bolivia - holy schmoly!

the past three days have seen their share of highs and lows. i will, as per usual, document everything in as fine detail as possible!

we left san pedro de atacama at 8AM in the morning, changed some money into bolivia bolivianos, and then took a van over to the edge of the chilean border. the driver dropped us off there, and we went through customs to get an exit stamp. while we were waiting for that, there were two dogs that were fighting and running into everyone in line. super scary! meanwhile keith was pretty much playing with them. on yet another scary note, when it was our turn with the customs agent, everyone seemed to notice (but me) that he had a gun beside his keyboard. lovely!

our driver then drove us to the bolivian border, where we had another breakfast of ham sandwiches and bread with jam, and we were introduced to our driver, alberto. he looked about 22 and drove a red land cruiser that looked like it had been through several beatings.

i rode shotgun for the day while the others sat in the back (and often times, smacked their head in the ceiling due to all the bumps in the road. actually road should be in quotations... it was more semi-well-worn dirt paths). we went to a lot of the sites in the park - there was the laguna blanca (the white lake), the laguna verde (the green lake), hot springs, a bunch of rock formations, and around 2:30 we ended up at laguna colorada, which had a bunch of flamingoes.

the night in laguna colorada goes down probably as my second worst night of sleep of all time. first of all, laguna colorada was high in altitude - 4528m to be exact. so, we were not feeling too hot between the headaches and dehydration and being winded. second of all, it was FREEZING!!! we were all wearing about 6 layers of clothing. outside it was about -10C at night, the common room where we ate dinner it was 10C, and our room was 0C. at one point, we were so desperate for warmth that we snuck into another building that some british people were staying in that had heat. sweet mother!!!

meals were very strange. for lunch we had tomatoes, cucumbers, and hot dogs. for dinner, we had vegetable soup and pasta, which many of us got heartburn from.

at night, the five of us shoved three beds together and made an elaborate sleeping bag. yes, keith was the lucky guy in the centre!!!! :P it was impossible to sleep - between it being really cold, and it being kind of hot under so many blankets, heartburn, headaches, altitude sickness and our various sleeping habits (moaning, my snoring, others heavy breathing, tossing and turning), and it being pitch black, it was a really really bad night. second only to me and amelia{s night in marrakesh when we had no air conditioning, it was 50C and our room was filled with bbq exhaust smoke.

in the morning, none of us were too happy and we got back into the 4x4. this second day, we saw lots of rock formations and geysers. we also ended up in a town called copacabana for lunch - another small indigenous town with lots of low adobe huts. at night, we ended at the salt flats and stayed at a cute salt hotel! everything was made out of salt, save for the bathroom (thank goodness for that). we were happy to have a hot shower and hot tea, as well as some fairly good food. (we had llama chops for dinner! whoa!) most of us had a very solid sleep - it was great to sleep on a mattress again! kavitha and i lucked out with a room with two single beds with SPIDERMAN sheets. sweet.

today we are in uyuni. we spent a lot of time on the salt flats taking ridiculous photos, taking advantage of the fact that it is a large white surface and perspective is completely skewed. the salt was really neat - it looked like an endless mass of snow - except that it wasn{t cold! it was a strange juxtaposition of salt and cacti! we also went to the original salt hotel, which has now been converted to a museum (it is loosely called a museum - it had a lot of salt sculptures). apparently, the salt hotel had been condemned because of sewage problems. using their bathroom for 5 bolivianos, i could see why - it was repulsive!

afterwards, we stopped at an area where there were piles of salt - this is where they do salt mining.

we ended up at a random town for lunch - there was chicken and pasta. keith managed to eat an entire chicken!

we also went to a train graveyard before landing in uyuni. tonight, we will be heading on an overnight bus to la paz - a solid 11 hours. eeek! until then!