The next morning we were relieved to see that our landrover was one of the better looking ones and that along with a driver we also had a cook. In our group, along with the Irish couple, Aaron and Aofie, there was also a Canadian couple, Jeff and Winny, making eight of us altogether. We squeezed in, with bags tied to the roof and set on our way, first stop the train graveyard.
The train graveyard in only a few minutes outside of Uyuni and as the name suggests it consists of a whole lot of abandoned trains. The trains were once used to transport minerals to Chile, Argentina and La Paz, however in 1985 the venture was discontinued and the trains abandoned. Their carcasses form a vivid reminder of the severity of the elements in the desert, creating a stark contrast against the barren landscape and making for some cool photos. We played around here for 20 minutes or so before heading on our way towards the worlds largest salt flat.
As a result of it being the end of the wet season in Bolivia, a significant amount of the salt is covered in water, most of the time there is only 5cm or so, however some parts were unaccessible because of the water. Although the water stopped us seeing some things it did create amazing reflections and the mountains in the distance all appeared symmetrical and as though they had curved bases which was cool. We stopped at one point to get out of the landrover and take some photos. My boots were still wet from stuffing them in a plastic bag after our Worlds Most Dangerous Road ride so I braved bare feet, and although cold my feet had a nice exfoliating experience. We jumped back in the landrover and headed towards the salt hotel in the 'center' of the salt flats which was to be our lunch spot. While waiting for our lunch to be cooked we played around doing illusion photos. As a result of the size of the salt flats and the lack in many places of any visible mountains, the horizon and the sky blur together, this along with the sparse landscape allows for many fun photos that play with size differences to be taken. We played around with Mike standing on my hand, Me on my bear, Claudia Bongo's head, Mike eating a car etc - lots of fun!
After lunch of salad, meat and quinoa (a very popular grain eaten here), we were on our way. Normally the trip would continue over the salt flats to an "island" that is covered in 1000 year old cacti, however because of the level of water on the salt we were unable to do this and instead drove through the desert for three hours to a small town literally in the middle of no where. About two and a half hours into the drive I started to feel quite sick, at first I put it down to motion sickness from which I have suffered a lot during this trip, however the roads were relatively straight and I didn't feel like I normally do. I was right in thinking it wasn't motion sickness and as soon as we arrived at our hostel, well more mud house, I rushed to the bathroom and was violently sick. As the evening progressed I continued to be sick, unable to keep even water down. Thankfully Jeff, the Canadian guy on in our group was a doctor, providing all the drugs I needed, only thing was I was unable to keep them down. In the end taking the anti nausea rectally was the only option, but even that didn't help and it was a very long night as even with nothing in me I continued to be sick. Jeff was again a life saver providing reassurance when I was vomiting up blood, apparently I had been vomiting so much that my stomach was moving up and causing tearing.
The next morning we made the decision that we had to discontinue our tour as I was just too sick to continue. Unfortunately we were in the worst possible place for me to get so sick. The town could have been in the wild west with tumble weed blowing though, it really was the middle of nowhere. Our driver informed us that there was a bus coming through that would take us to Uyuni at 10.30 so equipped with a few plastic bags just in case my stomach decided it could find anything else to get rid of, I made my way with no strength whatsoever to the main road that ran though the center of town. Although I was in such a sorry state I could still appreciate the beauty of the place we were in, a little desert town with snowcapped mountains in the distance and not a cloud to be seen in the sky. 10.30 came and went with no sign of a bus, some locals informed us that the bus was actually at 11 but that too passed without any dust moving down the road towards us. We made the decision to make our way to the main road that bypassed the town and attempt to hitch a ride to Uyuni, although the road was only 200m away it was a hard move for me to make and took out of me everything I had left.
With the wind sweeping though us we waiting beside the road for anything to come past and nothing did, and then on the horizon we saw dust and as it moved closer, two buses. The first turned off to go though the town and without waiting to see if the second would come past us or not Mike sprinted, with a large pack on his back, a small one on his front and at 3700m above sea level he was pretty much dead when he reached the bus but he made it and they waited as I pushed myself to the max and stumbled the last few meters. The bus ended up being on of the nicest ones that we had been on in Bolivia and I was able to sit next to an open window, meaning I made it to Uyuni in one piece. We checked back into the hostel we'd first stayed in and I crawled into bed, sleeping for the remained of the day whilst Mike waited, looking after me when needed and hoping that I'd get better. I was sick once more before falling asleep that night and awoke the next morning still not ready to attempt stomaching anything.
