Lying face down on a sopping bathroom floor wasn´t in the itinerary of our three-day trip around the world´s largest salt lake but that´s where I ended up.
The minute I had woken at 4am, I knew I was in trouble.
Quickly becoming aware of diarrhoea, I threw on some clothes and rushed for the dorm door.
However, a day in the back of a 4x4 under a baking sun, coupled with the effects of altitude and the pre-bedtime beers, meant my head was spinning.
I felt for the walls as I headed down the pitch black corridor but stumbled around a corner and straight into a large gas cylinder, ripping its pipe from the wall.
I´m not sure whether it was the wall, the floor or the tumbling gas bottle that connected with my head but whatever it was hurt.
After a minute or two lying dazed, I remembered my desperation and stood up, only to smack my head on the door frame. (The average Bolivian ísn´t too tall and ducking is essential).
This time I ended up in a pool of dirty water outside the cubicles, before finally clambering up to find relief without having an altogether different sort of accident.
Having heard the commotion, the One With The Common Sense instinctively knew I´d come a-cropper and proved to be something of a Florence Nightingale for the rest of the night.
Tending to my wounds - a gashed forehead, scraped nose and black eye - she also fed me rehydration fluids as I spent the next hour rushing to and from the thunderbox, banging my head several times more.
Eventually, I threw up the rehydration fluids before she put me - shivering with cold and shock and terrified of dying of hypothermia - to bed under a double cover of blankets.
Apparently, the One With The Common Sense said 10 Hail Marys and an Our Father for me and they must have done the trick because I´m still here.
Organised tours can be hit and miss but they are often the only easy way to see places.
And this was one of those occasions when everything fell into place, as we toured the area around the remarkable salt plains of the Salar de Uyuni.
Our fellow travellers were four great lads from West London (camp as a row of tents - and one was a ginger - but sound lads nonetheless), while our guide, Placido, was both fun and careful to make the experience special.
There was some controversy when the lads realised they´d paid extra for an English-speaking guide which never materialised.
The management cheekily realised they could rely on the One With The Common Sense to translate thanks to her excellent Spanish. But, if anything, it only added to the fun.
The Salar is like nothing else in the world. An expanse of white stretching for 12,000 sq km, in places it makes you feel like you´re on the North Pole.
Elsewhere, a thin layer of water covers the salt to give a perfect reflection of the distant snow-capped mountains.
Only a small area of the Salar is harvested, with workers manually shovelling salt into mounds, where it dries before being collected by trucks.
The scenery is truly spectacular but it is amazing what else tour companies can turn into attractions.
Our first stop had been the "Cemetery of Trains" - a set of sidings where old goods locos sit rusting.
You could probably find something similar outside Crewe or Doncaster but I doubt health and safety officials would allow you to clamber over the iron hulks.
Big vehicles and mild danger made for a perfect playground for us grown-up little boys and the schoolboy theme continued throughout the trip.
The Ruislip Four shared my childish sense of humour and we happily passed three days making lewd jokes, breaking wind and giggling at bed time with taxing games like "name the famous ginger".
It was hard to match the beauty of the Salar during the rest of the trip but the sheer variety of landscape in Bolivia´s high plains is remarkable.
At times reminiscent of Patagonia´s wide-open spaces, elsewhere the mountains hide huge lagoons which are dyed red, green and black whenever the wind whips up the minerals in the water.
The red-tinged volcanic landscape around some stinking, spluttering sulphuric geysers in the Reserva Eduardo Averoa makes you feel like you´re on Mars.
Up the road you can relax in a beautiful 35C thermal pool with a picture-postcard backdrop, while in other places the weather has forged volcanic lava into weird rock sculptures set amid desert.
I wasn´t the only one suffering the headaches and shortness of breath associated with being over 4,000m above sea level.
The One With The Common Sense was sick one night, while several of the lads had upset stomachs.
Despite overdosing on bung-up pills, I was still caught short on the second day and was forced to pay an open-air visit in almost certainly the most scenic spot I will ever make like a bear in the woods.
It was on the highest point of a mountains pass, overlooking a beautiful lagoon and the absudity of it all sent both the One With The Common Sense and I into hysterics when she came to check on my wellbeing.
At least I was able to hide behind a rock, however. One of the Ruislip Four - a Freddie Flintoff lookalike called Adam - was forced to blunder into a flat field to adopt a less-than-dignified crouch while at least six 4x4s rattled past.
Aside from all that, we managed to spot a bit of wildlife, completing the set of the area´s three different kinds of flamingo, while seeing a type of Andean rabbit, plenty of llama and several of their cousins the vicuña.
We also had our first taste of llama - a tender chop with the texture of beef but a stronger taste, more like lamb.
It´s amazing how the people around you can transform your experience.
So it was great for me that the Ruislip Four didn´t mind too much about having a bloke 10 years older than them in the van rather than the buxom blondes they´d no doubt been hoping for.
We all relaxed easily into football team banter and even their music taste matched ours. The One With The Common Sense has hardly stopped going on about "that lovely bunch of lads" since they presented her with a bottle of wine for being their unofficial translator.
That said, their iPods did throw up the occasional aural crime. I could handle the ironic (at least I hope it was) Boyz II Men hit.
But when the Lighthouse Family came on and they responded to my tirade about "the most offensively bland music ever made" by serenading me with Ocean Drive, I just wanted my life to end.
Even my threats to unveil my Boney M collection fell on deaf ears.
But never mind, along with Placebo - as the lads insisted on calling him - we were able to enjoy a drink afterwards and look back on great three days.
It was in stark contrast to the journey The One With The Common Sense and I had endured to get to Uyuni from the Argentinian border.
After numerous long bus rides, we relished the prospect of taking a leisurely train.
Having settled into the carriage´s comfortable seats, we sat back to enjoy the views as the train wound its way north.
However, it soon turned into an eight-hour ordeal, thanks to a group of Aussie girls.
All in their mid-twenties, they acted more like a bunch of 13-year-olds as they talked - or should that be yelled - the most vacuous tripe at each other.
If that wasn´t bad enough, they insisted on singing along to the train´s entertainment system which was blaring out "classics" such as Lady in Red, Don´t Wanna Miss a Thing and I´m Never Gonna Dance Again.
Eyes throughout the carriage were raised to the heavens as their incessant chatter increased in volume the first time they had a sniff of beer.
To make matters worse the rail company used 30 seconds of What a Wonderful World or Love Is In The Air on their adverts every five minutes.
I´ve never been a victim of torture but I imagine the experience was something akin to waterboarding.
Even my iPod could not drown it all out and our only escape was to the sanctuary of the dining car for an hour.
I was just glad they didn´t end up on our Salar tour, or I may have deliberately brained myself on that gas bottle.
No comments:
Post a Comment