Bolivia

Hello all,


This is our first blog since hitting Bolivia about a week ago. lots has happened in this week. Firstly we crossed the Argentinian/bolivian border by foot, and straight away we could notice the difference between the two courties literally within 50 metres of crossing the border. The people look different, their stature was different, and all the women wear traditional clothes (and not even just for the tourists). The women wear these colourful pleated skirts, bright stockings and rubber sandals. Unfortunatly these women use these skirts to wipe themselves and concequently yolu can smell them from a mile off. All the women also have two long black plates of hair, and they use these to indicate their marital status. If they are tied together then she is marrried.

The other imediate change we noticed Bolivia was the public transport system. Unlike the wonderful bus system of Argentina, most of Bolivaia roads are one-lane gravel roads that weave in and out of the mountains, also they have roads blockades at least once a week (usually the miners protesting about working conditions). On the day we arrived there was one of these blockages so we found some other travels and took the afternoon train to Tupiza. That night we booked a tour to the salt flats and found accomadtion all within the space of about 30 mins... all seemed a little to easy.

So we set out on our salt flat tours on the 13/10/06 (Friday the 13th... which we joked at the time was a bit of a dubious date to start on.. it was.) The jeep landcruser was the same age as Ebs and had done about a billion kms on the clock, through salt.. and finally started after seriously the 12th attempt. Our driver was a Bolivian called Ricardo (champion but when asked whether he could speak English replied ¨Si¨ and that was pretty much the only thing we understood from him for the next four days.

The scenary we saw on the first day was pretty impressive, very barren mountainous land that looked kind of what you would expect Mars to look like.

All was going well until our landcruiser had a head on with a motorbike.

The roads that our driver was navigating were all single track dirt/rock/gravel/crater roads and were full of blind corners. At the exact moment we were coming around one of these corners, a motorbike driven by a 30 year old bloke, with 14 year old passenger, flew around and smashed into the front left hand corner of our truck. Ebs was of course kipping at the time, but Richo saw the whole thing and managed to let out a ¨shiiiiiitttttt¨ (not literally but almost) and curl into the foetal position.

Shit hit the fan.

We all jumped out of the truck to firstly find the older man unconscious on the ground with blood pissing from his forehead, as a result of cracking our windscreen with his unhelmeted head. The kid was silent for about the first 15 seconds, but then began to let out a series of groans whilst clutching his groin. Apparently Ricardo (our driver) had done some first aid, as when he saw the broken arm of the older man, was more than ready to try and put it back in place. The 30 year old had asked our driver to do so, and it was disgusting. OUr driver began grasped the hand of the patient, and started a series of rapid flicking movements, much like cracking of a whip, in a vein attempt to realline the bone. It was pretty disturbing to watch.

The kid was being tended to by Ebs and Sioned (a Welsh girl on our tour), and they quickly realised that the poor little champ was not in good form. There was a small amount of blood forming on the crutch of his trackpants, and we thought the worst. We all realised that both these two needed a hospital asap (with the 30 yearold having slumped over unconscious again), but the landcrusier was not drivable. THe impact of the bike had collapsed the front right hand corner of the cruiser, and the front left wheel was now locked against the car. We managed to find the jack and place it between the body of the car and the wheel and jack it out.

Another tour group then passed and, and after another 15 minutes of the guards flapping about talking to each other, they too had decided that the two patients needed doctors. Two Irish girls from the other tour were nurses, and managed to convince the boy that they need to examine his crutch.

The poor kid torn his scrotum open, and the remains of a ruptured testical were visible. They made sure the kid kidn´t know. Eventually we got them on there way in our jeep, and our group (6 of us) were left on the road for ¨no more than 30 minutes my friends¨.

So after about 4 hours they returned to pick us up and we beelined for our first night in a village.

The next few days were pretty amazing. We saw landscapes that seriously looked like they could in no way be real (as if someone had just managed to somehow photoshop them. The highlights of the second day revolved a trip to a green lake (from a reaction with the metals in the soil) a swim in a hot spring (there as a result of the volcanic activity in the area) and a night in another cosy little dorm.

On the third day we saw some pretty cool stuff, both green and red lake, with a phenominal capacity to mirror the surrounding landscape. All the lakes here were populated by hundreds of pink flamingoes that fed on the algae within the water... definitly got a couple of national geographic shots for sure.

The last day we got up to watch the sunrise over the salt flats, taking some pretty cool photos. Have just been kicked off the computer, but will try for more photos soon.

Ebs and Richo