We had originally planned to catch an overnight train from Uyuni that evening to the Argentinean border, arriving at 7.30am the next day and then get a 7hr bus to the town of Salta in Argentina. Although I was still not well I was managing to keep down the antibiotics and as everywhere was at least a 10hr bus trip away we decided to sick to our original plan, and if still sick I could get to a doctor in Salta, or get a flight to Buenos Aires and go to a British hospital there. That evening before our train, I manged to have half a glass of orange juice and a little bit of salad and keep it down which was a good sign. My biggest worry however was that we would get backwards facing seats and my motion sickness would kick in. Thankfully our seats faced forwards, they reclined a good amount and the train was relatively empty allowing us each to have two seats. This, along with the fact I hadn't really eaten for two and a half days and the gentle rocking of the train resulted in a pretty decent nights sleep and I awoke just before we arrived at the border with a renewed sense of life. Thankfully Mike had also slept well as he had been looking after me wonderfully for the past few days, which had nonetheless taken it out of him a bit. We crossed the boarder with an English guy and an Australian girl, and Mike got a comment from the guys at boarder control about the All Blacks, who knows what it was in relation to but it was nice to have an easy and somewhat joyous border crossing.
At the bus station I guarded the bags and Mike went in search for the earliest bus to Salta. Turns out when people want to sell tickets they lie about the departure time so instead of a 5 minute wait, we had a 45 minute wait. Our bus finally pulled up and we got on board, two hours later however just as I had fallen asleep we stopped and were told to get off the bus and get our luggage. Turns out it was a police drug checkpoint, they had news paper articles on the wall declaring how they had seized 90kg of cocaine, obviously the big stuff they were after. They were however going through everyones luggage, now some people on our bus had literally 6 plus huge bags of clothes and the police were pulling out every item, I saw one lady with a huge bag of shoes and the police man checked every single shoe before chucking them on the ground for her to repack. We were dreading having to open our carefully packed bags, things don't really seem to be fitting unless we actually put some thought into our packing, perhaps we've bought a bit too much... Mike went first and slowly unzipped his pack, unfortunately the police man seemed interested and stated pulling some things out, he was rather interested in a little box we had bought that was made purely of salt but soon realised that it wasn't made of cocaine and let Mike close up his bag. I went next and while the policeman checked my passport I was busily undoing the clasps on my pack. He however wasn't interested in me whatsoever and thankfully didn't even want to look in my bag. Mike thinks he was pulled up because he's Maori and they were racial stereotyping, I think it's the beard... We continued on with no more trouble, had an hour stop in Jujuy and another 2hrs on the bus before reaching Salta.
On first appearences Salta was a lovely city with a distinct European feel, and during our couple of days in the city, these first impressions didn't falter.After a long day and night of travelling and the fact that I still hadn't eaten anything for a very days, we were both ready to get something to eat and the have an early night. Finding somewhere however was hard as one thing that takes a bit of getting used to in Argentina is the time they eat dinner, 8.30pm is considered early and a lot of restaurants wont even open till then. We eventually found somewhere and I ate my first proper piece of food in three and a half days before we crashed and slept for nearly 13hrs. I awoke feeling like I was definitely on the mend, stomached some breakfast and then we set upon the day, first task getting some laundry done. We wandered the streets enjoying the changing leaves, which after experiencing countries that have wet and dry seasons is something lovely to see and I have been marvelling over the effects of autumn. We then headed to the bus station to book our 21hr trip to Buenos Aires, we opted to travel in premium class with fully reclinable seats and champagne served on board. With tickets sorted for the following afternoon, we caught a cablecar up a mountain to a lovely park that provided panoramic views of the city. We stomach rumbling we returned down to the city and headed to another park where we had a nice picnic under a bougainvillea with sandwiches overflowing with amazingly creamy blue camembert, salami, avocado and tomato.
That evening we went to try some Argentinean steak, many claim that the steak in Argentina is the best they have ever had so we went with high expectations. Our hostel had recommended a place and suggested that we only ordered one piece of meat, as I still wasn't eating much we took their advice and are very glad we did. The piece of meat we ordered was as long as Mike's forearm and nearly as wide the two together, I could only manage a little and Mike finished it up. Our verdict was that although good it wasn't amazing, so therefore we are still searching...
