Bolivia - Uyuni

Day 1 – Getting to Bolivia – Uyuni – altitude 3,656mtrs

Despite internet connections, PC issues and general tardiness I am proud to say we have now completed one year of blogging and I feel like Adrian Mole aged 47 3/4.  I hope that some of you are still reading and it has been worth the hard work!

Getting up at 5.30 and managing to get a coffee from the reception area we then packed up our gear and Shell phoned the bank to see if we could sort our blocked cash card.   After relating the story three times and getting cut off three times, the bank were still not helpful and we are still down to the one cash card.

We were picked up by a mini-bus around 7.00 and driven around town where we picked up a few other people including a German guy who wanted to chat to us quite a lot.  Just outside town we stopped by the side of the road and we were not sure what was happening as we knew all about the government strikes so we were concerned the boarder control was not open.

The driver then got us all to get out of the van and he prepared a breakfast out of the back of the van, coffee, juice and nice hard roll’s with ham and cheese as usual.  Whilst we were stood there a young Swiss girl joined us and related her story of being ill for the last 9 days, having a few hospital visits and scan whilst her travel party had moved on.  She was not very happy and was scared to eat anything. She also said that everyone that goes to Bolivia & Peru gets ill at some point, which is something to look forward too!!

As it turned out we were just waiting for the boarder control to open and it seemed that our driver had got us there early to ensure we were first in the queue.  He ushered us over to the office as quick as he could and we then got an outgoing stamp in our passport before getting back on the minibus and heading for Bolivia.

Driving towards the Volcano’s and up the mountains for around half an hour we soon found ourselves pulling into a car park next to a very basic looking stone building, this was the Bolivian boarder control.

Quickly , we got ourselves to the back of the building and queued up in order to get our passport stamped for Bolivia (We love getting new stamps) and then had to hang around for a while whilst the minibus driver sorted out our 4x4 transport for the rest of the journey (8 hours in total).

Transferring our bags from the minibus to a 4x4 and being joined by one more passenger (a local lady) we then sat there for another ¾ hour, not sure why, I think the driver was just chin wagging with his mates. Although we were pretty happy that there were only three of us in the jeep so we had quite a bit of space and we arranged it so the local lady was in the front seat so she could chat to our driver.

At last we were on our way and making our first tracks into Bolivia and as we drove along, the mountain scenery was pretty amazing.  Soon we found ourselves climbing higher and higher and Shell caught sight of the driver bringing out a bag of Coca leaves which he started chewing (apparently, it helps alleviate altitude sickness). Shell politely asked if we could have some (well I should say she pointed and smiled!) and soon we too were chewing these leaves, not too bad just a bit bitter, we hoped it would do the trick.

An hour later and we pulled to a stop where we had to pay and entrance fee to the national park as we were travelling through it on our way to the town of Uyuni, our final destination.  A quick toilet stop later and we were on our way again.

The roads were very bumpy, rocky, dusty tracks but the scenery was great, passing through volcano/mountain ranges, salt flats and lakes.  It was just a shame that we were not stopping anywhere to take some pictures, instead just trying to get a few shots through the jeeps tinted windows.

It seemed we had been driving for ages and were looking forward to the lunch stop we had been promised.  As it past 12 & 1 o’clock and passing through a couple of small villages we got the impression that lunch was not going to happen, so we broke out the emergency biscuits we had in our day sacks.

Sometime after 2.30 we did actually stop in a dusty one horse town for a refreshment break (this made me slightly concerned about the town we were heading for).  We were given ½ hour to find something to eat, however we could not see anything worthwhile getting so we just settled for a toilet break.  The public toilets had an attendant that wanted a few coins, as we only had notes and no change he eventually allowed us in for free, which was much more than these conveniences were worth!!

One thing about this town was that it was our first experience of the traditional local Bolivian women, fairly rotund, short, with long double plats running down their backs.  The dress consisted of very large multi-layered skirts, a shirts, very wrinkled stockings topped off with a bowler hat perched on their heads . It did now feel that we were now in South America.

Asking the driver how much longer it was to Uyuni we were informed it was only an hour and twenty minutes away, so for the rest of the journey we just read and watched as the scenery change. 

