Travelogue

We both left Potosi early, myself for Uyuni and Sandra for Tupiza. I was a little nervous about taking off on my own as I wasn’t sure how I’d fare with my lack of Spanish and we had both been travelling together for such a long time that it felt like something was missing. Still it would be a good challenge for myself in particular and a part of me was getting excited at the thought!

I soon got myself booked on a bus that was to leave Potosi at 11am. It actually left at 12pm as it waited to fill up. The bus company were really quite cheeky in that they had a big luxury bus parked outside their office to which I thought I had bought a ticket. 10 minutes before it was supposed to leave a driver came and drove the empty bus away and replaced it with a smaller and much more basic bus! The luggage went on top and I squeezed on with the rest of the passengers. I had to move from my allocated seat, although not fully understanding why. It seemed that a local guy needed my seat for his spare wheel that he was carrying… quite odd! Eventually the bus left on what was a long 6 hour journey across a very bumpy and dusty road.

Getting off the bus in Uyuni we were greeted by a few tour agencies offering tours into the Salar. Most were 3 day tours but you could also do a day trip. After talking to 3 of the agencies I decided to go for the company that offered me a hotel for the night in Uyuni, the 3 day tour through the Salar and also a transfer into Chile at the end. I also got her to throw in a sleeping bag for 700 Bolivianos. It seemed a fare price at the time, although I was to find out some people got the tour for 550 Bolivianos, including a transfer to Chile.

After spending the night in an extremely cold Uyuni I made my way to the office and waited for the agency to pick me up. I must have waited for 45 minutes and was just getting worried when the lady I bought the ticket from turned up in a taxi. She handed me my transfer to Chile ticket and put me in the taxi which took me to another agency that was just over the road from the hotel I had stayed in! I soon realised that it really doesn’t matter who you book with, you still get lumped together in any group that needs filling! My advice is to just go for the cheapest. Although all the tour agencies go to great pains to tell you of the importance of booking with their tour company, in reality they are just a tour agency and you end up going through one central company and get put in any group and any 4×4 to make up the numbers…

The adventure started and I was with 5 others: two Irish girls, two New Zealand boys and a Scottish lad. They had all been travelling together for a couple of months so it helped when we kind of joined another group at the hotel in the evenings, I was less of an outsider!

First stop was an old Train Cemetery. Quite surreal. There were a few long trains and countless other carriages and engines all rusting in the dessert where they last stopped. It looked like one of the trains came to a halt as it ran off the tracks and into the sand.

Straight after this it was into the Salar itself. The landscape now turned from the baron rocky desert to a brilliant white salty flat void. Spread out at various places there were mounds of salt awaiting to be taken away for processing. It’s hard to explain this part of the world, it really is magnificent. There appears to be nothing except volcanoes and mountains on the distant horizon in all directions. The salt beneath our feet is set in a cracked looking pentagonal pattern that stretches for miles. I’ll let the pictures explain!

The first night we stayed in a salt hotel. It was built from bricks made of salt and had cactus wood furniture inside. It was very cold at night here, but thankfully the group that arrived before us had been out to get some booze so we were able to get our beer coats on and stave off the cold!
Taking pictures outside at sunset it suddenly made sense that this whole area used to be covered by water. It was obvious from the coral and reef like plants and rocks.

The next day we were up early and out the door by 4:30am. It was absolutely freezing! The day was full of lakes, flamingo’s and volcanoes. We stopped off at the Salvador Dali inspired rock formations. I was a little disappointed with this part, I thought they would be slightly different having seen Dalis paintings but then he did have a fantastic imagination right?!

At night we had a kind of party, mainly to stave of the cold again but it was all good. Felt a bit rough in the morning as we had another really early start to get to the geysers for sunrise. After it was a quick stop at the thermal pool to warm up from the extreme cold, then a quick look at Lago Verde surrounded by live volcanoes then off to the Bolivian border to end the tour and cross over into Chile. Exhausting but a fascinating few days.

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