Happy New Year everyone!!
It’s currently 9th January and I’m on another 15 hour bus
ride (that has turned into longer as our bus broke down in the middle of the
night) – destination Huacachina to go sandboarding at an oasis in the desert
near the coast of Peru. Again, a lot has
happened since my last post, and I’m finding it difficult to keep this blog up
to date, but I have a new motivation in that after my travels have ended I am
going to turn the blog into a coffee table book as a hard copy memoir of my
adventures.
So picking up where I left off, I was with Pete and Andy on
a 10 hour bus ride to Uruni on New Year’s Eve and we were mildly concerned at a
couple of points when the bus broke down that we were going to spend New Year’s
in the MOFN (middle of something nowhere), but luckily, despite apparently
leaking water at a significant rate, we did make it to Uruni ready to get our
party on!
So our first impressions of the place given that mentality
was somewhat surprising. Ghost Town were
the words that passed my lips, complete with dust, rubbish, wind and
tumbleweed!! I don’t think I had an
expectation of where we were going per se, but this place certainly wasn’t
where I had envisioned ringing in 2013!!
Regardless, we were there, and we weren’t going anywhere, so
we had to make the most of it. Our next
alarming moment was when the first 5 hostels we went to were full. The good news being that at least somewhere
in this ghost town there were some people, but we were a long way from
anywhere, so coming up with a Plan B would have been very interesting! Luckily, we did eventually find somewhere
that could take us, and we set off to find out more about our 2 knorwn New
Year’s options; FestiSalt, or Extreme Fun Pub!
FestiSalt sounded completely awesome – a full on festival in
the middle of the salt flats complete with 2 stages, 2 tents, DJs, hip hop,
sponsored by Red Bull, Coke, Hard Rock Café and a bunch of other well
recognised global brands, despite being slightly expensive by Bolivian
standards but not by festival standards anywhere else in the world, this was
naturally my first choice.
Unfortunately, Andy was still feeling pretty bleak from the chicken
escapade, and wasn’t up for a massive all-nighter with no way to get home as
desired. So we decided over a beer and
then several more at Extreme Fun Pub that it was going to be a decent place to
ring in the New Year, and that we’d save some money and still have a great
time. And have a great time we did, we
met a bunch of other tourists, drank, did karaoke, at midnight a whole lot of
champagne appeared which was consequently sprayed far more than it was drunk,
and generally had a good ole fun boozy night.
The following afternoon (we didn’t resurface until about
midday), we stumbled out into the bright sunlight to find food and check in
with our tour agency to see that everything was in order for the We following
day. As we were walking back from the
agency we overheard a couple of guys talking about FestiSalt, and enquired how
it all went down, hoping they weren’t going to say it was too amazing! Well it turns out the whole thing was an
absolute scam!! When the buses arrived
at 10pm full of tourists ready to party there wasn’t a tent or stage or anything
else in sight – absolutely nothing was set up!
There was no alcohol to buy, it was cold, and it wasn’t until 1am that
eventually they managed to get a bit of music playing and find a few bottles of
rum to sell! Then at 4am when the first
of the buses were meant to turn up to take people back there was not an
automobile in sight, and it wasn’t until after 4.30am that it bothered to
show! A massive bullet dodged
indeed!
The rest of the day passed fairly quietly, predominantly playing
cards and eating pizza, not only because we were somewhat worse for wear, but
the following day we were starting our 3 day tour of the Salt Flats and
surrounding sites – one of the major highlights of Bolivia and indeed a sight
that could hold its’ own in a competition for one of the most unique landscapes
the world over. We knew we were with
guys after our own hearts when the 3 local Bolivian boys about 10 minutes in
opened a bottle of red wine and enquired with the driver whether it were ok for
them to spark up a joint in the car. We
were equally pleased when the answer from the driver was no, as there are a LOT
of horror stories both on travel forums and from people we had met of drivers
that would either be too drunk to drive and passengers having to take over
while the driver slept, or even worse, drivers taking the wheel totally
plastered! So both seemed like good
omens. And on the subject of our driver,
I can’t help but immaturely point out that when first Pete, and then myself
asked him his name, the response was Wanka!!
Three days on tour with him, and still every time anyone used his name I
couldn’t help a wee smile. Then again, after 6 years in London and I never got
over Cockfosters, so it’s hardly that surprising! We were also incredibly fortunate that 2 of
the 3 boys (Junior, Muno and Alonso) spoke very good English and was able to
translate what the driver was saying, given that the “English speaking guide”
that we had paid to come on the trip neither spoke English nor actually got in
the jeep and came with us!
After a quick market stop where various salt and llama
purchases were made by us all, it was off to the salt flats, props in hand, to
take those famously fun forced perspective photos of people coming out of beer
bottles, being crushed by their friends, and many, many other cool shots which
we had spent quite some time brainstorming.
Sadly, after countless attempts by us all trying to get the focus
balanced so that either the foreground or background object wasn’t a complete
blur, and speaking to others in different tours who were equally frustrated and
despondent, we begrudgingly accepted that for whatever reason those photos were
incredibly difficult to take. Although
we did get some shots that weren’t completely terrible, it’s fair to say we didn’t
quite get the results we were hoping for.
It turns out (and we only learned this once we had finished the tour, I
think Andy is still having a hard time with the disappointment!), that our
fancy SLR cameras were the problem, and that good ole Steve Jobs was the ticket
– by taking photos with an iPhone the photos come out because it takes an image
as it sees it rather than putting an object in focus. So if anyone does go to Bolivia, please
remember this and send us some images so we can Photoshop ourselves in and
pretend we didn’t have a massive fail!
