Where I've Been Map

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Salty, I shrunk the French!

Before heading to Bolivia we dipped into Chile one last time and picked up a passenger, our new friend the Afro-portuguese Londoner. Though we have only been friends with the lovely Carina for little over a week, there are few people I can reminisce about the sand, salt and candle wax surfacing in places that they shouldn’t. Our friendship started with sandboarding in Chile, crossed the train tracks to get to the customs office at the boarder, and survived multiple crazy-french-headlamp-candlelight-card-games in Bolivia (with interspersed, open-minded discussions of gun control and veiling in french schools).
After arriving in Uyuni, Bolivia, having the best pizza ever (yay for crazy Bostonians who marry Bolivians and move down to the middle of nowhere to make really good pizza for tourists), we were fortunate again to pick up two more random friends (yay for adorable French couples) and set off on a private 4 day adventure into the salt flats. It was just the five of us--Hueona stayed behind under the care of the Bostonian.
Our driver was 16---just kidding Mom! He was 21. Haha, that didn´t make us feel much safer until the cooks (his young wife and 5 month old daughter) hopped in the car with us! (Yay for the big happy multi-ethnic family we became!)

Though we had only known our new family for a few hours we broke the ice like many do: with food. First I ate my brother. Then my brother tried to eat the girls. Then the condor tried to eat us all.
Of course, you all know that my happiness would not be complete without lots of cute little kids running around the salt hotels, which are made entirely--walls, beds, tables, chairs--of salt. Learning that playing hand-games is universal was the icing on the cake.


Oh, did I mention the flamingos in the red laguna the primordial soup and the 10,000 year old mummies (this creepy pic thinks it´s too good to load)? Nuff said.
Yipee!

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