Due to the way that this page posts things according to date and time...please read the next blog before this one...it is the first half of the story...this is the second half...'episodes' I guess I called them...I realize that this is quite retarded, but as it happens, so am I when it comes to computers at times...so there it is!! Please read Salar De Uyuni: Episode 1 first!!
As we left the last part of the story, we were headed into a mighty day of 4x4 breakdowns! The day before, the driver of the other Jeep in our excursion, who normally goes by Juan, but whom I dubbed "The Black Rider Of Doom" after his seemingly endless run of vehicle destruction caused by recklessness over bumps and excessively high speeds upon tremendously poor roads, had gotten a flat tire which we had to fix. (How's that for an opening sentence!!) That meant that we at least should have expected to have some problems on the road. We didn't really, and so at least for a while they came as a humorous surprise...later they were just humorous. The first one of the day was good old Juan having another flat tire. We came upon him and some other guys trying to use a jack to push up the jeep body. It was a tiny red hand-jack and they had it balanced on top of a couple foot-high mound of rocks. There where two guys under the car and it was sort of swaying back and forth on the rocks. All us whities looked at each other with that "We're about to watch someone die!" look. That time they got the tire changed with not too many troubles. The next time we came upon them, they again had the car balanced on rocks but this time it fell down with two Bolivians underneath it which created a moment of panic followed by a lot of sighs, and again, eyerolling. The jeep went down, but so did the guys underneath it and so it just avoided crushing them. The problem this time was that the shock rails had come undone and so they could no longer drive over the huge bumps and ruts. We needed to brace car up high so that someone could hammer these rails back into sync. After about twenty minutes there were probably thirty people from other jeeps just sitting around watching, so I gathered them and we manually lifted the jeep on oneside high enough to get a propane canister (!!!) propped under the back of the jeep. These guys are nothing if not unconcerned with the idea of fiery death!!! We got it fixed, but that same problem was to replay itself a couple more times throughout the day.
The third time we came upon The Black Rider Of Doom, he had just about flipped his jeep over and had gotten stuck in the mud. He was reaching for the stereo and got distracted. We pushed him out of it. About the time that we were supposed to be having lunch, problems started in our own jeep. At first it was the gasoline filter and then it was the carburator. We had been the last jeep to go, so we were far behind at this point and there was no one to help us out. It ended up being me and Santos out in the boiling heat of the afternoon repeatedly taking apart the carburator and filters and cleaning them out and then replacing them. We could then get a ways before the problem would repeat itself. After a long series of breaking down and then getting going again, we found a few of the guys from the other jeep walking back towards us. They had been coming to help in the car, but then they too broke down again and so we had to go help them oncemore! It was four in the afternoon before we ate out lunch, and we ended up doing it in the middle of the goddamn desert!! It tasted all the better for it though, and I must admit that we did have a great group of people, everyone laughing instead of getting mad and we really turned it into an adventure. This day was the turning point though. Everything following that morning was rough and did not go smoothly at all. We ended up being over three hours late, so we had to really cruise to make it to Laguna Colorada and we where late so we missed the famed sunset there. Laguna Colorada may not be colored at all, we only saw its reflection of the moon in the dark of night. Because we were so late to camp, it was full. We had to drive even further to find a place to sleep. We had a late dinner and all of us giggled our way into sleep. We all six shared a room that night and it was like a big slumber party. Cold as hell at over 15,000 feet of high desert altitude. The stars shown like silver fire and we marvelled through chattering teeth at all the southern constellations that shivered above us. We awoke at four AM the next morning to get a good start. Since everything had gotten screwed the day before we wanted a little spare time to get things done and to get a head start. Anna the cutey and Doris had to catch a bus at the Chilean Border crossing and then the Aussies had to catch an eight PM bus back to La Paz. My train wasn't until ten-forty so I had time. At least in theory.
Before light that morning, we had arrived at a series of geysers, steam outpourings and paint pots of boiling mud. Think Yellowstone Park, but in Bolivia. It was amazing to come upon these things in the half-light of dawn. The steam was hot, but not hot enough to burn the skin and you could actually stand in the jet-vapor as it plumed upward. It was bone cold up at that elevation and we were all waiting for the sun and sitting close together in the jeep to create heat. The sun came up as we rolled into an area where you can swim in a natural pool of hot water. A thermal bath. There were people gathered there in the first light of day; the steam rising off the water and the chatter of ten different languages, all quietly happening in the new day. We had a sparse breakfast and again we were off. The previous day we had had a chance to view many pink flamingoes, and that day we saw many more. We stopped at many lagunas of different colors, the mountians rising off them and creating interesting colored reflections. At one point, in the sky we spotted a cloud that was a perfect hollowed out square. Gabe took a picture of it and captured the whole environment in one quick mouthful, "Dali would have loved this."
