…take an old sardine can, glue on some wheels, sellotape an old partially functional gearbox underneath, add two engines – one of which should be loosely connected to the gear box – the other through an error in the laws on physics should be placed in a locker considerably smaller than the engine itself. Tie 25 backpacks to the top, add a bunch of tourists and shake violently for 16 hours!
That is how you get to Uyuni, near the end of the earth, Bolivia!
Our trip started in Puno, Peru (where we had spent the previous day on Lake Titicaca on the floating islands of the Uros people whose homes and lives are intirely intertwined with the totora reeds on which they live) at 8am…ummmmm…yesterday I think!
From 8 to 11am we drove alongside the beautiful Lake Titicaca, through border control and onto Copacabana (where music and passion are always in fashion…thanks to Barry Manilow!) – not the real one but a very pretty Bolivian version.
After a break to visit the famous cathedral we transferred onto a 1950s Mercedes bus. After an hour we breifly changed modes of transport to a small boat as our bus bobbed its way across the lake on a barge.
By 5.30 we were descending into La Paz, and running late for our connecting bus. The bus driver dropped us off on the side of the motorway and we ran across to get our next bus.
We were delayed as 3 men, 2 children and a dog tried to insert the second engine into a locker under our bus with the aid of a tree branch and the vibration of the idling bus. I am sure that the engine is now an intergral part of the bus and the two shall never be seperated. From there it was a mare 16 hour ordeal to drive from one end of Bolivia to the other.
It turns out that the roads designed and etched into the the desrt by engineers are marely a suggestion and the preferred route is to plough a new track through the low scrub 20 to 100 metres either side of the existing road. Rim deep in sand (dust actually) the bus fishtailed and bounced its way through the desert.
Keryn was ejected from her seat four times to a generally safer position on the floor! We were both amazed to arrive in one piece at 10am and astonished that the back of the bus arrived at all! Between laughing hysterically we were both REALLY hurting from being continuously thrown about.
