Yup, we thought we were roughing it in Argentina, in reality we were just on Holiday there. We did eventually make it out of Chile and travelled 30 hours up to the north of argentina to Salta. Exhausted when we arrived!
The next 2 days are a bit of a blur consisting of Red wine, a terrible club call El Salon and a Taxi driver smoking something that was not in way close to legal while driving us to the club.We had an average of 2 hours of sleep a night if that and i blame this mainly on the 2 Irish Lads we met in the Hostal Terra Occulta where we were staying. When we arrived at 3pm (yes afternoon) the one, Keane, was just getting into bed from the night before and his friend P short for Peter who was in another room came out to say hello - not such a good idea in his state, i cant understand the Irish at the best of times but one who has not been to bed for over 24 hours is beyond by capabilities!
A surprise visiter was Laurence the Quebecan we met in Mendoza a few weeks earlier added to our 4 strong team and we headed out. If you are ever in Salta, do not, i reapeat, DO NOT, go to El Salon...what a terrible club with music that is impossible to dance to. It may have been because it was a Sunday (our last experience of going out on a Sunday night was the Gay/bisexual place in Mendoza previously mentioned) that is was so bad, who knows? Anyway, the following day was abit of a write obviously and that evening i went and had dinner with the Quebecans and got my French up to speed (sort of), Annelie and the Irish boys and Mike - the canadian we picked up in Bariloche who decided he would prefer to travel with us - arrived at around 2am and we drank more wine only to get to bed around 6am. Unlucky for me, this was the day i had to jump of a mountain - with a parachute obviously - in laymans terms, Paragliding. It was pretty God damned scary running for a cliff face with this massive parachute thing pulling you backwards but was amazing all the same. the wind picked up while we were up ther and i did get a little nervous when it started wipping the Chute around the place and the thermals started taking us higher and higher, adrenaline overload!!
We left that evening for the border town of La Quiaca (border with Bolivia)and this was offically on eof, if not the, worste bus rides of my life, and i have had a fair few. There was actually ice inside the window, i was trying to catch up on 3 days of lost sleep and came away with a wet cardigan (couldnt find my bloody travel pillow so had to try sleep on it). No Sleep and frozen we arrived at the border - it was then i think that we realised we were not in Kansas anymore. The people were much more indeginous and and they were not as friendly as further down south. An extremely painful and freezing walk down to the border (and out of Argentina) at 6am in the morning later, we found that Annelie was not allowed into Bolivia so we bid the Israelie and 2 Germans we met while complaining about the cold at the bus terminal, we ventured back into Aregntina to wait for the Bolivian consulate to open. Finally armed with a Visa a couple hours later and $30 less in the pocket than before. We ventures back across the border and finally into the Bolivian town of Villazon - dont go out of your way to visit unless you are using it as a crossing point. I think the fact that we had now had less than 5 hours sleep in 4 days and it was hot (surprisingly enough - Murphys Law i think, when you are hungover with no place to go - the sun will beat down on you with no mercy whatsoever)did not help the Paris and Nicole cause nothing,nada, f-all! The next bus (as we obviously missed the 9am one due to the Embassy milarky) was at 3pm - piping hot bus with no airconditioning, windows didnt open and there were some less than appetising smells radiating from some on the bus. Most of the bolivians and some lucky tourists had a bunch of coco leaves stuffed inside there mouths (made them look as though they had a golf ball in there)- this however did cause alot of spitting and coughing which was lovely. The fact i need the loo all the way was not good (bearing in mind that Tar roads have not quite taken off in Bolivia, you can imagine how comfortable that was.) This all sounds like i am complaining, im not at all, its all part of the experience and we have now eventually joined the world of the traveller rather then the holiday maker in Argentina.
From Tupiza we booked our 4 day Salar de Uyuni expedition which left on the morning of the 2nd May - our group consisted of Annelie, Mike (Canadian), Imri and Sowl (Israelies - diem for a dozen of them here, its unbelieveable), Gabriel (ironically enough he was the Quebecans i met through laurence on the fatefull night in Salta), the driver Marcus and cook Pelissa (i have no idea, it sounded something like that) and moi. So, 8 in the jeep, cook and driver in the front and 6 of us in the back (4 boys rememeber), pretty cramped! The jeep had no breaks so it was first gear all the way down all the gorges and mountains - pretty slow going - and the one window did not open either. So good start....:-) The first day was filled with views of Massive red and other multicoloured mountains, scary going with sheer cliff faces too close for comfort...really beautiful. The first nigh was spent in a tiny 500 strong village in a equivalent of a mud hut with one fairy light as the loght for the 6 man dorm room. Here is where the sleeping bag purchased from Ebay came into good use, as did the Peters Vodka (bought for 25 bolivianos about 1 quid in Tupiza)- it was around -5 degrees. The second day was filled with Laguna Verde and Blanco as well as volcano´s and more amazing scenery. We slept next to the Laguna Colorado (red lake) 4800 metres above sea level so pretty high! It was about -10 to -15 degrees that night, no hot (or even running water) and no heating obviously. When we left the following morning it was about -9 degrees, i have never experienced anything like that desert bone chilling cold in my life. I will write about the next couple days soon, my time is out on this PC.
xxx