Nonetheless, we all had a great day, which then turned into a great
night playing cards and drinking games with the red wine a-flowing!
The following day as you can imagine, we were all feeling
amazing at 6am when Wanka woke us to get on the road again. But the countryside was stunning and it was
impossible to feel bad whilst being subjected to such scenes passing before our
eyes. Well, actually, the Bolivian boys
mostly slept, but I was very content with my camera and the views. Midway to our first destination, a beautiful
lake filled with flamingos, we had a standard stop to take some photos of the
surrounding scenery. As we went to pile
back into the jeep, Wanka turned the key and… nothing! If when the bus broke down on NY we were in
the MOFN, now you could times that 10-fold, we could have been in the centre of
the earth. Pete and his leatherman were
very keen to get a-tinkering, and thankfully eventually she ticked over and we
were on the “road” once again.
The lakes we visited were absolutely gorgeous, filled with
flamingos, the blue skies and mountains creating perfect reflections in the
calm waters. A photographers paradise…
that is until I had the pleasure of sorting through about 200 bird photos! After a t ty lunch we were off to see some
rock formations, again surrounded by stunning scenery for 360 degrees. And now I get to the part where I need to
break some terrible news… whilst scrabbling up some somewhat precarious rocks,
Dot suffered an accident L. It seemed to happen in slow-motion, watching
her slowly slide down a slant on the rocks and plunging about 2 metres to the
equally rocky ground. It’s not a
fatality, but she is currently in intensive care and very much in need of some
super-strong “gotica” – super-glue, which it turns out is not that easy to find
in South America. But I’m very much
hoping that I will find some, and Dot will once again be able to enjoy our
adventures around the world. But for now
she is resting comfortably awaiting surgery.
On arrival at our evening destination after siestas by
everyone but yours truly, it was dinner and more vino time – particularly as
not only was it our last night of the tour, but my last night traveling with
Pete and Andy. Sadly Andy had done her
dash the previous night and retreated to bed, while myself and the 4 boys
pushed on through another night of cards, drinking games, Munro’s terrible
jokes, and generally a lot of laughs.
Our final day’s schedule was to see geysers, animal shaped
rock formations, a train graveyard (yes, that’s not a typo), and 7 hours
driving time to get back to where we started Uruni. Our first job though, was to try and get the
very cold jeep jump started so we could get on the road, a job which being
somewhat worse for wear from the previous night’s escapade and at
super-high-altitude, was a task we could have all done without. However after numerous attempts we did get
her started and we were off again.
Whilst we did have some fun jumping through one of the artificial steam
holes, it’s fair to say that smelly bubbling steam and mud didn’t exactly make
the hangover any better, and I was somewhat relieved when we all piled back
into the jeep and were off again.
Enroute for lunch, there was a fairly decent ‘bang’, and on
pulling over not only had we popped our tyre, but completely shredded it! It was very bizarre, not like any burst tyre
I’d ever seen before. More rocks, more
food, a train graveyard and a lot of kilometres later, and we were back where
we had started in Uruni. After a
slightly tense wait at the agency to see whether our “guide” had booked my bus
ticket to La Paz or whether I had just given a stranger 230 Bolivianos never to
be seen again, she did eventually show and pass over a ticket as promised. With a few hours to kill, it was back to
Minuteman for more pizza, cards and wine and we happily passed our last couple
of hours travelling as a trio. The goodbyes
to Pete and Andy were somewhat eased by the fact that we were touch and go to
make our respective buses – theirs further south down to the bottom of Bolivia
to Tupisa for a horse-riding excursion and then onto Argentina; mine all the
way back up North to get back to Peru and back to my original itinerary, with
the added slight complication of working out how I make up the 10 days that I
spent in Bolivia that I wasn’t supposed to.
With my only solution looking like having to skip Ecuador, and spending
US$1200 not being an option to fly, I am facing a LOT of bus time to try and get
to the top of Colombia as quickly as possible.
Look at a map and you’ll see I have a huge distance to cover – good
times ahead!
Anyway, I boarded my bus to La Paz in the nick of time, with
the hope that when I arrived in 12 hours’ time I would be able to directly
transfer onto another bus back across the border into Cuzco another 12 hours
later so I could get to Machu Picchu.
I’m not going to work it out because I don’t think I want to know the
answer, but I’m pretty sure at the end of this trip I would have probably spent
as much time on a bus than off of it!!
But without the luxury of a ton of cash as the flights are ridiculous,
it’s the only way to see this massive continent. So being the great bus buddy that I am, the
first thing I manage to do to the guy that I had to sit next to for the next ½
day was spill the spaghetti Bolognese I was handed all over him! And then about 2 hours later had to wake him
to get past him to go to the bathroom. I’m
not sure if his departure from the bus about midway was because he was where he
needed to be or he was just sick of me, but either way I was extremely stoked
when I had 2 seats to spread out a bit more on and try and get some sleep
seeing it was the middle of the night.
Eventually we made it to Cuzco, and I was very pleased that
my hope of jumping straight onto another bus worked nicely and a coffee and
breakfast later and I was back on-board for another 12 hours, and back to
Eco-Packers where we had spent Christmas.
So now, as this is getting relatively lengthy again and I’m
only about halfway through – never mind the amount of photos I’m going to bore
you with - I’m going to sign off and start a new post, as it only seems worthy
that the biggest tourist attraction of South America – Machu Picchu, get its
own feature.
Ctrl S, Ctrl N – hasta luega!
xx
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| what's that Junior?! |
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| Swinging at the train graveyard |
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