5th - 8th September - Uyuni to Santa Cruz, Bolivia
We´ve made it to our last port of call in Bolivia, Santa Cruz (ah...ah...ah...ah - or something like that by The Thrills that Mummy keeps singing over email to us!!)
We took a rather sweaty and extremely stinky cramped bus from Uyuni to Potosi (the highest city in the world). Beautiful place, unfortunately tainted by my rushing to and from the baños with unpleasant frequency! About time I got my dose - 8 months without any bother is pretty good going!!
Potosi is famous as the silver mining centre of Bolivia, where people (as young as 13) are still working in hideous conditions down the mines. Meanwhile, the rest of the city busied themselves looking chic and wealthy.
After our extreme bus stench we decided to exploit our relative wealth and spend 2 squid each on a shared taxi for the 3 hour journey to Sucre. Amusingly, our other passenger was a well-to-do looking elderly chap who stopped the car at any opportunity to buy bag loads of cakes from the hawkers. Literally bag loads!! The driving style was entertaining since the whole journey was spent at erratically different speeds, not bearing any relationship to the course of the road! Often in neutral down hill slowing to snails pace, then winging round hairpin bends at 80kmh!!
Sucre is another beautiful colonial town and being much lower we were able to shed our silly hats!
After bus and taxi we decided to really go the whole hog and take a 35 minute plane to Santa Cruz, rather than the 15 hour bus journey on offer. We're getting rather pinickety in our old age!!
Santa Cruz (ah..ah...ah) is a massive modern city, very unlike anywhere else we've seen in Bolivia, and best of all I'm eating and retaining again! Hurrah!!
The hostel here is great, delicious breakkie - complete with resident toucans and parrot!
In an attempt to travel in as many ways as poss we have booked an overnight train to the Brazilian border. Tomorrow morning we should be ready to hit the Pantanal region of Brazil - a wetlands area bigger than France apparently with more wildlife spotting opps than any other place in S.America! Lush!
We took a rather sweaty and extremely stinky cramped bus from Uyuni to Potosi (the highest city in the world). Beautiful place, unfortunately tainted by my rushing to and from the baños with unpleasant frequency! About time I got my dose - 8 months without any bother is pretty good going!!
Potosi is famous as the silver mining centre of Bolivia, where people (as young as 13) are still working in hideous conditions down the mines. Meanwhile, the rest of the city busied themselves looking chic and wealthy.
After our extreme bus stench we decided to exploit our relative wealth and spend 2 squid each on a shared taxi for the 3 hour journey to Sucre. Amusingly, our other passenger was a well-to-do looking elderly chap who stopped the car at any opportunity to buy bag loads of cakes from the hawkers. Literally bag loads!! The driving style was entertaining since the whole journey was spent at erratically different speeds, not bearing any relationship to the course of the road! Often in neutral down hill slowing to snails pace, then winging round hairpin bends at 80kmh!!
Sucre is another beautiful colonial town and being much lower we were able to shed our silly hats!
After bus and taxi we decided to really go the whole hog and take a 35 minute plane to Santa Cruz, rather than the 15 hour bus journey on offer. We're getting rather pinickety in our old age!!
Santa Cruz (ah..ah...ah) is a massive modern city, very unlike anywhere else we've seen in Bolivia, and best of all I'm eating and retaining again! Hurrah!!
The hostel here is great, delicious breakkie - complete with resident toucans and parrot!
In an attempt to travel in as many ways as poss we have booked an overnight train to the Brazilian border. Tomorrow morning we should be ready to hit the Pantanal region of Brazil - a wetlands area bigger than France apparently with more wildlife spotting opps than any other place in S.America! Lush!
posted by Polly and James at Thursday, September 08, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home