Arriving in Uyuni (3,656 Metres) it appeared to be a more bustling busy tourist town and when the driver tried to drop us off at our hostel there was a market taking place in the road we needed so he dropped us off around the corner and we had to negotiate the stalls with our bags to get to our hostel.

 

 

We were quite pleased to be in Bolivia as we heard it was vastly cheaper than Chile and after Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Brexit our budget could do with some relief.  On checking in we noticed a label on the wall that translated as oxygen which was interesting, but we thought nothing of it. 

The room itself was ½ the price of what we had been paying in Chile and was fairly comfortable, so hopefully using this as an indicator it looks as though the standard of accommodation is going to be better too.

Once unpacked,  we headed into town to do a few usual tasks when we get to a new country, get some local currency and try and get a local SIM card, the latter being a bit more tricky. We had to do a bit of miming and bad Spanish before waiting for the shopkeeper to rub off ten scratch cards and load the credit one by one onto the phone and then set up the internet for us.

 

 

After these jobs were done we then had to find the agency where we had provisionally booked a trip for the next day, although on our way through town we had been offered it for a cheaper price.  We spoke to the lady in the agency explaining this and she agreed to do it for the same price, saving us a tenner, but everything counts!

Jobs done we sat outside a café and got our hands on our first Bolivian beers (which were more expensive than expected).  We sat there for an hour or so people watching, especially looking out for the ladies in the traditional dresses and bowler hats.  It was also evident that there were loads of tourists here to end/start their four day 4x4 trip. We had opted against this as we had already seen enough, desert, volcano’s, geysers and lagoons already.

 

 

Now relaxed,  we headed back to the hostel where we chilled for a bit whilst checking the internet to see if we could find somewhere to eat.  A lot of the reviews mentioned food poisoning and after listening to the Swiss girl in the morning we decided to head to a local bar that did hamburgers.

 

The bar was pretty funky but quite quiet (I think we were early), so we had some fairly decent burgers and a drink, but as it has been a pretty long day, we headed back to the hostel to watch a bit of TV and have an early night.

Day 2 – Breathless/Salt Flats

Even though we had a comfortable room neither of us had a good night sleep.  We both woke at various points in the night very breathless and trying to suck in air, wondering if we were having heart attacks or panic attacks, eventually putting it down to altitude (at one point I considered going down to reception to get the advertised oxygen).  We are still not sure whether it was down to the altitude or just in our heads as we had heard a lot of travellers talking about this issue along the way. Interestingly though, we only realised each other was going through the same thing when we spoke about it in the morning.

Anyway, after a broken night sleep, we headed down to breakfast which was pretty decent and had an eggs option, which Shell had read was not the norm in Bolivia.  We even had the option of Coca leaves tea for the altitude, so we thought we would try a cup just in case it helped.

As our trip, for once, started at the decent hour of 10.30 we headed to the main square where we sat and took some surreptitious pictures of the bowler hatted ladies passing through.  We then headed to the agency and waited for the trip to start and got chatting to a nice Australian honeymooning couple who were booked on the same trip.

 

After being introduced to our guide (very little English) six of us piled into a jeep, the Australians, a couple of locals and us and we were off to the first attraction of the trip which was apparently a train graveyard!!

The graveyard was only about 15 minutes out of town and we were soon pulling into a car park packed with tourists.  Although we had our reservations about this stop it was pretty cool and made for some good photos.

 

We were give ½ hour to wander around and clamber over loads of really old rusting engines and carriages.  Some of them were very interesting and had graffiti over them, it struck me that it would be a really good location for a music video.

 

Back in the 4x4 our next stop was a little village which was basically a tourist trap with a long row of stall selling, Bolivian blankets, bags, souvenir’s made of salt and plastic dinosaurs?!  We had a quick browse before heading for the salt museum which proclaimed to have the world’s biggest  llama.  The museum was tiny and the llama (which I presumed would be stuffed) turned out to be a dodgy looking salt sculpture of a llama, it would have been worth a photo for comedy value if they were not charging for it.  The museum had a few of these salt sculptures and some very iffy looking taxidermy and took all of 2 minutes to look round, luckily entrance was free.

