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Other entries in Bolivia

bouncing along

first of 3 days above 4000m, on dusty washboarded roads to do a ¨must see¨ trip in south america: the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. I'll end up with the same photos I've seen a thousand times but I don't care, I have to go!

We cross the border into bolivia, an italian guy in our group gets me to pay for his entry to the country (he'll pay me back of course), confusion unfolds and in the end, he jilted bolivia out of 5 pesos. this was a nice trick, but requires fast comprehension of numbers, spanish and numbers in spanish. I excell at none of these so I won't be cheating bolivia out of anything...

the fist lake, lago blanco, is aquamarine blue surrounded by rad mountains of natural ochre. it's gonna take me forever to get pics uploaded so you'll just have to look at someone elses' site (all the pics look the same!). we get back into our jeeps. I'm with 4 girls (germany, usa, canada, france) but overall we are 3 jeeps and a fun group of 15 (adding australia,  more frenchies and italy to the mix).

at breakfast, the first thing the french girl tells me is she doesn't speak english and then wrinkles her nose like she just smelled dog pooh. wow. that is truly a first. I make a note to avoid her, but she sits next to me in our jeep the rest of the trip. she also talks to me in spanish which I can barely understand (I'm still such a dope with it!) but I can hardly complain about someone speaking the native tongue and I can only laugh at how random life is.

our driver has 2 cassette tapes (the first day this wasn't a big deal, but by the third....), one of boliviano salsa-esqe accordian-y pop, the other a mix of rod stewart, boy geoge, b-52s, abba and MORE!

I'm trying to take deep breaths to stave off the unavoidable headache. the car is full of dust,  we bounce along the washboards. we suffer in the car, then get out to see these indescribable sights - landscapes of nothing but rocks, wind-blown rocks, dust, brilliantly colored lakes, mountains, flamingoes, vicuna, and in the flat valleys (the size of south park in colorado), instead of one road, there are 20-30 tracks where the jeep drivers just go where they want to. these roads to nowhere are as fascinating as the scenery.

we stay the night at a research center on lago colorada ('colorada' was my nikename in lima so it was a great place to stay!), 4,500m and I can feel it. moderately interested in seeing the actual lake, tho I did run for a few meters. I also napped for 2 hours. 

we play with the resident kid of the Quechua family that cooks here. I let him play with my dinosaur but he tries to take it. we distract him with a balloon and from somewhere HE busts out the word 'volleyball'. he said things in quechua, spanish, english, french, german. pretty remarkable.

that night I sleep in a room with 5 other peeps and NO ONE snores. a small miracle.

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