4 x 4 Experience

After a crazy journey which included getting off our bus while it crossed a river on what looked like a huge floating plank we found ourselves in La Paz, the world's highest capital. We set off to explore the Mercado de Hechiceria, otherwise known as the Witches Market where they sell such delights as shrivelled llama fetuses (apparently burying one under your house will ward off evil spirits . . . don't think I'll be testing this myth out) and whole preserved frogs with stones in place of their eyes, I haven't got a clue what they are for . . . in place of an ornament maybe?!

So after an action packed day exploring the city we set off on what looked as though it could be the best night bus yet; lots of leg room, reclining seats far away from the smelly toilet, an english film, dinner provided . . . things were looking positively radiant. That is until we heard a massive bang and the bus came to an abrupt halt. All the passengers, including us, looked at each other with rather worried expressions, however it turned out to just be a flat tyre which the driver fixed and we were soon on our way again. We hadn't gone much further though when we heard an even louder bang, another flat (have I mentioned that our driver was driving like an absolute lunatic on unpaved roads?!) . . slight problem, we only had one spare tyre which we had already used. At this point we were about 60km from our final destination, however, that was obviously too far to drive on a flat tyre so we turned round and drove 40km in the wrong direction to the nearest cluster of homes.

So, at 7.30am about 35 westerners descended onto this tiny town in the middle of nowhere in search of toilets and water, much to the surprise of the local community. Meanwhile our bus driver started to attempt to fix the tyre. He pulled and pushed but couldn't get the tyre off the rim. He tried using long iron rods, he even tried lubricating it with cooking oil, but nothing happened. The minutes turned into hours and the sun started to beat down on the dusty little town. We were all getting hot, smelly and pretty irritated. The driver roped in some of the locals to help him in his impossible mission and even some of the passengers gave it a go but to no avail. We were starting to get a bit fed up, we had after all been sitting on the side of the road for about four hours by this point when suddenly a spare tyre arrived, the bus was fixed and we were finally on our way. Not quite the perfect journey we had expected.

We eventually arrived at our destination and jumped into a 4x4 . . .we were off to explore the Bolivian countryside. And what a countryside it is . . .we spent three days driving through some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen. From the enormous salt flats; a dazzling whiteness spreading out as far as the eye can see in every direction to the dusty desert with Dali style rocks appearing in the middle of nowhere to explosive geysers and boiling, popping mud pools. It was all simply stunning.

The highlight of the trip was still to come though. On our final morning we were to visit the thermal pools in an attempt to warm up our chilly bones (the temperature dropped to about -20C at night, brrrrrr!). Arriving at the thermal pools we found about 6 other car loads of people had had the same idea and were already warming up in the hot water. We were just about to jump out of the car and join them when our driver muttered something to us in Spanish and continued driving. None of us spoke Spanish so feeling a little disappointed we just settled back to continue enjoying the amazing scenery.

Our driver stopped the car in the middle of nowhere and getting out we discovered that he had brought us to our very own private thermal pool. So, while he got down to cooking our breakfast we relaxed in the hot water whilst admiring the splendid views. Perfect! Wasn´t quite as much fun getting out of the lovely hot water and trying to dry ourselves as quickly as is humanly possible in the freezing cold air. It was so cold that our swimming stuff actually froze during the time it took us to eat our breakfast!

The thermal pool was definitely the highlight of my trip, however, Adam preferred a different section. We arrived at our first accomodation late in the afternoon and our guide (who spoke no English) muttered something about a cemetry and pointed to a spot in the distance saying 5 minutes and doing a miming walking action. Having nothing better to do we decided to go and find out what he was going on about. To my horror and Ad´s delight we stumbled across as ancient burial ground. The term burial ground might be a bit misleading here as the people hadn´t actually been buried at all but rather put into hollowed out rocks. Peering inside we could clearly see the skeletons which were crouched over in foetal positions, in the clothes they had been buried in hundreds of years before. It was far too real for my liking however Ad loved it.