I'm just back from my week away. I had a great time and it was really good meeting some crazy travellers along the way!
I left Sucre on Monday night and headed for the bus station which is like 5 mins on the bus from my house. It was really busy and took me a good 10 mins to try and get across the road. Once I was in I paid my tax then found my bus. It left at about half 6 and we were off! I was sitting next to a big Bolivian guy who was really friendly but was an insomniac. I chatted to him on and off for 11 hours in Spanish so it was some good practice! The journey wasn't too bad. It got really cold after about midnight but I had a blanket and a big bolivian to snuggle up to (I'm kidding). We stopped off in Potosi and Ururo and a couple of smaller places but i stayed on the bus the whole time. The bus was pretty comfy. The seats were like buisness class on planes, I kid you not. The UK should take note of Bolivian busses.. they're the way forward. We arrived in La Paz at about half 7am, so I said chau to my new Bolivian buddy and caught a taxi to the hotel Clementine, my travelling friend, was staying at. Soo I woke her up pretty early but she was suffering from altitude sickness. Not the best way to start a week travelling but by the end of Tuesday she was feeling alot better. We spent the day in the luxury of the hotel as well as taking a little walk around the market that was just outside the hotel. We met a few travelling couples in the hotel. One couple from New Zealand who were doing tour of Peru, Bolivia and Chile with a tour group and another couple from Swizerland who were touring Bolivia on their honey moon.
At 8 we were picked up and taken to the bus station to catch the bus to Uyuni where our tour starts. I'd never seen so many tourists in one place so it took a while to get used to after seeing indiginous faces for so long! The bus left some time after that. It was like being in a plane- they gave us food and we had blankets and pillows. This bus was freezing and there was something up with it so at 3 in the morning we all piled off the bus and were transferred into another bus in Oruro. Yes.. in Oruro, so by now I had come in a circle which doesn't really make sense but I enjoyed travelling around so it wasn't all bad. The last part of the journey, say 4 hours were spent driving across some really uneven, loose ground. It was like trying to sleep on a pnuematic drill.
We arrived two hours late in Uyuni at 9am where I'm surprised it wasn't snowing. Everyone was wearing massive massive jackets and it was foreigner galour. A woman was supposed to meet us but didn't turn up so we phoned the tour agency and 2 mins later a toothless bolivian lady turned up with our names on a piece of paper. It turned out the office was a 5 min walk around the corner but we didn't know that! The woman then got us to fill out a form and showed us where to get breakfast. At about 10 we piled our stuff into and ontop of a 4WD. We met the driver and cook as well as the people we would be travelling with. They wre an Italian family who spoke no english and a small amount of Spanish.. woohoo! We were in for a fun few days. The father immediatly shot down any sterotype of Italian men being tall, dark and handsome as he wandered around with a piece of tissue shoved up his nose to block an apparent nose bleed. The mother fussed around her teenage kids as they were shoved in the back of the car.
As we started to drive off the family were chattering away in Italian and we were wondering what we had got ourselves into. The driver then started to talk to the mother in Spanish but she seemed to understand what he was saying. He then told us that he could speak some Italian but continued to speak in Spanish. So the conversation went from the Italians speaking in Italian to the driver answering in Spanish. In some bizarre way they managed to hold a conversation and understand eachother.
We stopped off at a train cemetry first about 10 mins after we left which didn't interest me at all! We stopped for about 15 mins then follwed the convey of 4x4s to the salt flats. They were pretty amazing- it was huuuuge! We had lunch in the hose made of salt which was strange.