We dropped the Swiss lassies at the border and began to hoof it for Uyuni. We knew we would be close making the bus deadline, and with our luck in the jeep we knew we were likely doomed in our mission. We broke down a couple more times that day, but were able to make decent time. With about three hours to go to Uyuni, we came upon a hilarious adventure. There was a broken down jeep by the side of the road with a group of locals standing around it. One, an old man, approached and asked if he could ride into Uyuni with us. He turned out to be a drug runner and had quite a story. I am not going to tell this story online, but ask me later, and you will laugh hard. As we made our way back to Uyuni, he and our driver started getting along famously and soon they had stopped to by a 12-pack of beer. The old guy started pounding them back and when he was done with one he would open the window and chuck the empty can out onto the road. You could have followed us just by the trail of our cans, that's how much the old bastard drank. Our driver had three and was opening a fourth when I asked him to wait until we made it to town. He seemed stunned, but he obliged. A different way of live there in Bolivia. There were many more adventures on this trip but I will refrain from telling them on this blog because of how long it takes to write them all, and then also because it is christmas eve and these bastards are about to close their cybercafe...it's almost like they want to stop working or something!! Ha Ha.
Well, we made the bus, barely. Got the Aussies on their way and then I set about getting my pack and the ticket I spoke of before. That night I rolled out into the moonlit darkness in an old, squeeky train. Heading south to the Bolivian bordertown called Villazón. I slept for a couple hours this night, that was it. I expected to be across the border and into Argentina by ten AM that following morning...but...when we arrived in Villazón, it was discovered that my pack never made the journey. So now I had to wait for it to somehow get there. That was after the three hours it took for these guys to find it. That was a charade of cell phones and miscommunications...Bolivia really is something, even when you're almost in Argenitna nothing works right. Long story short, I got my bag and somehow got through the chaos that is the double border crossing. At one point I couldn't get money because the only ATM in Villazón didn't happen to work that day. A guy I just met pulled me through the gauntlet into Argentina to an ATM in La Quiaca. Then we crossed back to pay for my ticket. All this happened with no stamps on my passport at all. That is how easy it would be to cross. No one noticed either way!! A couple hours later I crossed legally, with the search and the stamps.
One thing that I must mention is that in all the scurrying for my bag I got hungry and wandered into a random bar/restaurant in this bordertown and as I sat down, these two Irish looking guys nod at me and I'll be goddamned if one of them isn´t that guy I wrote about earlier from the Uruguay Boat Trip Episode named Consi!! The guy who suggested the briliant idea of having a domestic vote in the US for the domestic policies of the president, and then having a global vote to decide who would run the American Foriegn Policy Leader. (Dare to dream right??) This guy that I met randomly on a boat across the Rio Plata...I see in some dive bar in a random border town. It was a trip. We really are brothers, in looks and in common mind. We had a great talk again over lunch and then we tossed ourselves back into the fray, not knowing when we would meet again, but definately knowing it was certain that we would.
By the time all this shite had happened, I decided to go back to Buenos Aires instead of going to Mendoza. I will be there for quite a while later, and I needed to get back to Buenos Aires for the holidays with friends. So at eleven PM that night, I was scheduled to take a very long bus ride to the capital. It began to rain at eight and by eleven, almost all the buses en route to the border were running late. Mine ended up arriving at twelve-thirty and it didn't leave until an hour after that. They tell you that it takes twenty-four hours to get to Buenos Aires, but it actually takes thirty-two. So I spent two nights and a full day riding on a bus to get here to Buenos Aires. I had a large woman and her four year old daughter sitting with me. That little kid was all over us like a goddamn jungle gym, I resisted for a while, and then just gave in. We must have watched eight movies on that bus. We sometimes stopped to eat, and then sometimes we would just continue on with growling tummies. I was the only gringo on that damn bus, and now I know what it is like to travel in the third world, South American style! I arrived this morning early and cabbed to my good old hotel. It was just like coming home. What a relief. The weather here is summer, unlike in the high elevation reaches of the Andes. Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires. I am going to cut this one off at this point. As always, there was a lot more that I wanted to write about, but it is time to call it a day. I wish you all a happy holiday, whatever it is that you are doing. You are special people in my life and I miss you this season of holidays, even if it is hot as hell down here...take care of yourselves and each other, it's quite a thing is it not? Love, Matt
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