(Altitude is in meters)
After we walked around the island and took some photos, we went over to another area of the salt flats.
This area of the salt flats is much different. Notice how there are all those geometric shapes on the ground. It was pretty interesting, they were all five or six sided... Why?
After hanging out here for a while, we headed off to the salt museum. It was rather lame, you had to purchase something from the grift shop to go in, and the inside was just poorly made status out of salt; not worth it.
As we made our way to a small town for lunch, we saw where they mined the salt. Apparently, they wait until it rains and they pull the salt into these large mounds, then harvest it when all the water evaporates.
We couldn't have gotten done with lunch any faster because a sand storm was coming in.
We then made our way into Uyuni, which is a somewhat large transit town in Bolivia. While we headed in, the wind was really picking up and the sand was blowing everywhere. Before we got into town, we stopped off at some broken down trains, nothing too impressive.
Our driver then took us into Uyuni and we went straight to the immigration office. Our driver, luckily, still had my passport; now I have to pay a $139US fee that all American citizens have to pay to get in. No problem, just need an ATM. Well, the wind is so bad that none of the city has electricity... Ok, I have some travelers checks; every bank is closed until 2:30pm, it is now noon. So we waited in a cafe in an attempt to escape the wind, not the cold, can't get away from that. Well, the banks don't take travelers checks. So we went to money exchangers, neither do they, even the ones that had signs outside that said, "We cash US travelers checks," didn't. I was getting pretty frustrated. We finally found some guy that said he wouldn't because his phone was about to die. Francisco said something in Spanish and next thing we knew he was on the phone calling in the checks. Thanks goodness. I took the money and got my passport back.
Afterwards we proceeded to the bus station and I got a ticket to Potosi. Potosi, is really known for two things: being the highest city of the world (13,500ft) and the legendary silver mines.
Since we had about 5 hours to wait for our buses, we just hid in another cafe and didn't do much else aside from talk and read. Unable to take it any longer, we left and just walked around. Francisco couldn't have put it any better, "this has to be the most depressing city in the world." We were bundled up to our eye balls, and each road was looking worse and worse.
We came across an Internet cafe that was being run by a small generator and headed in. I just used the time to book a hostel in Uyuni, as I knew I would be getting in late.
Eventually, it was my time to catch the bus. Once again, I waved goodbye to two new good friends and set off too star anew. The weather has already been pretty crappy and I hope it gets a little better; if there's one thing I hate on this planet, it wind, and there is plenty of it in Bolivia!
From what I read, this bus is supposed to take 7-8 hours, landing me in Potosi at 3am. Somehow, the bus ride was barely 4 hours. Fine by me. I got to my hostel, and was welcomed by a little heater in the corner; this might as well have been gold to me! Since I got in late, everyone in my dorm was already in bed. As I was putting my stuff away, one of the girls started to talk to me, asking me where I was from, where was I coming from, etc. Her and her friends were all from Santiago. It turned out that they are following the same path as I, except they are about a day or two ahead of me. Unfortunately, they are going on the silver mine tour early tomorrow and then catching a bus to Sucre. Since the one I was talking to was the only that could speak English, before we went to sleep, I said "Buenos noche chicas, hasta mañana," (goodnight girls, see you tomorrow) and then a buenos noche echoed back to me. A moment in the life of Hugh Hefner.
No comments:
Post a Comment