One CRAZY night

We arrived back from our trip, refreshed by the volcanic hotsprings dip we took that morning and found ourselves in the tireless Jeep - I still wonder where the gas tank was filled up - for the last 5 hours of the trip bumping and swerving our way through the deserts of southern Bolivia and we rode and bumped and occasionally hit our heads ...with aching arses and bitter faces at being woken up at 4am and not able to sleep during the ride back to Uyuni, we arrived at around 6pm.

After collecting the rest of our luggage we asked the dueña about a ride to Tupiza... the town where we could hitch a ride to Villazon... the pueblo where we would find our tickets to Argentina... The woman promptly stated that the only thing to Tupiza from Uyuni was a Jeep... ANOTHER JEEP. That was no big deal. We had dealt with Jeeps before. NOTE: With us on the Salar trip was an Argentine family - a man a woman and a boy of 8 or so - and they were not to be messed with. After some arguments about prices and the "real" schedule of the micros (buses) we found that it would be in our interest to take the Jeep.

We purchased the tickets for the Jeep and rode - swerving, bumping, and hitting our heads occasionally - for 2 hours, during some of which time we were in fact driving through a dry river bed and not a road. We arrived in a small town where the driver pointed to a place for us to eat dinner - by this time it is 9:30pm and dark - and walked briskly away. After finding out the recommended spot was closed we found a place that looked like it might serve food and sat down. We asked what was on the menu and the man said apologetically that there was only chicken on that night's menu. We naturally ordered the chicken, which was not nearly as questionable as I thought it might be.

We were all anxious to go - the sooner we leave the sooner we can get out of that Jeep. We walked briskly back to the Jeep and took our places and the Jeep roared to -seemingly- healthy life and drove a whopping three blocks before it no longer "went." After some tinkering, the Jeep did begin to "go" again and we thought we were pretty much on our way. Only three hours to go and we can get on a comfy train to Villazon..... ahh, dreams.

We were in the middle of the mountainous region twisting and swerving our way around holes, bumps and the canyon to our left when the Jeep ceases to "go" again. Doubt begins to set in when the Jeep decided it wanted to only "go" in 20 minute increments. Eventually, maybe the fifth time of tinkering and asking for our flashlight to do so, the Jeep was "going" but now it was 11pm, the canyon to think about and our lives, and the Jeep's headlights were no longer working. The fiesty Argentine father started yelling and saying it was ridiculous to drive like this and of all things, suggested we stay there until daybreak.

STAY WHERE? I thought.

We gathered all our warm clothes, blankets, sleeping bags, etc from the roof of the Jeep and really truely had to spend the night in a Jeep with five near-strangers in the middle of Bolivian no-where in the mountains. For the next 7 hours we slept piled in a Jeep, bundled in whatever was warm and miserably P.O.ed at the driver who did not have our money to give it back (we'd paid the dueña) for the exceptionally poor service we were given.

Now it's just a competition to see how many modes of transportation we can take in the shortest amount of time. We took the Jeep from Uyuni to Tupiza, the Train from Tupiza to Villazon, and we are now waiting for the bus from Villazon to our next destination where we hope to find a place that will allow us to ride horseback to the next.