HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing the little children faces open their presents
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Quite a few people are sick today – on Christmas Eve….
WORD OF THE DAY: Feliz Navidad – MERRY CHRISTMAS
An early start today as we wanted to get into Uyuni before lunch and have enough time to go and see the kids at the orphanage. So we were up at 6am and we departed at 7.30am for the 4 hour drive to Uyuni. The road was a little bumpy to say the least, with sections of it being in good condition. There was a lot of road works along this stretch as Uyuni, besides the salt flats are going to be processing lithium, so they are upgrading all roads to handling the traffic that will come through. Apparently this section would take 6-8 hours instead of the 4 that we were doing today. Stuff that!!!
There are a few people that are not well today, like stomach pains and a lot of spewing to just put it out there. That would really suck being sick Christmas Eve. I am happy to report that Kate and I are feeling great guns and Kate even had on her Christmas hat without me having to hassle her. It really is starting to feel like Christmas! Once we arrive into town it will be Christmas morning back in Australia, they are 12 hours in front of us, so I was getting pretty excited that I would be talking to Shelly and the girls soon. Like SUPER excited!
After 4 hours of bumpy and a rocking, we arrived into Uyuni at 11.30am, apparently we made good time. The town of Uyuni was not what I expected. It looked like a good old fashion western town out of a Hollywood movie, it was just missing the rolling tumble weeds down the streets, but they did have a massive plastic bag problem, where there were hundreds of plastic bags all over the place, literally they were wrapped around all the small bushes through the whole landscape as we descended into town. Seamus was not too impressed with the town as we drove through, it was pretty funny to hear his comments, and it really did look like the town that the world forgot. It did improve as we got further in, there was a small carnival with a small (tiny ferris wheel) and a small carousel and there were some street markets that we had to divert off for, so there was a hive of activity closer to the city centre.
The hotel was an Oasis in the middle of the city. It was a 2 part building and we were housed in the second building that was more new than the original, but it was a nice hotel with free Wi-Fi, so we couldn’t complain even if we wanted to. The hotel was decked out in Christmas decorations, with a beautiful Christmas tree i8n the main area, tinsel hung from the roof with baubles and Santa’s on all our doors. With Christmas dinner here tonight costing us 20USD, which is a lot in Bolivian terms, but for us to get a Christmas dinner for that is a bargain and I think we will get out monies worth.
After lunch, which we prepared and ate in the outside courtyard, we were literally only a 5 minute walk from the main street and the orientation tour only took 10 minutes maximum. There were stall set up in the main street selling their wares, mostly aimed at the locals and a lot of toy stalls which are primarily there for the tourists to buy and take with them on the salt flats for the perspective photos that are all the rage when you hit the flats. This is one of my trip highlights, I know you could get these photos anywhere in the world, these are the only flats, but this is what is done here and I am really looking forward to getting some good photos.
The hotel owners needed our help to wrap the presents for the orphanage at 3pm, so we had a spare hour to chill and I used this to catch up on some sleep. I was so tired. I am just going to have to blame the altitude at 3780m, it is still not to be sneezed at……I’m not being soft you know! The wrapping process was a little hot and miss and an organized chaos. Susie, the hotel owner had preprinted up name tags for the gifts and had the gifts allocated, so we literally just had to wrap and tag. We ran out of paper and one of the staff ran up the road to get more, so once everyone got wrapping the process only took us just over an hour. There are 18 boys and 12 girls at the orphanage averaging in age from 6-14 years old. Some of the gifts were pretty specky and it will be super cool to see their faces and it will be a nice substitute to not seeing my beautiful god-daughters faces Christmas morning.
As we finished the last present we got a surprise visit by Santa (Gray) and Spiderman (Mark) in a onesie outfit I have to mention and they looked amazing, besides Santa having a fag hanging out the side of his moth and aviators on, he did look pretty cool and like Mrs. Claus had under feed him for the year. The kids will so get a kick out of the outfits. So with the presents loaded on the BIG yellow truck-sleigh, Santa and Spiderman sitting in the front, we drove the 6 minutes to the orphanage on the other side of town. We were welcomed by 30 smiling faces and as we got all the presents inside I was hoping that we had enough presents, can you imagine if we were one short, now that would be a disaster. Luckily we had wrapped our gifts, so these could play as backups should we need. To me there looked like more children than gifts.
