Salar de Uyuni

There is an interesting thing which appears to go on in the backpacker world. It is a world where the more you suffer, the more kudos you earn. Take for example the LONG horrible bus rides. These are something which you often hear fellow backpackers bragging about, or frowning upon those who take flights or trains. These long bus rides give the backpacker kudos among others and somehow seems to present a more ‘real’ or ‘better’ experience in many other backpackers eyes.  Personally I don’t really get it. The bus rides suck. There is no shame in taking a flight and not losing a full day of travel on some horrible bus ride where you don’t do anything (obviously you are not more connected with local culture by sleeping on a bus for 12 hours). 

I got what I am assuming is a Spider bite on the third night in La Paz. It got a bit nasty, but is finally starting to clear up. It is weird, like nothing I have had before. It itched and burned for that first week.

I tried to buy a bra here in Cochabamba, as I somehow seem to have lost one (and one of only three is significant). But what a mission. Needless to say I have given up for now due to the quality, language barriers and sizing. 

NZ flag on the salt flats

We went on a three day tour of the Salt Flats (Solar de Uyuni).  So much nothingness. Desert, salt, mountains. So much brown. In contrast to places we stopped along the way, lagoons, llamas and flamingos. Of course we got some of the silly salt flat photos, like eating people and such (you can check them out on facebook), which are pretty cool.We signed up in La paz when we missed out on the bus the other day. In hindsight we should have hunted down the reference given to us by Stephanie on the mountain biking. Anyway. As commonly happens on these tours (so we hear) we were promised an English speaking guide, no more than 6 tourists in the jeep and a cook. In reality we had a guide who was also our cook, didn’t speak English and 7 people in our jeep. The sign at the place even clearly said English speaking guides.  By the time we had figured this all out we were well on our way.

The first night we stayed at the salt hotel. There was a crazy lady running the place who was up and cackling away in the kitchen by 4am. A little girl also lived there. Her life must have been full of tourists coming and going. We had a running race which ended badly, with her falling over and me trying to comfort her without any Spanish. The rest of the group were quick to escape inside when she tripped. She was ok though, with a little wash and some reassurance. 

The food on the trip nothing short of sucked. I guess after the Machu trip I expected a lot from tours, but this was nothing short of terrible. Rice which had been sitting in the jeep for five hours and stale bread for example. 

Our travelling companions were pretty cool. I won’t go into too much detail here though....Minus to say Mario, the driver, was pretty rude and grumpy. 

We went right over to the Chilean border where we dropped off four of the team who were heading through and picked up a family of three (with a sick husband) and the LONG, 8 hour journey back to Uyuni begun. By the time we got here we had been travelling close to 30 hours. YAWN. Physically travelling is my least favourite part about travelling. Mario was so tired we did have a 20min stop in the mining town San Cristobel mining. There is an interesting story to go with this. The mines are owned by an America company who when they started mining had to relocate the locals build a whole new town for them. However, in the next six months the company will be nationalised under the current president. It would be interesting to see what happens to wages and the state of the town in the next few years.

On a random note. I gave my slippery shoes to one of the ladies at the hostel in cusco... all going to plan I should be slipping over a lot less soon!!!