With the morning before we had to catch our bus spare we visited an archaeological mountain museum which displayed the very interesting story of Inca child sacrifices, left atop mountains, the exhibition also included one of these children - they have three altogether and switch then periodically. The boy was around 6 years old and was so well preserved from the cold that his hair and skin was still fully intact, rather fascinating.
We boarded the bus and were thrilled to discover that our seats actually reclined into flat "beds"! Time passed relatively quickly due to the constant showing of films in English and I managed to achieve a pretty decent nights sleep. We awoke the next morning stopped at a petrol station in a city four hours outside of Buenos Aires. Some of the passengers were getting rather frustrated, we'd also had a long stop the night before, and it turns out that there was a problem with the water on the bus causing us to have delays, and they had known about the problem before we had set out. We eventually got back on the road and arrived into Buenos Aires just after midday with no more problems.
Both myself and Mike fell instantly in love with the city, which although is the largest we have been in, feels peaceful and calm. Although tired from travelling we decided to head to the suburb of Palermo, where we wandered though the streets, sat with a glass of wine and watched the world go by, browsed a handcraft market and watched some street performers dance tango. Returning to our hostel filled with the magic of Buenos Aires we fell asleep without dinner, awaking with hopes of more amazing experiences.
We weren't disappointed. Being a Sunday one of the cobbled streets is closed to traffic and an antiques market runs. The traditional antique stores are more sporadic than they once were and now handcrafts and tourist items also line the street and intermittently a busker performs. With glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice in our hands and the smells of sugar coated nuts filling the air we weaved between throngs of people, out enjoying the autumn sun. We purchased CD's from the buskers, handmade jewelry from the jewellers themselves, and a photograph displaying a part of the city. When our stomachs started to rumble we stopped at a pub sharing a meat and cheese platter and a salad, along with a glass of wine for myself and a whiskey for Mike - he's been waiting to try some for ages to see if he actually likes it; the verdict is no. We rounded up the day buying Mike some new jeans as his are falling apart and cooking a simple tomato and tuna pasta sauce.
I'm falling asleep writing this but know if I put it off for another day there will just be more to write. We're off to Uruguay tomorrow for a few days before having a couple more days to further explore Buenos Aires and then it's South Africa. I can hardly believe these three months are about to be over, it only seems like yesterday that they began.
Ilona
The train graveyard in only a few minutes outside of Uyuni and as the name suggests it consists of a whole lot of abandoned trains. The trains were once used to transport minerals to Chile, Argentina and La Paz, however in 1985 the venture was discontinued and the trains abandoned. Their carcasses form a vivid reminder of the severity of the elements in the desert, creating a stark contrast against the barren landscape and making for some cool photos. We played around here for 20 minutes or so before heading on our way towards the worlds largest salt flat.
As a result of it being the end of the wet season in Bolivia, a significant amount of the salt is covered in water, most of the time there is only 5cm or so, however some parts were unaccessible because of the water. Although the water stopped us seeing some things it did create amazing reflections and the mountains in the distance all appeared symmetrical and as though they had curved bases which was cool. We stopped at one point to get out of the landrover and take some photos. My boots were still wet from stuffing them in a plastic bag after our Worlds Most Dangerous Road ride so I braved bare feet, and although cold my feet had a nice exfoliating experience. We jumped back in the landrover and headed towards the salt hotel in the 'center' of the salt flats which was to be our lunch spot. While waiting for our lunch to be cooked we played around doing illusion photos. As a result of the size of the salt flats and the lack in many places of any visible mountains, the horizon and the sky blur together, this along with the sparse landscape allows for many fun photos that play with size differences to be taken. We played around with Mike standing on my hand, Me on my bear, Claudia Bongo's head, Mike eating a car etc - lots of fun!
After lunch of salad, meat and quinoa (a very popular grain eaten here), we were on our way. Normally the trip would continue over the salt flats to an "island" that is covered in 1000 year old cacti, however because of the level of water on the salt we were unable to do this and instead drove through the desert for three hours to a small town literally in the middle of no where. About two and a half hours into the drive I started to feel quite sick, at first I put it down to motion sickness from which I have suffered a lot during this trip, however the roads were relatively straight and I didn't feel like I normally do. I was right in thinking it wasn't motion sickness and as soon as we arrived at our hostel, well more mud house, I rushed to the bathroom and was violently sick. As the evening progressed I continued to be sick, unable to keep even water down. Thankfully Jeff, the Canadian guy on in our group was a doctor, providing all the drugs I needed, only thing was I was unable to keep them down. In the end taking the anti nausea rectally was the only option, but even that didn't help and it was a very long night as even with nothing in me I continued to be sick. Jeff was again a life saver providing reassurance when I was vomiting up blood, apparently I had been vomiting so much that my stomach was moving up and causing tearing.
