*in boliviaa (@ twoday staff: how the fu*@ can i write boli v i a without getting an anchor????)

quite an adventure!
first: the tickes were okay. almost. at the trainstation (1 1/2 hours before depature) they told us all tickets are personalized, if the name doesnt match with your id you cant get on the train. BUT you can change your name for an extra 15% fee. okay, no prob.
wrong. the only one able to change the name is the train conductor who was busy keeping bolivians from taking the train over.
while i queued up to get on the train my friend tried to check our tickets. a policeman (checking tickets and id’s) told me ‚you wont get on the train‘. somebody else explained me he actually ment my backbag, which was too big for the waggon. so i put my backbag to the cargo-waggon, not knowing if i could go with this train. back in the queue i herad the bell ringing: 5min to go.
as i still didnt know if we could get on the train i went back to get my bag off the train. ‚i cant give you your bag‘ – ‚why?‘ – ‚coz its the lowest one, i would have to move all other bags!‘
after telling him (using some very BsAs words, he probably didnt even understand) my bag is not leaving without me he started diging out my bag.
good. i had my bag back, but still no ticket… the horn of the train sounded. it is starting to move…
just in time my friend came running back ‚get on the train, get on the train!‘
in the beginning the conductor didnt let us, but after some secs we jumped on the already moving train.
the other conductore said we could go paing the 15% extra fee, okay. finally we made it.

wait. thats not the end of the story. after a while the (other) conducter came to check tickets: ‚we dont have the tickets, you know the other conductor has them‘ – ‚aha, your tickets please‘. so he pretended not to know. we offered him to pay the 15% or even 20% and thats it. he refused and explained we need to pay all the price for the trip. after arguing a while he said either we pay or we have to get off the train. tired of this supidness we just said ‚whatever, then you have to get us off the train‘.
he didnt.

i arrived in uyuni at about 2am after a 11 houres ride, which was supposed to be 5 hours.

tomorrow i make me on the way for a 4 days tour around the salar de uyuni. as i saw already some pics of somebody i met on my way i’m quite curious about that…