What a Trip

So this weekend I went on a trip to the Salar de Uyuni. It was pretty stressful last week trying to plan a trip through a country I hardly know anything about to a place I’ve never been. It was also hard because we don’t have internet at the house and even then, it’s hard to find bus times, tours, and hotels. Luckily, my host mom helped us out a ton. Praise the Lord! She has a nephew in Uyuni who was so kind to find the four of us a hotel, meet us at the bus terminal at 3:30 in the morning, bring us to our hotel, and help us find a tour. We had to take 2 buses. We took the first one to Oruro, Bolivia. It’s smaller than Cochabamba and was not very pretty at all. It was very dry and there was garbage everywhere. However, the ride there was comfortable and very pretty. Once we got out of Cochabamba, we drove through the mountains. It was also very interesting to see because there were little villages in literally what seemed like the middle of nowhere! Most looked pretty poor with brick houses with tin and rocks holding down the tin as roofs or mud houses with mud or straw roofs. What would life be like there? Wow. At one point, Rebekah and I saw a lady leading a cow in the middle of a field by a mountain with absolutely nothing around. We had to laugh because it was just so random to see! But really, where is she coming from? Where is she going? What is she doing? So interesting.

We had to wait a while for our bus to Uyuni while we were in Oruro. We went to some hot springs about an hour away, which was very relaxing. The bus ride to Uyuni was probably one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. It was a 7 hour bus ride through the night on a pretty old, sketchy bus. The trip was almost entirely on an unpaved road. My body was jostled more than it ever had been! I was convinced that these were not roads; we were just off-roading. I thought that the ride better be worth the trip there. We were in the very back on seats that didn’t recline. We were going up in altitude and the bus was filled with dust from the dirt road, so it was hard to breathe. I was suddenly thankful for bathrooms on coach buses and paved roads. The last 2 hours were hard because I got a stomach ache, though it wasn’t too bad. We finally made it and got to our hotel, which was very comfortable.

So the people here had been warning us about how COLD it is there. Plus it’s winter right now. I was expecting this place to be like a tundra, so I brought with lots of clothes and a couple blankets. It wasn’t bad at all! The night we arrived was pretty bitter cold, but after that it was probably 50 degrees F. They must have just meant it was cold for Bolivia! We toured all day Sunday, left that night, were on 2 buses (MUCH better than the way there), and arrived back in Cochabamba on Monday morning. Vale la pena! (It is worth it!)

Rebekah and I

With an crystal! You can even see it dripping

I tasted it!

Bolivia lovin'

There was this cactus island with a couple llamas!  I was creepin on this cute little girl. Since the "ll" makes the  "y" sound, she said "llamas, llamas!" It was so cute

That's a lot of salt!