I may have been a bit over enthusiastic about how wonderful Bolivia is in my last post, today we saw the real Bolivia. We were up very early in order to leave La Paz before the traffic started, and because we had a lot of ground to cover. At 5.30 am we heard a big commotion outside and opened the window to see about 200 Bolivian Army soldiers quick marching past the hotel, in bright red uniforms, singing at the top of their voices.
Unfortunately La Paz was in thick cloud when we left, so we never got to see it properly, apparently it is a wonderful place. Once we cleared the city the sun came out and it was a fast 350km slog on good roads across a wide plain with mountains to each side.
After we stopped for lunch everything went pear shaped, firstly we wanted to top up with fuel as we knew it would be at least 300kms before the next fuel station, however there was a queue of about 200 local people all with plastic containers wanting them filled. We would have been there till tea time. Then the tarmac ran out a short while later and we were onto gravel roads of very questionable quality. When I say questionable what I really mean is atrocious, no, worse than that. We slogged on for 200 kms or so and it just got worse and worse. Ironically we had to keep leaving the road to get onto sandy tracks which sometimes run alongside and are marginally smoother. And then there is the dust, everything just gets caked in it, inside and out.
The driver, who shall remain nameless (me) made a minor error on one of these excursions and mistook a river bed for one of the sandy tracks, ending up stuck. Bear in mind that we are miles from anywhere, off the main road and up to our axles. As luck would have it we managed to flag down an elderly Belgian couple, both well into their seventies, in a Toyota 4x4 and they towed us out. Never again will I say a bad word about the Belgians. Or old people.
The roads didn't get any better and the "washboard" was becoming really wearing, the car was developing new rattles which were drowning out the sound of the rattles we had before.
We eventually made it to the Salar de Uyuini, better known as the salt flats. This is a quite unbelievable place and yet another "In The World". These are the biggest and the highest salt flats I.T.W. and measure about 10,582 sq kms, aproximately.
We drove out about 10 kilometres and all we could see around us was salt, apparently 10 billion tons of it, and it was totally silent. It is weird to see such a wide expanse of featureless flatness. We didn't stay to long as salt and Morris 1800's don't go well together.
Our hotel was up a long track, even more bumpy than before if that's possible and we arrived just after sunset. Guess what the hotel was made of...salt! The whole place is made of salt, the reception desk, the floors, walls, furniture, the lot. How salty is that?
To add a bit of seasoning (geddit?) to the situation, some of the Dutch crews are bitching heavily to the organizers about the terrible roads this afternoon because their cars got wrecked and are demanding a solution. Pussies.
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