Going back to the jeep,  we then were taken out on to the salt flat proper, which is the largest salt flats in the world.  After travelling over this mad landscape for a while (white as far as the eye can see) we then stopped and got out where there were small pyramids of salt that had been scraped up ready for collection.  Shell quickly jumped on top of one of these for a photo op, before being told off by the driver (not the done thing apparently). So we then took some time getting some photo’s, although this was easier said than done with the sun and white all around making you practically snow blind (well me because I wasn’t packing sunglasses!)

 

Once the photo’s were in the bag,  we were then heading off to lunch and we pulled up to a building, literally in the middle of this vast dessert, which had been constructed of salt and was where we were going to have our lunch.

 

 

We were given half an hour to walk around and get some photo’s whilst the driver prepared our lunch.  It’s really hard to express how alien and vast the landscape is.  I had been to a salt flat before but in was nothing compared to what we were looking at today.

After wandering around for a bit getting lots of white photo’s we entered the salt building and found our guide who sat us down on a salt sculptured table and chairs and then presented us with a fairly decent lunch of meat chops, rice and salad. If you had wanted any salt for your food,  all you had to do was bend down and pick some off the floor.

 

Lunch done,  we were on the road/salt again and we were enjoying chatting to the Australian couple, swapping travelling tip and stories of woe concerning loss of cash/credit cards.  After a while we then pulled up in what may or may not have been the centre of the salt flat.

 

 

It was now time for some fun and the driver who,  up until now had been pretty monosyllabic, suddenly came to life and was very excited by what we were doing.  It was time to do some perspective photo’s in this unique landscape, we now understood what the plastic dinosaurs were for as the driver positioned us in various poses whilst he took pictures on all our camera’s.

As I said,  the driver was really into this and kept on getting us to try various different things to get some really great photo’s and he was pretty much a perfectionist trying to get the best shots he could.

 

Whilst the driver was doing some shots with the local ladies, ourselves and the Oz couple tried to come up with some of our own idea’s.  Shell (project manager mode) and the Oz  girl (dance instructor) suddenly becoming art directors, thinking up the idea’s and making them happen!

 

In honesty, you could have spent the rest of the day coming up with idea’s but we had to move on to the next location which was called Isla Incahuasi.

 

 

We drove for another ½ an hour and I must have been having a bit of a blonde moment as I was expecting to have to get a boat across to this island (in a salt desert!!).  What we stopped at was a large rocky outcrop in the middle of this white wilderness.

Climbing out of the jeep we then headed to the office where we had to pay a small entrance fee to walk around this site.  The great thing about this place was that ‘the island’ was totally covered in large cowboy style cactuses with the odd llama wandering through them.

 

You could take a little hike around the place to the top where you had a view over the whole of the salt flat with the mountains fringing it.  Due I think to the altitude (I think) the walk did take your breath away a bit, but not as much as the incredible surreal scenery that we were lucky enough to be seeing.

 

Having taken enough pictures of cactuses, whiteness and with the salt in the air seeming to dry us out and preserve us we thought we would bite the bullet and get a beer at the onsite refreshment kiosk, amazingly the beer was cheaper than in town.

Shortly, we were joined by the Australian couple who had had the same idea, so we sat drinking cold beers in the shade whilst waiting for the time to leave.  Only a brief minute when I spotted some nearby llama’s posing for some photos separated me from that beer.

 

It was now getting late in the afternoon and we were headed for our final stop of the day which was a sunset on the salt flats.  As we waited for the sun to drop to try and get the best photos of the hexagonal landscape, the driver was seen in the distance creating some yellow salt!

 

We took a load of photo’s as the sun hit the horizon before getting back in the jeep and heading back to town.  The trip was one of the most interesting ones we had done for a while and we decided with the Aussie couple that this would have been the highlight of the 4 day trip had we chosen to do it (this was later confirmed by some other friends we had met on our travels).

 

Back in town we went back and dumped our stuff in our hostel and headed to the square to have some drinks and then some food at a nearby restaurant.  Again, we were being cautious, so just decided on having some pasta dishes and a beer, before returning to the hostel for another relatively early night.