The morning finds us looking around for a decent three day tour of the southwest corner of Bolivia – the salt flats (Salar de Uyuni), the colored lakes, and the volcanoes. The book has us weary of the mixed reports and poor safety record of the tour companies, so I keep insisting on talking to slightly more expensive companies with good reviews in the book. Unfortunately, all those are closed so we get in a random other office.
A middle-aged woman begins giving us a tired old routine of the tour itinerary in Spanish. Midway, a forty-year-old Bolivian man enters the office and explains everything again in what he calls “100% English from Miami”. It’s all pretty clear until we try to find out the price for a group of 4 as opposed to the usual group of 6 stuffed in a Toyota Land-Cruiser for 3 days of 8 hours driving each.
The next half an hour is spent looking at the man and woman tossing a calculator between them and murmuring in Spanish something about the number of people in the car, including or not including a cook and an English speaking guide, prices in dollars, prices in bolivianos. Even Alex with his very good Spanish is completely baffled. I’m thinking that if these people can’t figure out the answer to such a simple question, what’s the likelihood they know how to keep us safe and fed in the desert for 3 days. We let them figure it out by themselves and get out with no intention of returning.
After a bad lunch and some football on TV, we try our luck again. This time a few of the recommended tours are open. After an hour of listening to the same itinerary 5 times over while trying to judge the reliability of different people solely by their words and expressions, we finally settle on one of the more expensive companies. The woman promises us that we’ll be 5 in the car, not the usual 6, and we’ll have a cook in addition to the guide. We pay up and start looking for an Internet cafe.
It appears there are a few things quite hard to come by in Uyuni, at the edge of the high desert – water, cash machines, electricity, and Internet connection chief among them. I spend half an hour sending one 5-word email and give up.
One thing, there’s an abundance of, is bad pizza, so when we find a restaurant with a decent Margarita we enjoy it as if it’s worth a Michelin star. For all we know this will be our last decent meal for the next 3 days. Tomorrow at 10am we’re off into the unknown.
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Have you Bulgarianised the Bolivians? If not, why do they seem to be celebrating Carnival a week later than every other Catholic nation...or has it taken you a week to find an internet connetion
ReplyDeleteIt's actually all of the above -- one, I feel I'm doing a good job Bulgarianizing; two, Carnival here seems to go on forever (last night there was a procession in Potosi replete with dancers, drums and dynamite); and three -- yes, it's taken me that long to find internet.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know where you are today. My location, is case you are wondering, is precisely on the edge of my seat. Keep the posts coming.
ReplyDelete