Mother H

The last days in tupiza were spent mulling about with Mariano and Lucas (argentineans) and Eilleen and Joel (Aussie/Brit). We all hopped a bus to La Paz because they were headed for Peru and La Paz was the only other place I could go at the moment. All the other roads were still blocked. I overdressed for the bus ride, assuming it would be, like everything else in Bolivia, unheated. Dead wrong. I baked like a clam under my 6 layers of clothing as the woman behind me courteously adjusted my lumbar with her feet.
It was in the middle of this hellish experience that I began to feel sick. By the time I stepped off the bus 12 hours later in La Paz, I knew things were going to get worse. I quickly said goodbye to my travelmates (who I'll be meeting again in cuzco) and took an offer by a hostel hawker. Made the trek to the hostel and got an ubelievable deal - private room with cable TV and breakfast for 7 dollars. I was going to need the comfortability. I spent the next two days in bed (with the exception of a doctor's visit) dry heaving and familiriazing myself with the bathroom decor. The homecall doctor was busy treating a cocaine overdose so I found another doctor who diagnosed me with either salmonella poisoning or gastrointestinal staphylococcus infection. yikes. Never been so ill in my life.
I'm pretty sure it was that medium-rare llama steak I ate in Uyuni.

The next to last day of the desert tour our group stayed in a hotel on the edge of the salar de uyuni - at 7,000 sq. miles the world's largest salt flat. We were all glad to finish somewhat early that day because the two previous days had been long. Ou guides took us to some lovely sites but were always hustling us to leave as soon as we arrived.
That night was the 18th, the day before my birthday - the Argentineans and English/Aussie wanted to stay up until 12 to celebrate it even though we were leaving the following morning at 5 to catch the sunrise.
We met several groups of English in our hostel - one small group of very cool girls and the other a massive group of 20-somethings. I can only describe them as English frat boys and sorority sisters.
I tried not to drink much because of our early departure time - but my travel mates didn't help. Eventually, I found myself outside in the sub-zero temperatures at 4 in the morning with no shoes on. A move I like to call "The Nathan Christ". Finally, I headed back to bed at 4:45 AM and set my alarm for 5 AM. I, of course, awoke disoriented and just as drunk as I was 15-minutes earlier. I accidentally took someone else´s coat, crawled into the car and witnessed the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen. We finished the day in Uyuni at a train graveyard.
I'm in La Paz now, a city out of a dream/nightmare, all other roads to other cities are closed because of mining prostests. I'm sick again.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/motherh/

My second day in Tupiza was spent hiking around the area taking in the landscape - visited Cañon del Inca (with a small waterfall), Puerta del Diablo, and a valley of odd-shaped rocks names the valley of penises. Phallirific.
That night I hit the town with Joel and Eileen a English/Australian couple, respectively, and a plethora of other folk from our hostel. We started out at a restaurant named "The Alamo" - nice. Afterwards, everyone cleared out and Joel and Eileen and I wanted another drink. So we went to a karaoke bar and ordered cocktails of the local liquor - singani. Foul stuff that is thrice distilled from grapes. It is 80 proof and somewhere between tequila, vodka, and paint thinner. Apparently it has mildly psycotropic effects.
So after some of those I was feeling the music at the karaoke place - something I never do. I murdered a version of "House of the Rising Sun". Shortly thereafter the rest of the hostel squad arrived - apparently not really ready to call it a night. We ordered a bottle of singani and I convinced the multi-national squad to sing. The English sang Elvis' "Can't help falling in love" and me and a French guy sang "Michelle" by the Beatles. I tried to move people to the dancefloor but was unsuccesful. However, my gregarious attitude was, apparently, interpreted by a small gay, Bolivian man as invitation for courtship. Eileen made the situation worse by telling him, in spanglish, that I would come with him if he procured some margarine and a donkey. This surely confused the Boliviano. I made a hasty exit to my hostel.
Monday, I indulged myself and left on a 4-day tour of SW Bolivia with Eileen, Joel, and two Argentineans - Mariano and Lucas. The SW circuit of Bolivia is extremely dry, extremely high, and contains bizarre lagoons, volcanos, and geologic formations. The 1st day we were supposed to see some natural rock wonders but our guide, apparently, got lost in the maze of dirt tracks through the remote area. So we aimlessly off-roaded for 12 hours and saw some distant vicunas and a rodent relative of the chinchilla. Towards the end of the day the drivers, sensing our irritability, tried to cheer us up by singing quechua songs with mouths packed full of coca leaves. I wasn't having it.
The next morning we awoke to a temperature of -4 degrees fahrenheit and journeyed to an extinct volcano with an arsenic lake at its' base. We played 3-3 football at the end of the day, all of us immediately regretting this because of the 4000 m altitude. The Bolivians and Texan won.