An Emmerous Adventure

So I think I left you in Potosi when I was travelling with Henry and was about to head to Uyuni. Our last day In Potosi I met Helen who I knew from Cuzco and La Paz and she was heading in the same direction as us with a guy called Nik, so we bacame a little band of heros and headed off to Uyuni together after a fun last night in Potosi involving a massive Cigar and a dodgy Kareoke bar that wouldn´t let Helen do Kareoke.
Sorry for the spelling etc…this entry, i´m struggling with the keyboard.

So the next day the four of us set off for Uyuni. The bus ride there was an amazing 6 hours of beautiful and dramatic landscapes, amusing ourselves with games of I Spy and Guess Who and a nearby child who took a shine to Helen, a cow wearing a hat and Llamas.

Uyuni is a depressing and uninspiring town, nothing but the gateway to the Salar. On the other hand, we did have good Pizza and I bought some excellent gloves from the cold ahead.
The two things people say about the Salar is that it´s beautiful and bloody cold. With this in mind, when we were checking out agencies for the tour we wanted Sleeping Bags, an English speaking guide, a connection for Ipods to the car for music and Wine (which somebody had told us they got on a tour). We found one with 3 of the above so instead invested 65 Bolivianos in a bottle of Bacardi oro rum (about $12 Aus).

In the morning there we complications. Ouyr car didn´t have an Ipod connection, but did have CDs, so the boys went and bought a selection of fine music for us to listen too, plus Helen and I had some CDs. As a result we ended up with an eclectic selection including Hard Fi, Latin american pop and folk, Michael jackson, Manu Chau, Madonna, Beethoven, Nirvana and some of the drivers CDs that we discovered on the last day. This led to the odd and wonderful experience of listening to Like a Virgin as we sped accross the salt flats, Paint it Black as we cruised through moonscapes and Billy Jean as pink and grey clouds sat accross one of the best sunsets I´ve ever seen.
Also, we lost our english speaking guide and as a result I actually don[t know that much about the Salt Flats or the lagoons we visited.

Our little band of Heros grew to expand Antony, a french guy who I had met in Potosi and Lena an Israeli girl. So the 6 of us set off.

The first day was all Salt Flats, We glided accross this strange landscape and stopped quite often to take photos. Alas, we missed the Train Graveyard where they put dead trains because we left Uyuni an hour late. Helen and I weren´t particularly concerned but Henry and Nik had wanted to see it.
We were getting to the point where we were a little frustrated with the company because of their filure to live up to expectation, but when we asked the driver if we could call them he said he didn´t have the number. This didn´t sound good in general; we wondered what would happen in case of an accident, but later experience led us to think it was probably true.
We stopped at a little town that sold salt-made-mechandise, the Salt Hotel (that the guidebook says not to stop at as it is an Illegal Structure) some sort of mineral springs and the Fish Island (lack of guide means I don´t know the exact name) where we had munch and took trick photos.
because of the lack of Perspective in the Salt Flats everyone who goes takes funny photos where people look like they´re standing on each other´s hands etc…
We did our fair share (though saw some others later that made us with we had had more props, all we had was Mr Salt, a salt shaker we pilfered) and I assure you, you´ll be seeing many of them as soon as I figure out which CD they´re on.

The wierd thing about the salt flats, especially near the isalnd (which had cacti on it) is that it feels like you´re underwater, well I think so anyway.

We drove off into the beautiful sunset and to San Juan, where our HUMBLE abodse was waiting for the night. It wasn´t that it was that dirty or dodgy or anything, but rather that the electricity went off at 9 pm. i think that´s when you can call somewhere humble. So we had to play drinking games by candle light. We also met some irish girls and a british guy from one group and a Canadian guy from another. I think we polished off about 7 bottles of wine, a bottle of Lemon Vodka and the Rum. Therefore the morning was not welcome, especially as the night had been cold for me and i was a bit sick with a head old sort of thing.
I´m going to share with you the wisdom of the best drinking game in the world:
It´s simple, go around in a circle saying names, the next name always has to begin with the last letter of the previous name. If you can´t think of one, say one that has already been said that round or are too slow then you drink.
It may have been more fun than usual in our case because people kept coming up with obscure names then saying it was from their native country.

The next day was Lagoon and Rock day,in which we saw many beautiful lagoons, some flamingos in a lagoons and some rocks that are excellent and famous because Salvador Dali saw them and incorporated the formations into his paintings. We also ate outside for lunch next toa very windy lagoon whereourfoodblewoffourplates. Almost every other group ate inside. We also met a group that had a drunk driver and had comandeered the vehical from him and were driving themselves.
That night was ~the cold night~. But we were not cold as we made our own hot water bottlesout ofempty water bottles and pushed all the beds together (genius), and we were all toasty, even though there was no spooning action.
We got up VERY early the next morning to see the sunrise,which was nice, then we were off off and away to some geysers which were amazing and then to some hot springs. At the hot springs Nik was the only one to get in, but Henry and I put our feet in. There wasalso an old german guy with heaps of tattoos who got naked and jumped in… twice.

From there it was on to an ice covered lake and then to the Chilean border where ourgroupsplit as Lenawas going back to Uyuni and the rest of us forged ahead into new teritory.
In Chile we were in the town of San Pedro de Atacama, We had alot of fun, good food and drink (mmm… wine) met some interesting people, marvelled atthe attractivnessof the Chileans, andspent way too much money. I´m not going to give you an exact figure, but let´s leave it as CHile being ultra expensive. One Thousand pesos isroughly equal to one pound, and you´repaying about 2000 pesos for a beer, 5000 for a setmealor 1000 forasoft drink. This was a shock coming from Bolivia, but all worth it, much fun was had.

The next day,after a big bus befuddle, we got on ourown little hired bus to Argentina, there were 10 of us at this point and welistenedtoMadonna as we glided accross the driest desert in the world.
We got to Salta at 4 in the morning.
Salta is a beautiful city in Northern Argentina. I actually fell in love with argentina very quickly and have resolved to come back for more than a week another time. We had BBQ and steak and attracted even more people (went out to dinner with 14 people) (and had wine in glasses as big as yourhead (wellnot quite, but they were massive)) and had REAL coffee (my first down here).
But the fun and excitementonlylasted a couplefo days,as Nik, Henry and I took the 26 hour bus to Puerto Iguazu. The night before, Henry and I went out with some others to the ´clubbing district´ of Salta and wentto a cool club, saw a manu chau and bob marley coverband and met cool Argentinians,then got straight on the bus.

The bus ride wasn~t too bad, i think i slept for 15 of the 26 hours.
THEN! we were in Puerto Iguazu, and that chapter will have to be left for another day, probably next week as I am going to a beautiful island for the weekend with my friend Marianna.
I knowI promised photos, but i am struggling with Portuguese computers, but they will come soon and be amazing.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 8:43 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.