Uyuni

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  Uyuni, Bolivia
Sunday, May 7, 2006

After leaving Humahuaca we were off to Bolivia, a late night border crossing went without a problem, I donīt know why I always think that something will go wrong at a border crossing. I guess itīs all the official looking people, never been a fan, safely inside Bolivia we investigated the possibilities of getting to Uyuni that night, but we were informed there were no busses at night, because of a bus strike.

We ended up spending the night in a hostel in Villazon for 20 Bolivianos, thatīs about 1 pound 50, not much really. We thought, as we had to spend the night here, we should have a look at the town, after about 5 minutes though the lady from the travel agency who we had asked about busses, came running after us, to warn us that they like to rob gringos at night in this town. Heeding the warning we decided perhaps an early night might be in order, especially as we had an early start the next day. Although we managed to make it earlier than necessary, aiming to get up at 6, we managed to get up at 5am, because Bolivia is an hour behind Argentina, sometimes. Argentina has daylight saving times, and Bolivia does not, sometimes it is an hour behind, and other times, it isnīt. We got it wrong though, and ended up freezing our arses off waiting for the travel agents to open so we could buy our bus ticket to Uyuni. First thing you should learn in Bolivia is there is no such thing as a direct bus, our direct bus involved a rickety bus ride for an hour, a wait of an hour which gave us a chance to buy some salteņas similar to empaņadas, except spėcier, and full of scalding hot juice which burnt Martin so badly he dropped his salteņa which was devoured by the hungry stray dogs that surrounded us as soon as we had food.

After waiting at the bus staion for an hour we were squeezed into a 4X4 12 of us in total including the driver, chewing away on his coca leaves. Then we off roaded for a couple of hours, as dried up river beds were used as makeshift roads in a country with notoriously poor transport links, probably not aided by the continous disruption by protesters who destroy the existing networks to make a point to the Government.

After the jeep ride we were piled into a bus for the remainder of the journey, which was over similar terrain to the last part, but a lot worse in a big bus rather than a specially designed off road vehicle.

2 vehicle changes and about 8 hours later and we have arrived in Uyuni, the lonely planet was not lying when it said you can wave goodbye to comfortable travel when you arrive in Bolivia.

So why did we travel for 8 hours to get to Uyuni? Well Uyuni is the home of possibly the largest Salt plains in the world, definately South America, and it is supposed to be very impressive. A bit of haggling later and we have organised our 3 day 2 night tour of the Salt plains and surrounding area, leaving at 10am the next morning...

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