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Published: August 25th 2006
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It was a 7 hour bus journey, overnight from Potosi to Uyuni ...... cue the chaos! 4,000 people on a bus, lots of food produce and lots of babies (one of which I had to help pass back to her mother who was up the other end of the bus). There are only 2 paved roads in the whole country. The bus stops every 45 seconds to either let someone off or let someone on. Every time you wonder if your bag is still in the holdall! At one point a tire blew, everyone on the bus was shouting to make sure the driver knew. I am sure he felt it though! That took about an hour to sort out. Its all quite an experience, we had grown to love Bolivia already. The way they do things is never ideal, but it certainly makes things interesting. When we arrived, the holdall opened to reveal our bags literally covered in thick dust! haha oh well, before that, they were far too clean to be respectable travelling rucksacks anyway ;-)
We had a day to sort out our 3 day jeep tour of the salt flats and surrounding wonders. After a short
sleep we got up and walked around town ..... 2 roads of tour operators, hostels, cafes and a train station. At 10 o clock, we were walking past the clock tower and bumped into Sally and Nick! We knew they might be about and it turns out that Nick had emailed us to arrange to meet at the clock at 10!! We must be telepathic as we hadnt read it. It was nice to spend the day catching up before they moved on and we booked our tour for the following morning. Also, there was a parade in town (of course!), no idea why but it involved lots of flowers.
The tour is shown in the photos far better than I could ever describe it. Basically, the scenery you see makes you feel like you have been transported to a different planet! The main attraction being the salt flats, a vast salt lake as far as the eye can see. Our jeep took 6 people ..... us and 4 Americans who turned out to be really cool. The front passenger seat was occupied by our cook who fed us well I must say. Llama meat was her first concoction,
Train graveyard
Right next to town and the first stop on our tour. It made for some cool photos! YUM! It was like chewing on an old rubber sole! ;-) Our first nights lodgings were basic of course and in the middle of nowhere. We had hired sleeping bags to battle the cold we faced at night, the first night was cold but not too bad. The whole trip is 3000m+ above sea level so the nights get very cold .... especially when you have a straw roof and no heating! The altitude was giving me constant headaches too which was annoying. The sky on the first night was like nothing I have seen. The milky way stretched from one side of the sky to the other, so densely populated with stars it almost looked like a cloud. The second night was the coldest night of our lives and the lodgings far more basic and remote than the first. We slept fully clothed, with many layers on, in a sleeping bag, under rugs! The toilet facilities made UK festival toilets seem appealing ...... nevermind, we were used to this, we hadnt had hot water for a week. All hail the magic deodorant!! It all made for a real experience ..... 3 days of off-road, incredible scenery and seeing how
people live in such remote parts.
On our return to Uyuni, we found out that 2 of our American friends had been reported missing in Bolvia by their worried parents!! Hilarious ..... it had only been 4 days since they last contacted home! Impressively, after about a million phone calls they were tracked down to Uyuni and our jeep ..... I wouldnt have thought that possible in Bolivia. We got a train that night to Oruro, where we changed to a bus for 3 hours to La Paz. The train was a definite improvement to the buses! We were tired and looking forward to La Paz. We had booked a hostel in advance that looked nice in the hope of a warm room and a long hot shower.
Gray x
Do not read on if you are eating..... Me and Gray had a veeery grim toilet experience. It was the 2nd night of the tour and the loo´s were vile. Defo a hover and squat situation. One problem, the floor was slippery .... with CRAP!! Gray had to literally dangle me over the loo by my 17 layers while I went. My legs were slipping all over
the place. We were laughing so much it made it twice as hard!! hahaha
Lynny x
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Monty
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So glad you made it there!!
Isn't it surreal? So pleased someone else will now understand why I went there! Take care both of you.... M x