BUS TRIP BEDLAM!

Well bus trips so far had been fairly amicable, relatively comfortable and trouble free.........however Bolivia is a little different to most countries and so our tolerance needed to be adjusted!! Arriving in Uyuni was pretty easy but as we mentioned before its a flea bitten scorched part of the earth so we needed to escape on whatever mode of transport was available. fortunately for us our tour guide pointed us in the right direction and we managed to get tickets to leave directly for La Paz.......

Now "directly" becomes a subjective a word.....

So we get on the bus expecting 12 hours of pretty torturous road and the probability of it being pretty cold (this was the expectation set by all the people we had met.....oh and it would be a bit bumpy!)

We set off having met some pretty interesting types at the bus hut, a couple of scandinavian people being redirected from Chile and some brazilian guys looking to party ...we think!.....after about 30 minutes most people hat gone to sleep even though the road was like being rattle over a 100km stretch of cattle grid!! Oh and the brazilian guys had there one or two drug related smoking incidents come to light which caused some excitement.

A couple of hours passed when we had a puncture stop for an hour, waking everyone with sound of mallets, crowbars and luggage being thrown out the way. This unexpected delay, apparently gave the driver the green light for a Rally style attempt at the land speed record to make up time between some god forsaken place and La Paz......i´m not kidding about 80 mph across the most rediculously bumpy dessert, that shook you to the core. After 5hrs of spine shattering endurance though, it seems the human body just decides its in for a power massage and sends you to sleep. So after all the trials, panic and times of being petrified, 4hrs of sleep induced power kneeding sorted us right out.

We arrived in La Paz ahead of schedule by 1hr, a little scared, a little tired and little taller but what a cracking experience eh!