Uyuni

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Trip Start Oct 23, 2008 Previous
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  Uyuni, Bolivia
Thursday, January 1, 2009

Spent a da in Oruro waiting for the train and walked around the emormous markets. One of the best parts about travelling is the food and it's SO chepa of the street and in markets. I try to find stalls or people with food that I've never seen or tried before. I'm eating about 7 times a day since everytime I walk by a stall and smell it, ask how much it is, find out it's 50 cents I can't refuse.

We took the night train to Uyuni and arrived at 2:30 am in the rain. Got up the next morning and found a tour company to take a tour of the Unni salt flats with and the altiplano (high plane). Got a sweet deal since we were looking for a tour that morning and they were trying to fill up the jeep. Paid 70 USD and the people we were with paid 200! They got ripped off though and paid more than any one else we spoke to or any price we got from a tour company. Ironically one of the people that paid too much was Bolivian.

The tours are 3 days long with 6 tourists, the driver and a cook in a jeep. The day stared by visiting a train cemetary. Not very exciting, then drove to the Uyuni salt flat. It was amazing. DEfinately flat, you could see for miles and miles and it was all white. Since it's the beginning of the rainy season there was water in some parts that reflected the sky. Salt doesn't sound very exciting but this was one of the most incredible sights of the trip so far.

Drove out of the salt flat on the altiplano and spent the night. We were extremely lucky with blue skies on the first and third day but the 2nd was raining and over cast. We drove south and were surrounded bu 6000 m mountains (we were driving at about 4000m) but couldn't see them due to the overcast sky but it was still beautiful. Normally at 4000m you're standing on the zennith of a mountain but it was incredibly flat. We spent a day and a half driving at this elevation in extremely flat wide valleys surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. When the clouds lifted the mountains were amazing. They were coloured red, orange, etc.

And with mountians there are always lakes. We stopped at several that had hundreds of flamingos in each. They are made from mountain run off and not from rain so there was a huge build up of minerals in the water and as a result were multi coloured. We went to a white, red and green lake. All were stunning.

There were also amazing rock formations due to errosion. One of the highlights of the trip for me was seeing vicuņas. They are part of the camelid family like alpacas and llamas (had a llama streak off the street for lunch today actually). You can't eat the vicuņas because they are extremely endangered. They are making a come back but were hunted almost to extinction for their fur. Its the finest quality in the world, softer than cashmere. A sweater sells for about 1000 USD. Ironically, after being nearly wiped out for their wool they are now protected for it. We also saw a coule of foxes, wild but were hanging out at the lunch spots where the tourists eat which i don't like. Idiot white people were feeding them.

The tour was amazing but are now stuck in Uyuni. We got back to town on new years eve, tried to take a train at 2:30 am which didn't exist got up early this morning to take a bus but they're not running due to the holiday. Not much to do here except eat cheap delicious food but have a ticket for tomorrow morning to Tupiza. A real wild west town. Has amazing cowboy scenery and history, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed not far from there.

Photos soon

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