallet was used for one of the first times on my trip so far containing my switch card, money, passport and most importantly...my memory stick from my camera! We found the hotel with ease and the town itself felt amazingly safe even at that time at night. We both got our own rooms for 30b and went straight to sleep. Around midday we asked the hotel staff where the closest laundret was and they pointed us n the right direction. The door was closed when we arrived and after we knocked on the door and waited for a few seconds this kid jumped out of the dog flap and started hitting us with a plastic bottle. He even started to pinch Mike really hard. Luckily his parents came out and stopped him from beating us up. He even left marks on Mikes skin! I thought it was hilarious!ha We gave them our 6kg worth of cloths and heading into town for lunch. We sat outside a bar eating our lunch watching a school musical parade. We also booked our three day salt plane trip for the next morning for 600b. Feeling a little bit lazy we decided to have a workout in our rooms. I dont know if you have ever seen the film Con Air but at one point Nicholas Cage is in his prison cell doing a handstand up against a wall and starts doing push ups. We thought we would give it a try. I was standing beside Mike ready to give him a hand if he needed it. He squared himself up with the wall and kicked himself up to get into the handstand position. But one thing got in the way...my private area! Yeap, he kicked me in the privates!ha I spent the next few minutes sat on the bed taking deep breaths!ha We went to the very slow internet cafe before picking up our clothes and i bumped into some Swedish friends of mine i met in Mendoza. We headed to the laundret at 7pm to pick up our clothes but there was a slight problem. There were no clothes there to pick up. They asked us to come back at 9pm. We went to a Mexican restaurant and both of agreed that there was a good chance that our clothes had been stolen. We put the chances down as 50 50. So we found ourselves discussing what clothes we had left. The conversation went a bit like this. Myself saying, ¨i have two pairs of combats left so you can borrow one pair of them,¨ then Mike replying, ¨well i have a few t shirts left which you can have,¨and so on! The great thing was that we were laughing about the situation rather than pulling out our hair with stress. Thats what great travel companions are all about. We walked back at 9m not feeling to confident and rightly enough...no clothes. The man working there spoke no English but he had his computer ready and waiting for us on a translating web site. It turned out two other lads took our bags instead of theirs. I told the man that we would be back in three days time and at that point we would want our clothes back or 5oob each to replace the clothes taken. We told him that our clothes were more like 2000b each but we couldnt expect him to afford that. He agreed and we walked back to the hotel to have an early night. Back at the hotel i said goodnight to Mike and said i was going to have a shower before going to sleep. I walked into my room and closed the door to hear Mike shout out, ¨have you still got a towel then mate?¨ I looked down at my empty backpack, smiled and simply replied, ¨ahhh shit!¨



13-03-09

We were checked out and at the tour office by 10am with our empty backpacks. Luckily for me Mike had a spare jumper as we were told it got cold during the night in the salt flats. Both Mike and I had items of clothing that had sentimental value. For me, it was my fleece. I have had that fleece since my first travelling trip and had used it as a pillow hundreds of times on buses, trains, flights etc. But at the end of the day its only clothing that can easily get replaced. We got introduced to the other four people that would be in our jeep for the next three days. A lovely couple from Holland and two American girls. We jumped into our Toyota jeep and headed out of town to our first stop, the train cemetery. After that it was the salt flats and a salt factory. These salt flats were so much larger than the ones i went to in Argentina. We went to a place in the salt flats called Fish Island for lunch where we ate llama. Not my favourite meat i have to say. We were there for an hour so we got to experiment taking funny photos. Our guide Juan, rushed us along and took us to a place in the salt flats where we couldnt see a single other person or jeep. It was there where we had the most fun with taking photos and Juan helped us out loads. He must have done this a hundred times before though bless him! Being a huge fan of spooning, i thought it would be hilarious to get the group spooning on a giant spoon and we done just that. We had a great time there and it really felt you were in a different world. A world where you needed sun glasses big time!ha The jeep had the facilities to play our i pods through its speakers. So after convincing everyone we needed to listen to cheese, i put my i pod on. I am the master of cheese!ha Backstreet Boys went on and i filmed us all singing along, which to look back on will always make me laugh. We arrived at the Salt Hotel and met up with the other two jeeps from our tour. Everything in the Hotel is made out of salt. Even the beds. A crazy little hotel in the middle of nowhere! Some of the people in our group had guitars and we spent the evening sat outside, under the stars listening to these talented people. It amazes me how people you meet travelling can play the guitar and can sing. Whilst having dinner later on in the night a group of young local children came to our hotel and sang for us. You should have seen some of the female travellers getting all broody. It was well funny! We spent the remaining part of the night playing a dice game. This game almost drove us crazy! The dutch couple introduced it to us. Its called Petals Around The Rose Bud. Friends and family back home beware, im bringing this game back with me!ha Mike was one of the lasts one to get it and he refused to go to bed till he did. I sat with him till after midnight till he finally did!ha



