Say goodbye to Uyuni.

Friday 13 th July Further to today´s earlier log I am relieved to say Sylvia has at last delivered my train ticket.

I duly turned up at her office at 11.30am to be told to come back at 2.30pm, and was again unconvinced by her assurance that she could deliver. Any how after spending the next 3 hours updating the blog, writing some emails and having some lunch I returned to her office. I had to wait 10 mins for her to turn up. We then both went over the road to the train station ticket office where there is a ticket system for the order in which you are served. Sylvia made sure she sat next to her friends also queuing and not next to me.

It´s obviously not a straight forward first come first served system as some went forward and came away smiling with tickets while others did not. After about 45 minutes waiting the ticket man said something in Spanish and a number of people went forward at once, including Sylvia. Eventually she got to the front of this new queue and she called me over to show my passport and was then told not uncertainly to go and sit down again. Within a minute I heard the dot matrix printer chattering which was a very good sign. Hip hip hooray the ticket was being printed and a few minutes later Sylvia was handing it to me.

My understanding of what happened, partly drawn from what Sylvia told me, was that Sylvia forgot to buy the ticket (and book last night´s hotel) in advance and she was relying on obtaining a standby ticket being available after 3pm once the train left its starting point in Oruru. Whether she had been able to use a bit of influence to secure this I don´t know and to be honest now I don´t care.

OK, I know I was a bit anxious about a relatively minor set back and lost confidence in Sylvia. Travel has just confirmed what some of you knew already: I´m a very anxious person who needs to relax more. Maybe I need a holiday! All being well tomorrow I´ll try Argentina for a change.