| Dec 9, 2005 - Travel to Uyuni, Bolivia
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 | | show all 15 | | The majestic Mt. Illimani from the airport arking lot | | Mt. Illimani and the lot, once again | | Another mountain (or maybe the same), now from the air | | |
| The day more or less worked out as planned, just a bit slower than we would have liked. I was traveling with Ami, an Australian girl who was on my Lake Titicaca tour, Griet, a Belgian girl who was on the same tour with us, and Nick, and English guy we met in the hostel.
We took a taxi to the airport, which at over 4,000m is the highest commercial airport in the world. So although it stink to have to blow all this extra money on a flight, and just the fact that I have to break the consistency of travelling overland for my entire trip, I guess its cool to say that I've flown from this airport. We also got some cool pictures of the mountains from right in the airport parking lot, and from the airplane window. It was a gorgeous day and the short 30-minute ride to Sucre was spectacular.
In Sucre the 4 of us bargained for a private taxi, which took us 2 hours to the city of Potosi. I had my iPod and car adapter so that the trip a bit better. But the guy I think was actuallyjust learning how to drive stick or something, cause he did not get the concept of changing gears. We would be going up a steep hill and barely having enough to make it, and he would try to change to the next gear. Then the car would start sputtering and he would curse it and look at me like "Man, what a crappy car huh?".
Anyway, we get to Potosi by about 2pm, and the next bus on to Uyuni isn't until 6:30. Nick gets off here and finds a hostel because he had plans to meet a firend here. So the rest of us take a bit of time to get some food and see some of the city. I know that people say you should avoid political demonstrations of any kind, especialy in a country like Bolivia, but it was an accident. On the walk from the bus company office into the city center we walked right through a huge demonstration for the same presdential hopeful, Evo, that I wrote about in the other entry. It was just interesting and nothing happened, but we were a bit cautious for second walking by.
We take our bus, which takes almost 2 hours longer than they said it would, and we finally get into Uyuni and check into our hostel at 1am.
By the way, later on in my trip I met other people who were in the same situation in La Paz trying to get to Uyuni, on the same day as us. Some people I know actually made the trip by bus the exact same morning that we flew. They went to the bus station and bought their tickets in the morning. A few hours later when we showed up the police had told the bus companies they were not allowed to sell any more tickets because of the road blocks. We also met people that we able to do the trip again the next day. So we just got caught in the few hours, it seems like, when the trip was undoable. Go figure. I was told by those who did it by bus that it took 6 hours instead of 3 to get to Oruro, they had to do some interesting off-roading in a bus almost to get there and avoid the blocks, and some men came on the bus to collect money from everyone just to let them pass. But it worked for them, and could have been an interesting experience to go through. Anyway, I thought the flight was cool. |
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