Got back from a four-day trip to the Salar de Uyuni on Saturday morning
after the worst overnight bus journey in Bolivia (confirmed by other
travellers!); the road is unpaved and so rough that the entire bus
continually shakes and rattles as if you´re in a washing machine on spin
cycle. This also makes the ancient windows constantly rattle open, so
that M & I ended up literally huddled together for warmth and I was
rubbing my legs Vic Reeves-stylee every so often just to try and get
some circulation back. And we´d booked the two front seats so we´d get
some leg-room, only to find when we got there that a blanket-wrapped
girl of about ten was installed where the space for my legs was! Sadly,
you can´t shout at small children even when they´re not that goddamn
small, so that was my knees crushed for nine hours. I relieved some of
my feelings later on, when the driver decided to go off and have a
lengthy dinner in the middle of the night without telling us, leaving
the doors wide open for the freezing wind. He was predictably more
amused than chastened by my diatribe in flawed Spanish, but at least I
felt a bit better...!
The trip itself was absolutely stunning though; we´ve met quite a few
people who´ve said the Salar is the best thing in S.America, and I can´t
imagine a more attractive place. It´s the rainy season, so the salt
flats are under a few inches of water, which makes the drive across them
a surreal experience; it´s like driving across a huge, blinding mirror,
with reflections of the clouds and mountains making you go Oooh! every
few seconds. We visited the Isla de las Pescadores, which sits in the
middle of the flats, apparently floating on the water, and is populated
not by fishermen but by a collection of ridiculously huge and phallic
cacti.
The rest of the trip, which is undertaken in groups of six in battered
4WD Toyotas (which I got to drive off-road for a bit once the driver was
sure we were out of sight of his grinning male colleagues - excellent
fun), involved visits to a series of lagunas, mountains, geysers and hot
springs which are so heart-stoppingly beautiful that attempts to
describe them tend to be ridden with cliches and repetitive superlatives. The sense of space, the grandeur of the scenery and the
clear, bright colours and mountain air seem to permeate your soul until
you feel drunk with beauty and admiration. And the hostels are so basic
that the only way to get through the evening is to drink all their beer,
so most people end up feeling pretty out of it one way or another!
Anyway, it´s inspired me to upload a few pictures onto the net, so I´ll
be sending you an email from Ofoto soon (Their website is brilliant -
can´t recommend it enough. It was easy, even for me!) and you can choose
to go look or delete it as you wish...
We spent the weekend in Cbba and then ended up having to take a plane to
Guyaramerin in northern Bolivia, as the roads become impassable in the
rainy season (a bridge collapsed on the Sta Cruz road last month and
several buses went over the edge in the middle of the night). I´ve never
seen a red-dirt runway before, or loads of dead planes at the end of
one, but we arrived safely yesterday afternoon. Having crossed the river
to Brazil (woo-hoo!) to buy our bus tickets for today and returned to
the cheaper Bolivian side for the night, there didn´t seem much to do,
until as we sat in the main square having dinner we saw a sign offering
motorbike hire for just over a pound an hour; and who are we to argue
with Fate? Amazingly, we both managed to avoid falling off, which was
lucky as it´s jungle-hot here and we were wearing vests, and... we can
now ride motorbikes! Well, after a fashion.
And after some hassle with immigration on both sides (the Bolivians
didn´t want to give us an exit stamp, and the Brasilians detained us for
ages, because we had difficulty understanding that the man was asking
us to give *six alternative numbers between 1-60* for the amount of days
we wanted to stay. And the reason for this was... he thought travellers
are lucky and wanted the numbers to put on the lottery! Fecksake!!!)
...we are now in Brazil! It´s so exciting just being here, although the
humidity and heat are knackering - cold showers are welcome relief, and
you want to get back in again immediately after you step out.
Tomorrow we´re off to Porto Velho, and then on the boat to Manaus. So
now I´m off to buy hammocks for the trip. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah!
No comments:
Post a Comment