South West Bolivia
Have just returned from my Jeep tour. Went with the two lads, two fun girls from Colorado and a **** of a girl from London.
The first place we visited was Salar de Uyuni - the Salt Lake of Uyuni. The local people collect the salt and sell it on when the water from the lake evaporates every winter.
That night we stayed in a little ramshakled town in the middle of nowhere so we naturally went down the local for a pint!
We went back to our "hotel" for dinner and afterward played cards and drank Puro. Puro is a
spirit containing 96% alcohol that the miners of Potosi drink and its pretty potent stuff - a litre of the stuff can be bought for the princely sum of one euro. As it turned out I forgot to get a sleeping bag and due to a dictionary malfunction asked the guy in the hotel for a shawl instead of a blanket. Rather drunk I fell onto my bed in the early hours and passed out. Bad things happened in the wee hours of the morning and i´ll not be drinking Puro again. Day two began with 4 of the 5 other people still talking to me - I never liked the girl anyway!
The next three days were mostly spend in the Jeep looking at blue and red and green and other kinds of lakes. We saw some geysers and some flamingos and some rocks and some other stuff too. Night two was the coldest - apparently it was -20 degrees outside and none of these places have heating. On the plus side I learned the correct word for blanket and wasn´t as cold again. We went to a town party on the last night (it was held in the parish hall). Bolivian dancing is a strange sight - I feel as if a former ancestor of mine invented it and brought it here. For a while they just face each other and dance without making eye contact, apparently the woman can´t leave the dance until the man does - and they can stay dancing for ages, not that they expend much energy doing it. They also have a dance called the Circle Dance where they dance in - surprise surprise - a circle!
The first place we visited was Salar de Uyuni - the Salt Lake of Uyuni. The local people collect the salt and sell it on when the water from the lake evaporates every winter.
That night we stayed in a little ramshakled town in the middle of nowhere so we naturally went down the local for a pint!We went back to our "hotel" for dinner and afterward played cards and drank Puro. Puro is a
spirit containing 96% alcohol that the miners of Potosi drink and its pretty potent stuff - a litre of the stuff can be bought for the princely sum of one euro. As it turned out I forgot to get a sleeping bag and due to a dictionary malfunction asked the guy in the hotel for a shawl instead of a blanket. Rather drunk I fell onto my bed in the early hours and passed out. Bad things happened in the wee hours of the morning and i´ll not be drinking Puro again. Day two began with 4 of the 5 other people still talking to me - I never liked the girl anyway!The next three days were mostly spend in the Jeep looking at blue and red and green and other kinds of lakes. We saw some geysers and some flamingos and some rocks and some other stuff too. Night two was the coldest - apparently it was -20 degrees outside and none of these places have heating. On the plus side I learned the correct word for blanket and wasn´t as cold again. We went to a town party on the last night (it was held in the parish hall). Bolivian dancing is a strange sight - I feel as if a former ancestor of mine invented it and brought it here. For a while they just face each other and dance without making eye contact, apparently the woman can´t leave the dance until the man does - and they can stay dancing for ages, not that they expend much energy doing it. They also have a dance called the Circle Dance where they dance in - surprise surprise - a circle!
posted by Sean at 12:42 am
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