Pain sure brings out the best in people, doesn´t it

As far as I could tell the town of Uyuni only existed for easy access to the Solar de Uyuni. Other than that there was nothing I wanted to see in this hallow testament to the poverty of Bolivia. Unfortunately as Bolivia is lacking a well developed infrastructure of just about every other country in the Americas I was stuck there for a day and a half waiting for the next bus to La Paz, where I would take another collectivo to get to Lake Titikaka.

For some odd reason the busses to La Paz only travel over night. This is a problem because given the open valley, the incredibly high altitude and the vicious winds the ride over unpaved roads was colder than the night we spent at 5,000 meters alongside the Laguna Colorado.

I knew we were in for trouble when they started handing out blankets. I supposed that meant the heated bus I was promised by the ticket vendor was not to be had. As the night went on I put on all the bits of clothing I could find. The wool socks came on, as did the fleece and the jacket, and the headband and the gloves. None of them kept me warm, but they beat back the cold enough so that I could bear the 9 hour ride. The latch on one of the windows broke, but luckily one of the bus operators was prepared with a roll of tape to tackle the blistering wind.

As I shivered to stay warm I thought about the e-mail my dad sent me while I was in Cuba. He told me he hoped I was enjoying this hard life I had chosen. And the truth was, I was. My life before I started on this journey was fairly comfortable. It was easy.

And I thought about my two months in Buenos Aires. The steaks and the wine, the nights out which turned into mornings, the fun and interesting people around every corner, and of course the lovely sights that Argentina had to offer. That was all fun. This was something different entirely.

But after two months in Buenos Aires I was just two months older. Sure my spanish got better, but even that I didn´t study as hard as I thought I would. I´ve taken to refering to it as my lost weekend. This hard life, really wasn´t so hard when I looked at the faces of the locals who did this would enough frequency that they didn´t consider complaining.

I thought about Nietzche the Philosopher and Conan the Barbarian. None of this would kill me, I could handle it all, perhaps it would make me stronger, or perhaps I´d just have a good story to tell. Either way, it wasn´t really so bad. And it was far preferable to the comfortable life I enjoyed earlier where the sun set infront of me and come up behind me and I was just another day older.

As sleep caught up with me, I dreamt of the sweltering carribean beaches that awaited. I had my ticket to Cuba purchased. I only needed to make it to Lima, Peru by the 7th of June. And while that meant I would have to cut short some of the sights I originally planned on seeing in Bolivia and Peru. I wouldn´t have it any other way. But really I suppose we all live our own hard lives or alternatively we wait to die an easy death.