Valley of the Rocks

LLAMAS!!

more llamas!

Day 2 of our tour. We had to get up super early, breakfast at 6:30 to leave by 7:30. A simple breakfast, like most, of toast with marmalade and horrendous coffee. The first stop of the day was "Valle de las Rocas" (Valley of the Rocks). Incredible and enormous formations created over hundreds of years by the simple fores of nature. And incredible doesn't even encompass what I saw. Another AMAZING sight.

Alice and I, tiny

However, our wonderful morning (and consequently the rest of our tour) took a turn for the worst as one of our travel buddies, an englishman named John, made a decision that he would definitely regret later. While the rest of us were being cautious climbing to get good views and a couple cool pictures, our friend John took it a little too far and obviously didn't use much common sense. He ended up falling about 30 feet from the top of one of the rocks. It was one of the most scarring things I have seen to date. One second I was smiling, posing for a picture sitting up on a rock, and the next I was watching horrified. Our tour guides were convinced it was simply a bad fall and a significant amount of bruising, and wanted to leave him at a "hospital" in another town in the middle of nowhere so we could continue with our trip. There was no convincing us though. We insisted on taking him back to Uyuni immediately. I can't say I was happy at all about cutting our trip short, especially since you really have to be an idiot to be doing what John was doing. He ended up ruining the tour not only for himself, but for another five people. But given that morning's events, there was no way I would've enjoyed the remainder of the trip anyway.

Upon returning to Uyuni, we took him straight to the town's hospital, a huge upgrade from where John would've stayed. After some x-rays, we found out it was a little more than just deep bruising-- he had fractured his pelvis in two places. The guy didn't have a single penny on him, and since in Bolivia no care is given until you pay upfront, we continued to help him. At least John had had the sense to get traveler's insurance, and after contacting them, he was on his way to La Paz on a body-board.

And to think that the point of our vacation was to get away from patients and hospitals for a week... but that's life. After our long day, we took another 10-hour long busride to Sucre, the capital of Bolivia, to try to enjoy our last two days.