So with everyone seated in a U shape on chairs and Santa and his Spiderman helper seated at the top we were welcomed to the orphanage by the director in Spanish and Susie translated for us their goals and missions with the children. At the end of the day they are feed and accommodated but to receive presents and visitors to the center is a big deal and to this they are eternally grateful for this and will make a big difference to the children in the orphanage. It bought a tear to a few of us as the words were being translated and once again it just makes me feel that my life back home is full of things, goods and items that I just don’t need and compared to a lot of countries it is an extravagant lifestyle I lead and I know that I will be changing my life/style in 2012. This is a definite statement. Stayed tuned.
So we started to bring in the presents calling out the names and getting the kids to come up and collect their presents. After the first child, they all starting giving Santa a hug, it just made your heart melt. The kids were so good, they came up hugged Santa and sat down with their presents and waited for all the other kiddies to get theirs. The restraint was amazing. As the presents dwindled, the little faces that had not received a present were looking a little sad, but keeping a brave face and by the end of it all we were only 2 presents short, which Omar’s present saved the day a jumping ball for the young Karen and we saved the day with a Twister game for the older girl who had missed out. Lucky we had some back up gifts, but it all worked out in the end. It was amazing to see 30 rays of sunshine on their faces as they opened their gifts to see what they had received. It is amazing what a difference a $4 toy can make to a child, really, it just made your heart flop. It was a great experience to be able to help and make a difference to these children even if only for a few hours.
We were then given a hot cup of hot chocolate and plates of biscuits and we tried to communicate with the kids as we drank. It was then decided to take the kids for a spin in the truck, which was an awesome idea so with a tummy full of drink and bikkies, we climbed on the truck and me and my new friend Daniel, who was 10, sat together in my seat and with the window open, we drove around the town wishing everyone we saw a merry Christmas ‘ Feliz Navidad’ and saying hello to anyone we could. With Santa ‘Gray’ tooting the horn every couple of minutes, the pure joy on the boys faces was priceless. They were talking to each other outside the truck windows and bouncing around and they were fascinated that they were as tall as most of the buildings. Jesus (Haysus) sat in front of us with Mick and he found my Galapagos turtle hanging on the window, so what was the harm in letting him play with it. Well as what happens to all good things, the ride came to an end and the kids piled off as we said our goodbyes and as we were heading back to the hotel, little Galap turtle was missing. Mick’s orphan child, under his supervision, had stolen my turtle! Jesus had stolen my turtle on Christmas Eve. I was not about to go back and demand it back from an orphan, and at Christmas, so I am happy to take comfort that a 10 year old child will get more joy out of it than a 37 year old adult, so Merry Christmas Jesus and make sure you take good care of my Galapagos turtle.
Christmas Eve dinner was being prepared by the hotel for the cost of 20USD, in Boliviano terms it is a lot of money, but where back home could you get a dinner on Christmas Eve for 20 bucks? It was an amazing meal and way too much, with a gingerbread man soup, a German Christmas tree salad, beef AND chicken for main and then carrot/ginger cake with ice-cream for dessert and not to forget the tea and coffee that was offered after all that. What a meal, and isn’t that what Christmas is all about over eating and we had done that to perfection in a small dusty town in Bolivia called Uyuni.
Secret Santa was then done, with us all getting pretty impressive gifts. I think the best gift was either Debbie’s massive sew on patch of the continent or Kate’s silver charm of a Llama. I received a triple CD pack of Leonardo and Leandro, so it will be interesting to change them to MP3 format and then crucify the whole truck to 48 songs of goodness knows what is on there. Thank-you to my secret Santa (I think it is Paul) I promise I will make sure I will listen to it at least once.
So that was our Christmas Eve in South America and we are now all stuffed.
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