Oops I´m falling behind on this journal thing, having adventures quicker than I can write about them! I guess I shouldn´t complain...
So I signed up for a 3 day tour, which would normally start with a visit to the salt flats and the dreaded salt hostel, but I opted to skip that part and pick up the tour later in the afternoon. We had a lonnng drive through quite desolate mountain landscapes before arriving at our hostel for the night which was in a tiny town made mostly of adobe buildings, in the middle of nowhere. We spent the evening getting to know each other - the group consisted of a nice couple from Germany, a French girl and two English girls. The tour driver was a nice bloke, though he didn´t really speak any English but it meant we could all practice our Spanish. Either that or starve really! He also brought along his wife, aka the cook, and their incredibly cute 2 yr old boy who sat patiently in the jeep for hours on end.
The next day we drove about 150kms in total, visiting massive strange rock formations in the middle of desert, beautiful coloured lagoons with flamingos sitting beneath majestic snow-capped mountains, and endless desert roads twisting through the mountains. We stopped periodically at "key photo sites" when we all jumped out of the jeep and wandered around taking pictures. It was really a photo tour in retrospect, but then to see the kind of places that we saw meant driving miles and miles, so I guess there was no other way to do it. If I´d been on my own, I would´ve hung around for longer and just sat down to feel the places, but then if I´d been there on my own, I would probably still be there now trying to find my way home!
That night we stayed at another random little town in the middle of nowhere. This time it was FREEZING. We got to the hostel at about 5pm and had to wait until 8pm for dinner. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no way of staying warm except to put all our clothes on and get in bed to wait! A bottle of gin helped us warm up with dinner, then it was an early night for everyone as we had a 4:30am start next morning!
The only good thing about getting up at that time was the night sky. It was SO full of stars, I have never seen anything like it. Absolutely beautiful, and just about enough to take our mind off the FREEZING weather as we piled into the jeep and scraped the ice off the inside of the windows. The idea behind the early start was two-fold. First, we were going to watch the sunrise at some thermal springs. Next, in order to see the famous Lago Verde (green lake) and get back to Uyuni that evening, we had to do a total of 500kms driving. I was all up for a lie-in and skip the lake, but the driver wasn´t budging.
Anyway, of course, it was all worth it in the end. We got to the thermal springs, which ran down the mountainside and culminated in a small but deep pool which tourists could bathe in, and then the waters continued into the huge lake beyond, which sat at the feet of a towering mountain. The driver told us we could put our swimsuits on and bathe in the pool if we liked. We told him, politely, where to go. It was still below freezing! But a couple of us dangled our legs in the hot water while we watched the spectacular sunrise over the mountain, breathtaking!
After that, a long hard day of driving with some stops along the way for photos and lunch. We got back to Uyuni at about 8pm, shattered, sunburnt and with a camera full of pictures to upload.
Next day I decided to get out of Uyuni. Which is more difficult than it sounds as it is the middle of nowhere with limited trains and notoriously uncomfortable buses. I went for the latter and took an evening bus to Cochabamba, a total of 12 hours travelling. The best way to describe the experience is to imagine, for the ride, a vehicle with triangular wheels driving over ploughed fields for 12 hours. Next, add the sound: imagine a car with no interior and a boot full of metal tools, being driven over road bumps. Add the two together and try to imagine sleeping on it - impossible! I arrived in Cochabamba, found a hostel and slept most of the day!
After a day in Cochabamba, I decided that my planned trip to the animal refuge wasn´t going to happen, it was just too far and I was too tired. So I took another bus back to La Paz, another 8 hours, and chilled out there for a couple of days. I met a cool Australian girl in the hotel and we shopped like lunatics in La Paz´s markets for two days. I bought some lovely silver jewellery, hats, scarves, all kinds of things.. and hardly spent anything, its so cheap.
Kylee left La Paz with her tour group on the third day, and I moved onto Copacobana, which is on the shores of the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. Look up Lake Titicaca on the net, spare me having to reel off all the statistics! I spent an amazing couple of days there and it also deserves its own blog entry, so more later :)
