Death and Dalliance

Hello my lovelies.

Entering Bolivia has taught me how important it is to have well labelled streets in all parts of the world. Indeed, the residents of the cities themselves appear to have very little idea about their home address let alone a broader knowledge of the geography of their cities.

But this has lead to nothing more serious than a sore back, after lugging my damn backpack around for a 45 minutes at 5.00 in the morning trying desperately to get a handle on where the hell I was. And y´know, this kind of challenge can be fun.

What was less fun was the serious car accident that I was witness to on my journey between Oruro and Uyuni. The entire human contents of my bus spilled out on to the highway, gawking and pointing for all they were worth. (A multitude, I must admit of which I was part) Emergency services were called and during the wait, someone (who was not medically trained to my knowledge) decided that it was imperative to lay out the dead beside the cars in wait of an ambulance. I had two major criticisms to this plan, but was largely overruled. My thoughts were A) what if they are not completely dead? What if they are only almost dead? (Sorry, bad taste I know, but it was a reference which I could not resist) Is it necessarily a good idea to be moving them without knowing exactly what we are doing? and B)if they are dead, what do they care if they are nicely geometrically aligned or not?

Suffice to say it was a fairly gruesome early morning. One that I do not care to repeat any time soon. Actually screw anytime soon, how about never.

Off to the Uyuni salt flats tomorrow, which has been a constant in the tales of travelling wonderfulness coming from other travellers along the way. I shall tell you how I go on my return.

Rock and Roll.

Paddy