Renate & Mirko descubriendo América Latina ...: first impressions of Bolivia

Welcome!

Hi to all of you! Welcome to our Blog! We are looking forward to our journey and we are also looking forward to telling you all about it :-) That's maybe because we are sadistic (yes - defenitely) but it could turn out that instead, we will show you - from time to time - how nice, cosy and warm it can be at home in comparison to freezing in a tent on a mountain or getting soaked by rain while waiting for the d... bus to pick us up in the middle of nowhere... depends on the places we will stumble into, the people we will meet and the experieces which are in wait for us.... So everybody of us can be a winner at some point in time during our journey! don't miss it when it's your turn at home :-) And ... don't you forget us ! You can be sure that we will miss you all ....

Saturday, 2 June 2007

first impressions of Bolivia - from Arica to Uyuni

Hallo,
we have survived about one week in Bolivia and we are still in posession of all our luggage ;-).

The journey from Chile into Bolivia first to Oruru and then further south to Uyuni (all of them in the Altiplano above 3.600m) was characterised by delays, breakdown of the bus, a hard struggle to assure that our luggage was carried in respectively ON the same bus as we were, and the experience of the most horrible night-busdrive. We bought a ticket for a busride of 8 hours with heating inside the bus...the first time we got suspicious was, when all the locals entered the bus with at least two or three blankets..it still didn´t make click in our heads when a man in the bus sold blankets (????) ... and for this naivity we got punished with a 10 hours ride (20:00 - 6:00) in a freezing cold bus (there was ice on the windows INSIDE the bus of 3mm thikness), the windows were not closing properly, seats were bad and worse, no toilet, strange electric cables dangling from the ceiling (?...better don´t touch) and it was pitch dark, the roads were horrible and we thought that
a) the ride was never going to end
b) we will never arive alive but instead frozen to death
c) at least we will loose some of our toes or fingers due to freezing
d) did I really pay my travel insurance which will fly me home in case of severe health problems?
e) we are going to kill everybody especially the woman who sold us the busride "WITH" heating
f) it would be best to rob the blanket from the weakest passenger in the bus
g) maybe we should have bought some drugs before
h) wether we should have written a testament before leaving home
i) if at the end of the busride there is a "Plaza Hotel" with rooms for 400 USD the night we will take it! No argueing!
and:
WHO the hell had this bluddy, stupid idea of travelling through south america ?

Unbelievably we arrived with a bodytemperature probably below 35 degrees C in Uyuni, took the best hotel in town with heating and slept under 5 blankets till we recovered.

Brrrr.....Renate & Mirko