Luxury Travel

On Saturday night I took my first night bus. I have avoided them thus far, because they are not always safe and it often means arriving in a new place at some ungodly hour. So I decided I´d take my first night bus in Bolivia. Yeah I know, but it was actually a tourist bus running between La Paz and Uyuni. Uyuni is the starting point for all excursions into the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia´s giant Salt Flats.
The bus left La Paz at 9pm, it was the nicest bus I´ve travelled on, with plenty of tv´s, a toilet and drinks and food were served. Although of course I declined the latter, knowing it would only make me travel sick.
I settled into my reclining seat and thought, "um this is pretty good". Until about 2am it was a relaxed journey, I didn´t sleep but then it´s hard to when you are travelling through a new country. The bus went through a number of drug check points, all without hassle. I was starting to drift off when the whole bus began to shake violently. I thought, this stretch of road is bumpy. I tried to settle back into my pillow and snuggled into my complimentary blanket, but the problem with luxury travel in Bolivia is no matter how many pillows you have, you can´t avoid the fact there is no road between La Paz and Uyuni!
A "luxury" bus can´t handle the all terrain road, so for the next 5 hours we jolted in our seats at every large rock encountered. Amazingly I didn´t feel sick (I didn´t even need to use the old E.T neck extension trick), that is until I used the toilet. I was knocked from one side of the cubicle to the next, trying to find the toilet seat was the main problem. Of course when I returned to my seat I felt sick, I actually sat with the driver for a bit, until he sent me back to my seat. I thought we must have reached the end of the journey, oh no it was time to serve breakfast!
Eventually we arrived in Uyuni, looking like earthquake victims. I was met by a lady, I expected the tour was to begin soon. She led me to a small tourist shop and then told me to sleep. Yes sleep. I said actually I´m okay, it was 7.30am. But she kept on insisting, so in the end I reluctantly lay down on the one sofa, unfortunately it was in the shop window. I was awoken a few hours later by some tourists wanted to book an excursion with me.
Eventually after getting an exit stamp for Bolivia, I was collected by my guide Alexandro in a 4 x 4. We collected the rest of the group from another shop in Uyuni. There were about 30 tourists waiting to be collected, typically the 4 x 4 I was in was filled with Polish tourists, no offence Barbara, but they were not a very friendly bunch. I made an effort introducing myself but was met with a wall of indifference. So instead I chatted with Alexandro, well I should say he spoke with a strong Bolivian accent and I nodded a great deal, partly because of the bumpy road.
Luckily from lunchtime onwards I met some very friendly people, who I ended up spending most of my time with.
Driving out of Uyuni, we arrived at the Salt Flats within 40 minutes. It´s an incredible otherworldly place. The whiteness is so bright it´s impossible to see anything without sunglasses. I took a lot of photographs but had no way of knowing if they were any good or not, as I couldn't´t see anything on the display. On our first day we visited a hotel made of salt, everything inside is made of salt, including all the furniture. From there we travelled onto an island in the middle of the salt flats covered in cacti, were we had lunch.
The whole three day experience was great, the landscape of the Salar de Uyuni is amazing, at times it was hard to believe I was in such a poor country. With such natural beauty, Bolivia is a country of much contrast.
I´m now in San Pedro, a desert town in Northern Chile. It´s very beautiful and it feels a little like a film set, with all the adobe buildings and sand dunes. It´s lovely and warm in the day and cool enough at night for jeans. Perfect weather as far as I´m concerned.
Unfortunately there is no broadband available in San Pedro (something about being in the middle of the desert), so adding photographs is difficult at the moment.