Monday, August 18, 2008

Uyuni - or How I got my nose broken

In good old backpacker fashion, I'm getting behind on both my blog and my diary. Not to mention my laundry... So anyway, right now I'm in Cuzco, Peru, my belly full of a barbecue we organised with the coolest travellers and I'm gonna reserve tomorrow for catching up with my diary and stuff and then move on to Arequipa. BUT, I'm not giving up on writing a blog entry for each town I visit. So, ladies and gentlemen, without too much further adue; UYUNI. (written back then in warm Coroico).

...6 layers of clothes later (2 socks, 2 jeans, 2 longsleeved t-shirts, 3 sweaters, gloves and hat) (ok, maybe more than 6 layers), we stepped into the jeep with 3 other guys; Mark the american, Steve the Irish and Jasper the Dutch. They're a cool bunch, though only Mark opened up quickly. Steve is also getting there, but Dutchie is still quite reserved. It's hard to describe the trip, for it was mostly amazing landscapes after amazing landscape. (google Salar de Uyuni) I was still ill the first day, so I didn't do so much socializing with our 3 new friends. I'm not sure exactly when I started feeling better, but surely it started when I swallowed pill after pill. The first stop was on the train-cemetary, which wasn't bad, but felt touristy in the sense that what we really were here to see, was some salt flats. Also, we bumped into a bunch of the Dutchies from Delft (RSP) which I deftly avoided. The 2nd stop was even worse, just some tourist souvenir shops, I stayed in the car. We also immediately understood that the several jeeps just followed each other so we ended up just nodding to the recurrent french chick (not the nicest) and an indian chick (much nicer) we had met before at Uyuni, she's cool. We started joking about 'stalking each other' quite early on. Next stop was the Salar de Uyuni (oh no, first the salt museum, also boring) where we took all the classic warped perspective pictures. I think we spent the rest of the day driving through more outer-world landscapes. Two notable episodes: one, I tried to pee outside the jeep and couldn't do it while everyone watched. Quite a funny sight. The second story, is when our driver and the cook (actually husband&wife, how cool!) stopped ta the Chilean border where their son was stationed in a military base guarding the border. I managed to pee behind a wall there. Then, back in the car, the married couple seemed to have a slight marital argument (from the facial expressions, it seemed to me that the mother was being sad and motherly about their son, while the father was being stoical and manly). It was really endearing, and nice, to, for a moment, step outside the tourist paradigm and participate (specate) into real life of Bolivia. That first night, my head was about to explode again. More pills. Go to sleep. Oh wait, that night, we also went outside to look at the stars, which was amazing! Amazing... The sky lit. so full of stars, so tightly packed, like a paint-by-numbers mozaique. Intense. With the stellar fog (nebulae?) and all, I felt connected to the rest of the galaxy, instead of just looking at bright lights on the sky's wallpaper.


DAY 2

The 2nd day, we headed to the laguna's. Although the first cool part was when the jeep had to cross train rails which were on top of a berm. So we had to all go out and watch the jeep attack the obstacle like it was built for. Then first laguna, 7 flamenco's. 2nd laguna, more flamenco's. Third laguna, probably more flamenco's and some llama's. The llama's were cool. I felt the irresistible urge to chase them like you chased pigeons as a kid. Then a mirador with cool rock formations where we took another set of cool pictures. Then to the famous rock tree, and across the Chilean border where a red laguna awaited. Massive, in a C-Shape. With many llama's and again, you guessed it, flamenco's. Arrived at the sleeping place quite early, socializing with the other groups, after a dinner with provided children-musical entertainment ("Una collaboracion para material scolar, por favor"). Then they turned on a stove around which we all gathered. That's it. my speakers are playing, Steve just got Rum and Coke, and I'm off to sleep. The say it gets very cold. When people in Uyuni tell you of a place that's even colder, you know nature's gonna fuck you up.


Day 3

I actually almost liked the third day the most, for the reason most people disliked it: the last day was almost entirely about just driving through the every-changing landscapes of Bolivia. You could read, sleep or look out the window, the wow-view was always eerily waiting outside your window-side. I liked it because we didn't stop every 20 minutes for a fotoshoot ("Sacar fotos, diez minutos" says our guide every time). It felt more purposeful to drive through an amazing country with a destination in mind. Rather than our guide stopping the car (again), anouncing the photo set's name ("laguna something something"), and get back in, next. Don't get me wrong, we saw some amazing things and I'm grateful for each stop but the vibe was different, kind of like that coke ad of 4 young people just half asleep on a train ride, perhaps back from a concert, and life is good.

Ok, but the other thing that really made that 3rd day was the hot springs. Did you notice the word HOT in there? (No you didn't, cuz you're sitting at home in a warm cozy sofa!) Today might be the first time that the word HOT made it's appearance in my diary. And I'm not talking about the kind of hot that the hostel clerk promised you about the showers. No I'm talking jacuzzi-hot baby! I took some guts to undress. You see, it was sunrise, Uyuni-cold and we had been woken up at 5 am to see the smoky geysers. But once inside the water (and we were among the first), OH-MY-GOD. SO good. So divine. We were excited like little kids. At some point Dim and I just wrestled for fun. Then we played freesbee a bit. And then we just contendly stared at the growing number of bikini-clad travellers making their first steps into a pool of such orgamic warmth that their facial expression left no doubt. A time like that, I wishes I was a Natural. It was a situation that begged to be fulfilled in fantasy-like fashion. And what's more, the scenery was just... if anything, this was a pure Sigur Ros moment. Sun rising over a meadow of grass and little offsprings of the water, melting the morning ice as they spread through the landscape of flamenco's and llama's. I must ask the other 3 guys for their most beautiful pictures of that one morning. Bolivia, it nothing else, is simply the most outerworldly place I've set foot on, or dipped my toes in.

That last thing which marked the third day is how my nose got to be so painful. We were crossing through the gravel roads near Uyuni at high speed. The road was flat and elevated a good meter or two above the surrounding land. I ws reading the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy when out of the corner of my eye, I notice another grey tourist jeep, clearly about to overtake us. I wasn't worried until that jeep clipped us wit it's tail, banging against our front side, jamming us off the elevated road, and we just dived off the to the right. Me sitting at the rear left end, I'm rocketed againt the roof, only to land back and smash my face against ammu's rock-hard knee. My glasses flew around, the cartlilage in my nose punched-massaged and my upper teeth felt it too. All credit must go to Simon, our hero-driver who got us though all this alive. And for deciding after a look around (checking if everyone was fine), to catch up with the mother fucker in the other jeep, yelling "Vamos vamos" before shifting and pushing the pedal to the metal. The other jeep had stopped ahead. Some of us claimed that it had only stopped because it had tourists inside it too. Personally, I'm not speculating about the morals of the other driver. It was an accident, he apologized, nobody got hurt and we all got a piece of adventure. Funnily, that same day, Ammu and I had discussed the concept of 'adventure' that we all travelers are after. The conclusion was that although 'out-of-context-ness' was clearly a central element, it needed als an element of danger or 'dramatic obstacle' to be called an adventure. And there we had it. Our life-threatening puzzle-piece to complete our 3 day adventure through one of the most remote place on earth. And tonight, clean-showered and buffet-fed in tropical Coroico, we splurged into pure out-out-contextness, overlooking the safe universe.

Tal Benisty

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