Following lunch we drove on through the salt flats, stopping at an island full of cactuses and eventually arrived at San Juan where we were sleeping for the night. It was a small village which had a big block of rooms which I guessed were for tourists to stay in on this trip as about 10 jeeps turned up and piled out into the rooms. We had a pretty good dinner as we attempted to make conversation with the Italians. Clementine tried to rekindle her high school Italian as I tried to speak Spanish which they didn't understand anyway. Their oldest son, Samwela (say it in an Italian accent) muddled out some broken English he knew from school. In some strange way we did actually manage to have a conversation. We got stuck at the mother asking Clementine about the pope visiting Australia, which was bizarre anyway. Next to our table were a group from Uruaguy. It sent me back to when we moved from England to Scotland.. eventhough we spoke the same language I had no idea what they were saying, they spoke so fast! Most of them could speak English so they just spoke in English to us. Soon after we finished dinner a couple of local girls came in as they squealed out some Bolivian tunes.
We had a cold night then got up for breakfast at 7, headed off just after 8. The landscape was amazing.. Photos never really seem to show it.
Here are some photos:
The Italian dad got sick in the afternoon just after lunch so he was spewing at one stop, just after the flamingos. We met an English couple in the toilet queue who were horrified to pay 5Bs for the toilet.. thats like 50p. They were travelling across South America too and seemed to have a fascination about talking about their bowel movements.
We got to the place where we stayed for the second night at about 5ish. This place was even colder and we knew we had to get up at half 5 the next morning. After a good dinner the Italians who were down to two went to bed followed by Clementine who had a hard time at keeping her feet warm. There were a group of Argentinians who I sat with for a while before heading to bed. There were 3 guys and a girl from Argentina as well as 2 girls from NY who were travelling with them. I've never met more sleazy men in my life but it was a good laugh. One of them was a travel agent so he gave me his card and told me to go to Argentina.
Soo, I went to bed frozen, fully dressed and got up the next morning at 5.15. It was pretty cold as people shuffled their way into the jeeps. I talked to one of the Bolivian cooks in Spanish.. wahey! and then we headed off soon after.
The first stop was the geysers then we moved on to the thermal pools where I saw the Argentinians and several other people we met. It was 8am so was still freeezing.. only the totally crazy people went in and everyone else watched shivering. One guy cut his foot on the way the out and his blood froze.. nasty.
After some brakfast we headed off to to our final stop, Laguna Verde then headed all the way back to Uyuni. It got really hot in the car which wasn't the nicest thing ever. We got back at about quarter to 7 and had to rush to the bus for 7. It was pretty tight but we eventually got onto the bus after a bit of panic. We were almost at the back and behind us a family of Bolivians were squished into a really small spot. The bus seemed to stop every half hour which was annoying and Clementine had a mysterious Bolivian head that wandered into her personal space every so often. It was an interesting ride!
We eventually got to Potosi at 2am to be welcomed by a swarm of taxi drivers. We got to the hotel, had a long awaited showered and eventually fell deliriously asleep b 3am. The place was like an oven but it made a welcomed change to the freezing cold.
At 9am a Bolivian guide, Willy, turned up to take us on a tour of Potosi for the day. We started off by heading to the silver mines. It was fascinating.. we wandered round the mines as he talked us through it. Willy had worked in the mines for 7 years from when he was 12 so knew everything about it. We met some of the workers and blew up some dynamite!! It was amazing to see it and to see how the miners live and work.
We also did a tour of a museum for what was supposed to be 2 hours. Anyone that knows me would know the thought of this would be beyond exciting for me... ortunetly it only lasted just over an hour and actually wasn't that bad. The man's thick Spanish accent kept me amused as he mumbled out his speel in English saying things like mon-taaains and us-ed. It was actually pretty interesting to see the Spanish influence in Potosi. The place has a really interesting history. Willy came back for us and showed us around Potosi, explaining more about the history and all their superstitions. It was a fascinating place and we learnt alot about how people live there now.
We got our taxi back home at about half 5. The man was totally silent the whole way. I've never seen anyone take corners so fast but we got back to Sucre in good time haha. We were home by half 8 after having to direct him to the house in Spanish which could have gone better.
I'm now back in Sucre. I went to the orphanage yesterday which was really good. I'm going again today from 2-6. I'm enjoying my time here in Sucre but think I've caught the travelling bug.. think I'll be back to tour South America some day haha...