14-03-09

We got woken up for breakfast at an ungodly hour of 6am. That sort of time shouldnt exist whislt travelling!ha We were in our jeeps by 7am and at our first stop of the day shortly after that. A place called Devils Cave. Inside the cave were tombs but the thing that got me was a fairly new looking cross. This cross was put there in 2002. An eight year old girl from one of the near bye towns went missing and they eventually found her body curled up in this cave. After the cave we visited many lagoons with pink flamingos before arriving at the Stone Tree. The Stone Tree is a very famous sight on this trip. But the best thing for us at this view point was not really the Stone Tree but the snow lying on the ground and rocks around it! It wasnt long till we started a huge snow ball fight with just about everyone there at the time. Mike and I had climbed up the highest rock to take a photo when we noticed we had the advantage of higher ground. So thats when it really started! It was great fun and definately a first for me. A snow ball fight in the middle of a dessert?!ha What do you expect though from the highest dessert in the world? We had a long drive to our hostel for the night and arrived around 6pm. We were put in a four person dorm with the two American girls from our jeep. The night was spent playing cards and playing another new game for me, Warewolf! If you havent played this game before then your missing out. Once again im bringing this game back home!



15-03-09

I thought getting woken up at 6am was mean, this morning we got woken up at 4am! Needless to say it took a wee while to get out of bed and doing so was hilarious. The conversation went as follows.

American girl, ¨Barrie turn on the light please?¨

Me, ¨Mikes closer!¨

Mike, ¨I cant reach it from my bed!¨

The three of us, ¨Come on Mike you can do it!¨

Then all of a sudden because all the room were next to each other with just some thin ply wood seperating us all, people started chanting.

Everyone in the hostel, ¨Come on Mike, come on Mike!¨

It was amazingly funny!

Mike replied, ¨ok, i can do it!¨

He got out of bed (and it was freezing cold!) and turned the light on! We all started cheering and so did everyone else in the hostel!

So once in the jeep shivering to death we drove to the Geysers which were close by. I have to admit i was far to cold and sleepy to appreciate them properly. I had my photo taken standing next to them then jumped straight back into the jeep under Mikes thick sleeping bag...yes, Mike and i did share that sleeping bag in the jeep for the early parts of the morning!ha But it was freezing and we are close friends so its all good!ha All of us couldnt wait to get to the hot springs and when we got there we wasted no time getting changed and jumping in. We soaked in the 38 degrees hot spring for over an hour enjoying every second of it! We hit the desert road and started the very long drive back home through the Salvador Dali Desert. We were back at our hostel by 6pm and decided to walk to the laundret straight away to get it over and done with. Both of us both knew we were not going to get our clothes back! So we walked through the doors of the laundret and we could tell straight away by the blokes face that it was going to be bad news. The two lads that took our clothes had obviously open the our bags and though it was Christmas come early and decided not to bring them back. In the end we took their bags to our hostel and took the clothes we wanted from them as well as receiving 500b each. We managed to replace some of the clothes stolen from their bags but one thing we found made the whole experience worth while...we found a pair of red speedos!ha I kept them bad boys!ha We did thank the bloke at the laundret for his professionalism and help. If that happened in many other places i have been around the world they wouldnt have cared at all! We hit the sack by 10.30pm after a very long day!

We were leaving the next morning to Potosi which was suppose to be all organised by the tour company we used for the salt flat trip. It was going to be an easy bus trip...well we thought it was going to be anyway!

So our first few days in Bolivia were testing but yet fun at the same time. One thing i will say though about Bolivia is that the local ladies...the worst i have ever seen. So i knew it wouldnt be to long till i was crying out for Argentina again!ha We knew though Bolivia was going to bring plenty more adventures, fun times and more importantly...surprises!ha

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Comments

[anonymous]

your weird..............
do you want to die!