Bolivia contd

So after a few days back in La Paz, I caught a night bus to Uyuni, which is in the southwest of Bolivia. It's meant to be an 11 hour bus ride, but because of getting stopped NUMEROUS times by either our bus or ones ahead being bogged in mud, it ended up taking more than 21 hours. Which wouldn't have been so bad except for the fact that no one brought enough food or water, and strangely, whenever we got stuck somewhere it was inconveniently located miles from any store or town. One of the girls I was with, Carolyn, it was her birthday that second day, so while it wasn't ideal I did manage to scrounge around and find a snickers bar that i put all of the birthday candles in, and some argentinians on the bus had a guitar and we all sang happy birthday on the side of the road. It was actually kind of fun. Very memorable anyway. Mind you, the crossing of the river in the middle of the night barefoot because the bus would probably get stuck if passengers were on board, after 3 hours or unsticking busses ahead, not so fun.

But we arrived in Uyuni eventually, at like 4pm, to a very pooey smelling town, and booked a 3 day jeep tour of the nearby salt flats, the atacama and salvador dali deserts, flamingo lagoons and geysers. Since my luck was going that way, our jeep definitely got bogged within the first half hour, right up to the undercarriage in quicksandish mud. Eventually got pulled out by a passing tractor, after like an hour and a half of rocking it back and forth, tires spinning mud all over everyone, with an approaching thunderstorm on its way. (in a few minutes we passed a small stream which in the course of an hour turned into a raging river due to farther off rain. craziest flash flood i have ever seen, and even when we were standing there the water was coming with more intensity all the time, like continuous small tsunamis)

Managed to get to the salt flats though, and they were absolutely indescribable. 12000 square km of salt flats that look like ice, with a bit of water on top. You can't see the horizon, so it feels like you're floating, and you can see your own reflection so clearly that it's hard to tell which way is up. Very very strange. I think the pictures are going to be awesome. There's even a hotel out there with everything made and carved out of salt. From there we drove further out, and the next day entered the desert, and passed through some really cool rock formations, made by volcanic eruptions happening on top of glaciers only like 50 000 years ago. The lava cooled immediately, so the "droplets" ie enormous boulders, are all these crazy shapes just blobbed around the desert (which is not sandy at ALL. the driest desert in the world, and it's all pebbly. Really weird landscape). You can climb up them really easily with all of the air bubbles and uneven faces.

From there it was on to some huge lagoons that day and the next that were absolutely teeming with flamingos, and while it was a little cloudy sometimes, the reflections of the snowcapped mountains in the water filled with thousands of pink birds was breathtaking. Also really cool was that we got up early on the last day and drove to some areas with natural volcanic activity (ie geysers), and they're way different from what i pictured, with bubbly mud pits spraying hot steam that smelled like wet egg. Really gross odor, but it was really cool. Actually literally freezing up there, since it was like 5500m.

And then it was back to Uyuni to catch the bus to Potosi, which had no major problems, although it still required several disembarkings to cross rivers. (9 or 10 hours to go 208 km. Which is apparently like the fastest bus time in the past several weeks). And then spent the day going down into the potosi mines, where they have 700 different mines, 15000 workers (2000 of which are under 16) and many of them have been operating since the 1500s. Our guide told us afterwards that 11 years ago experts said that due to the swiss cheese effect it was ready to fall down in 7 years. Very comforting. Went down to the third level, which really didn't feel all that claustrophobic but definitely hard to breathe, the asbestos and cyanide burning your throat. Can't imagine doing that every day.

And then it was another bus to Sucre, where I spent the night partying with some australians on australia day, and getting attacked with shaving cream by pre-carnavalers. And then due to more rain related transportation problems, decided to fly to santa cruz for my brasil flight, and so spent an entire day in the airport on standby before heading off to lapaz and then here. Back in tropical heat here now so am feeling rested and ready for my flight to brasil at 4am tomorrow!!

That's all for now, but hope you're all doing well! xo