The next morning we made the decision that we had to discontinue our tour as I was just too sick to continue. Unfortunately we were in the worst possible place for me to get so sick. The town could have been in the wild west with tumble weed blowing though, it really was the middle of nowhere. Our driver informed us that there was a bus coming through that would take us to Uyuni at 10.30 so equipped with a few plastic bags just in case my stomach decided it could find anything else to get rid of, I made my way with no strength whatsoever to the main road that ran though the center of town. Although I was in such a sorry state I could still appreciate the beauty of the place we were in, a little desert town with snowcapped mountains in the distance and not a cloud to be seen in the sky. 10.30 came and went with no sign of a bus, some locals informed us that the bus was actually at 11 but that too passed without any dust moving down the road towards us. We made the decision to make our way to the main road that bypassed the town and attempt to hitch a ride to Uyuni, although the road was only 200m away it was a hard move for me to make and took out of me everything I had left.
With the wind sweeping though us we waiting beside the road for anything to come past and nothing did, and then on the horizon we saw dust and as it moved closer, two buses. The first turned off to go though the town and without waiting to see if the second would come past us or not Mike sprinted, with a large pack on his back, a small one on his front and at 3700m above sea level he was pretty much dead when he reached the bus but he made it and they waited as I pushed myself to the max and stumbled the last few meters. The bus ended up being on of the nicest ones that we had been on in Bolivia and I was able to sit next to an open window, meaning I made it to Uyuni in one piece. We checked back into the hostel we'd first stayed in and I crawled into bed, sleeping for the remained of the day whilst Mike waited, looking after me when needed and hoping that I'd get better. I was sick once more before falling asleep that night and awoke the next morning still not ready to attempt stomaching anything.
We had originally planned to catch an overnight train from Uyuni that evening to the Argentinean border, arriving at 7.30am the next day and then get a 7hr bus to the town of Salta in Argentina. Although I was still not well I was managing to keep down the antibiotics and as everywhere was at least a 10hr bus trip away we decided to sick to our original plan, and if still sick I could get to a doctor in Salta, or get a flight to Buenos Aires and go to a British hospital there. That evening before our train, I manged to have half a glass of orange juice and a little bit of salad and keep it down which was a good sign. My biggest worry however was that we would get backwards facing seats and my motion sickness would kick in. Thankfully our seats faced forwards, they reclined a good amount and the train was relatively empty allowing us each to have two seats. This, along with the fact I hadn't really eaten for two and a half days and the gentle rocking of the train resulted in a pretty decent nights sleep and I awoke just before we arrived at the border with a renewed sense of life. Thankfully Mike had also slept well as he had been looking after me wonderfully for the past few days, which had nonetheless taken it out of him a bit. We crossed the boarder with an English guy and an Australian girl, and Mike got a comment from the guys at boarder control about the All Blacks, who knows what it was in relation to but it was nice to have an easy and somewhat joyous border crossing.
At the bus station I guarded the bags and Mike went in search for the earliest bus to Salta. Turns out when people want to sell tickets they lie about the departure time so instead of a 5 minute wait, we had a 45 minute wait. Our bus finally pulled up and we got on board, two hours later however just as I had fallen asleep we stopped and were told to get off the bus and get our luggage. Turns out it was a police drug checkpoint, they had news paper articles on the wall declaring how they had seized 90kg of cocaine, obviously the big stuff they were after. They were however going through everyones luggage, now some people on our bus had literally 6 plus huge bags of clothes and the police were pulling out every item, I saw one lady with a huge bag of shoes and the police man checked every single shoe before chucking them on the ground for her to repack. We were dreading having to open our carefully packed bags, things don't really seem to be fitting unless we actually put some thought into our packing, perhaps we've bought a bit too much... Mike went first and slowly unzipped his pack, unfortunately the police man seemed interested and stated pulling some things out, he was rather interested in a little box we had bought that was made purely of salt but soon realised that it wasn't made of cocaine and let Mike close up his bag. I went next and while the policeman checked my passport I was busily undoing the clasps on my pack. He however wasn't interested in me whatsoever and thankfully didn't even want to look in my bag. Mike thinks he was pulled up because he's Maori and they were racial stereotyping, I think it's the beard... We continued on with no more trouble, had an hour stop in Jujuy and another 2hrs on the bus before reaching Salta.
