Snow in the desert and other oddities
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2008
1
21
93
Trip End
Dec 08, 2011
Uyuni, Bolivia
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The following day we set out again driving across the snow covered terrain on our way to visiting any number of lakes and some funny rock formations, while the final day involved the salt flats at dawn, an island covered by enormous cacti and a train graveyard. The pictures will tell the story once I eventually get around to uploading some: there's absolutely no point in trying to describe the sights, so I will instead describe some of the journey.
Our transport was by a trusty, 30-year old Toyota Landcruiser driven by the at times not so trusty Emilio, who must be a narcoleptic or something cos he seemed to be constantly on the verge of nodding off. This wasn't too much of a problem on the salar itself where there is nothing to crash into, but it remained a slight concern nonetheless! He also managed to crash into one of the other jeeps, though the other driver didn't seem to care (the company owns the jeeps) and they resolved their differences with a snowball fight.
Being unfortunate enough not to get the jeep with the iPod connection and owning only one cd between us (Dub Side of the Moon, which has about two good songs on it and doesn't bear immediate repeat listening, let me assure you), we were stuck with Emilio's bizarre Bolivian folk music for three days. I'm not too annoyed at this as it got to the stage where it was so bad that it was funny, abd surreal landscapes probably should be soundtracked by surreal music, but at the same time I would have loved to have burned across the salt flats with some qualty tunes blaring!
We went with Estrella del Sur, and I must say that the food they provided was a couple of cuts above what I was expecting and that I could definitely recommend them overall (though make sure you ask to be in a jeep with an iPod connection).
On our arrival in Uyuni on Connie's birthday we were dismayed to find that the only bank machine in town was out of order, which made celebrating in style a little difficult. We pooled our money and bought the two cheapest bottles of Bolivian vino we could find and headed back to our hostel (the HI hostel with the 1001 rules and regulations and the little Hitler devil-child whio took no crap from nobody). Unfortunately, the person who was carrying the wine (name removed to protect dignity) wasn't really looking where he was going and walked into a wire, dangling breifly on it in highly comic fashion and dropping our precious cargo to the ground! It was one of the single funniest things I've ever seen, but it left us with only one bottle of wine... happy birthday Connie! I guess we'll just have to make up for it elsewhere!
