Bus Ride from Uyuni to La Paz

After the 3 day trip around the salares, I jumped on the overnight bus from Uyuni to La Paz. The local bus was already full, so I claimed one of the last seats on the cama tourist bus.
We stopped in a small town at 11am for a nice 2 course meal for a whole B$6, and then stopped quick at the petrol station in Oruro at 4:30am.
Shortly after, between 5 and 5:30am we were suddenly awoken as the bus slammed full speed into the back of a truck that was parked on the side of the road. I was sitting in the front row, on the aisle of the left side. This proved to be very lucky, as the korean bloke sitting next to me by the window suffered some severe lacerations to his head from the shards of glass and bits of steel and appeared unconscious, and the israeli couple sitting across the aisle from me were looking at the back of the bus only 20cm from their noses. The girl had her legs broken. In front of me there was previously a glass wall, then another 2 meters of bus where the driver sat along with his son. Now it was just a tangled mess of strips of steel and I could look down between my feet and see the road below.
I was relatively fine so quickly found my shoes, gathered all my belongings which luckily hadn´t dissapeared (many people lost bags, cameras, etc in the confusion). Noticing diesel pouring out the front of the bus, I decided it was a good time to get out of the bus. The 2 guys sitting behind me couldn´t understand why I would want to get out when it was freezing cold outside (still pitch dark) but was nice and warm in the bus.
I headed towards the back of the bus. The scene was quite extreme with people all over the place, blood sprayed all over the bus, and many seats had been ripped from the floor of the bus and tossed around. Towards the back of the bus we smashed open 2 windows and jumped the 2m down to the road. Most people got off the bus, with a couple remaining including the brazilian doctor to assist the girl from the front.
Some people attempted to stop the traffic to get assistance, or call for the emergency services. Much to our disbeleif, and what should be severe embarrasment for all Bolivians, cars and busses would only wind down their window a few centimeters to say they can´t help, while the others wouldn´t even slow down. Some said they would call for help at the next town.
About 15 minutes after the incident occurred, another bus and truck attempted to pass at full speed alongside our accident, causing the truck to fly off the opposite side of the road and almost roll over.
The few natives that were on the bus then decided to start lighting up the tusks of grass along the road. With sparks being blown around and diesel still coming out of the bus, we were in grave fear that the bus would soon go up in flames. First thing we got the last few people out of the bus, then we wanted to retreive our bags from the cargo bays. These were of course locked, so we managed to smash them open and retreive all the bags from the bus and put them a safe distance away.
Since the accident we saw no sign of the driver. We only assume that we was tossed through the windscreen and had taken off. We decided this was excusable given there was little left of his son.
After 2 hours it was clear that no help was on its way. Two guys had just managed to get a lift in a car to La Paz, so I joined the brazilian doctor and the swedish nurse couple and managed to get a lift on another bus for the remaining 3 hours for the journey to La Paz.
On arriving to the La Paz bus terminal 5 hours after the accident, we went to the office of the bus company, who, to our sheer amazement were not even aware of the accident.
The tourist police soon took interest in us since we had blood all over us, and the brazilian guy had a big cut to his lip. This took about 3 hours while they took details, some more people from the bus started to arrive, and I showed the photos I had taken to some police boss with a thousand gold stars on his shoulder.
We dropped our bags at a hostal. I suffered chips to about 6 teeth, so I went for a walk through town to the Australian consulate to see if there were any reputable dentists in town. I was quite impressed by the service they provided. Within 10 minutes they had sent my details to the embassy in Chile and onto Canberra so everyone knew I was OK, had booked me in to see the consulate dentist that evening. Next stop was the tourist police office to get a police report of the incident for the insurance. They were overrun with everyone coming from the bus, and liasing with all the embassies. Apparently the worst injury they were aware of was a guy undergoing serious surgey to his upper nose, but they hadn´t even heard about the girl that had gone to hospital with the broken legs.
With my police report in hand, it was time to head to the dentist. He was a bolivian guy and didn´t speak any english. Unfortunately my spanish does not yet extend to understanding dental diagnosis, but I had the girl from the consulate on the phone the whole time to translate. I got 2 teeth fixed up there and then.
In the evening I met up again with the brazilian and swedish and enjoyed a good meal.
This morning I headed back to the dentist and got the rest of my teeth patched up, so they should be almost as good as new now. Fortunately all the damage was very minor and easily fixed. Only one tooth caused any pain, and another tooth is slightly more exposed from the gum than before so is quite sensative to temperature for a few days. I organised to visit again on Friday just for a final checkup before getting on with the travels, but will no doubt have to visit an Australian dentist on my return home just to check up on his work.
This is actually quite amusing given it was only the day before yesterday that we were joking about the state of bolivan dentistry. We thought that bolivian dentists must only be trained in extractions, and I could almost have been convinced to get a full set of gold teeth like every second Bolivian seems to.