On first appearences Salta was a lovely city with a distinct European feel, and during our couple of days in the city, these first impressions didn't falter.After a long day and night of travelling and the fact that I still hadn't eaten anything for a very days, we were both ready to get something to eat and the have an early night. Finding somewhere however was hard as one thing that takes a bit of getting used to in Argentina is the time they eat dinner, 8.30pm is considered early and a lot of restaurants wont even open till then. We eventually found somewhere and I ate my first proper piece of food in three and a half days before we crashed and slept for nearly 13hrs. I awoke feeling like I was definitely on the mend, stomached some breakfast and then we set upon the day, first task getting some laundry done. We wandered the streets enjoying the changing leaves, which after experiencing countries that have wet and dry seasons is something lovely to see and I have been marvelling over the effects of autumn. We then headed to the bus station to book our 21hr trip to Buenos Aires, we opted to travel in premium class with fully reclinable seats and champagne served on board. With tickets sorted for the following afternoon, we caught a cablecar up a mountain to a lovely park that provided panoramic views of the city. We stomach rumbling we returned down to the city and headed to another park where we had a nice picnic under a bougainvillea with sandwiches overflowing with amazingly creamy blue camembert, salami, avocado and tomato.
That evening we went to try some Argentinean steak, many claim that the steak in Argentina is the best they have ever had so we went with high expectations. Our hostel had recommended a place and suggested that we only ordered one piece of meat, as I still wasn't eating much we took their advice and are very glad we did. The piece of meat we ordered was as long as Mike's forearm and nearly as wide the two together, I could only manage a little and Mike finished it up. Our verdict was that although good it wasn't amazing, so therefore we are still searching...
With the morning before we had to catch our bus spare we visited an archaeological mountain museum which displayed the very interesting story of Inca child sacrifices, left atop mountains, the exhibition also included one of these children - they have three altogether and switch then periodically. The boy was around 6 years old and was so well preserved from the cold that his hair and skin was still fully intact, rather fascinating.
We boarded the bus and were thrilled to discover that our seats actually reclined into flat "beds"! Time passed relatively quickly due to the constant showing of films in English and I managed to achieve a pretty decent nights sleep. We awoke the next morning stopped at a petrol station in a city four hours outside of Buenos Aires. Some of the passengers were getting rather frustrated, we'd also had a long stop the night before, and it turns out that there was a problem with the water on the bus causing us to have delays, and they had known about the problem before we had set out. We eventually got back on the road and arrived into Buenos Aires just after midday with no more problems.
Both myself and Mike fell instantly in love with the city, which although is the largest we have been in, feels peaceful and calm. Although tired from travelling we decided to head to the suburb of Palermo, where we wandered though the streets, sat with a glass of wine and watched the world go by, browsed a handcraft market and watched some street performers dance tango. Returning to our hostel filled with the magic of Buenos Aires we fell asleep without dinner, awaking with hopes of more amazing experiences.
We weren't disappointed. Being a Sunday one of the cobbled streets is closed to traffic and an antiques market runs. The traditional antique stores are more sporadic than they once were and now handcrafts and tourist items also line the street and intermittently a busker performs. With glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice in our hands and the smells of sugar coated nuts filling the air we weaved between throngs of people, out enjoying the autumn sun. We purchased CD's from the buskers, handmade jewelry from the jewellers themselves, and a photograph displaying a part of the city. When our stomachs started to rumble we stopped at a pub sharing a meat and cheese platter and a salad, along with a glass of wine for myself and a whiskey for Mike - he's been waiting to try some for ages to see if he actually likes it; the verdict is no. We rounded up the day buying Mike some new jeans as his are falling apart and cooking a simple tomato and tuna pasta sauce.
I'm falling asleep writing this but know if I put it off for another day there will just be more to write. We're off to Uruguay tomorrow for a few days before having a couple more days to further explore Buenos Aires and then it's South Africa. I can hardly believe these three months are about to be over, it only seems like yesterday that they began.
Ilona
And here's hoping you stay well for the final few days of an action packed trip. Thanks! xx Mum
ReplyDeleteThis is a fantastic blog Ilona! I love it :) I am so doing this when I go overseas. Like a diary online.. I think the boys (benj and his bro) will be keen to do a joint one.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me so excited about travelling!