Salar de Uyuni and La Paz

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Our 3-day Land Cruiser trip to Salar de Uyuni was a blast aside from the effects of altitude (to which Chuck seemed immune as ususal, except for feeling mildly tired as he jogged up a ridge to get a sunset photo!) We crossed the Bolivian border early in the morning and were assigned to our Toyotas. We were lucky because we ended up with only 4 people and a driver, so all our luggage could stay in the vehicle rather than being wrapped in a tarp on the roof. Some vehicles had eight people in them! Our destination on the first day was the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. A factor that added to the novelty of the trip was the drama that ensued after a recent increase in the park admission from 30 bolivianos to 150 bolivianos. We were amazed at the huge jump in prices, but our tour guides and drivers were livid! According to them, the park had promised better roads, bathrooms and facilites and had not yet delivered. They politely advised us not to pay. On Day 1, there was a standoff at the gate with much arguing in Spanish and gesticulating, and we ended up being admitted without paying. We figure the wardens at the entrance just passed the problem off to their colleagues at the park exit the next day! We spent the day driving through spectacular landscapes of colourful lakes dotted with pink flamingoes, and distant sandy mountains. We stopped at a geyser and it actually started to snow! We ended the day at our refugio for lunch and were pleasantly surprised to see the spread of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, vegetable soup and choripan (hotdog) sandwiches, all washed down with the ubiquitous Coca-Cola! The refugio was quite nice with lots of windows and brightly painted yellow walls. After a brief siesta, we drove out to Laguna Colorado to see the llamas. I was starting to feel the altitude at this point (headache, lethargy) so I had another siesta before dinner and turned in early after dinner.

The next morning we were roused early by our drivers in order to be at the park gates to continue the great debate about park fees. We all stood around for about an hour, watching the debating techniques of the wardens and drivers, which were surprisingly polite. Each man was able to have his say with no interruptions and he thanked the audience for listening at the end of his diatribe! The wardens had a paper copy of the official document decreeing the fee change, but apparently it hadn't been formally approved yet, so we ended up leaving without paying anything. We had wanted to make a contribution at least, but the drivers were adamant that the money would just end up going to corrupt government officials and would not benefit the park.

The rest of the day featured natural hot springs, the Arboles de Piedra, the Salvador Dali desert (so-called because of the weird and wonderful rock formations that evoke his paintings), more colourful Lagunas and flamingoes, flighty vicunas and another delicious lunch of cold rice salad, tuna and veggies, all laid out on a cloth tablecloth with ceramic dishes! Chuck was frustrated at not being able to get close enough to the flamingoes to get a good photo, but I think he has some amazing ones. After lunch, we hurried back into the vehicles as there were ominous rain clouds on the horizon. We were soon driving through a lightning storm with very close hits and torrential rain. At one point, the road became so flooded that our driver had to veer off the track and drive through the tussocks in order not to get carried away! Apparently this kind of rain is normal for this time of year, and in fact the crops of quinoa and flocks of llamas depend on it. We covered a huge distance that day and for most of the day there was no evidence of human life as far as the eye could see. That night we stayed in the Salt Hotel, which is exactly what it sounds like: an entire hotel in which the walls, beds, tables and chairs were all made of blocks of salt! We had a delicious dinner of llama and potatoes and chunky vegetable soup, and red wine purchased at the local corner store! The sunset was spectacular and we went to bed eager to see the world famous salt flats in the morning.

We were not disappointed with the fantastical descriptions we had heard of the Salar de Uyuni. It is difficult to describe the feeling of driving through a landscape that is absolutely white. I have never been to the Arctic so maybe it is comparable, but it is very strange. It feels like an unfinished painting or movie set. There were hazy mountains in the distance but they never seemed to get closer, and other vehicles produced crazy mirages as it was difficult to tell how big or small or how close they were. Our destination was Isla Pescado which is an island in the salt sea covered in cacti. We got some great photos of the view and tried to get some mind-bending shots using the perspective and the absolute whiteness, but unfortunately we hadn't studied carefully enough how to set them up. I think we got some good ones (the one of me with the toilet paper rolls is definitely going on the bathroom wall at home!) but Chuck was disappointed when he saw what we could have done in a display at a restaurant later that day in Uyuni. The whiteness of the salt became hard on the eyes after awhile and I was eager to get to the town of Uyuni and see the train cemetery! We didn't have long to spend there as the other half of our group was heading back to San Pedro de Atacama that afternoon, so we scampered (well I scampered; Chuck isn't a very good scamperer) around the rusty hulks for a little while. I tried to imagine them in their former glory but it was difficult. Apparently there is a train there that was robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but which one it was is anyone's guess!

As I mentioned, the tour ended in the town of Uyuni and we said goodbye to some of our fellow travellers who headed back to Chile while we continued North to La Paz. We were able to get an overnight bus ticket for that night and we spent a few hours wandering around the surprisingly pretty town of Uyuni. We had heard from many backpackers that Bolivia is dirty and poor with dirt streets and awful hygiene, but Uyuni had a nice little tiled pedestrian street and some strange, interesting statues. The overnight bus, on the other had, lived up (or lived down?) to everything we had heard about buses in Bolivia. It was like off-roading in a schoolbus. The roads were hugely rutted and washed out and the bathroom door kept us from getting to sleep with its incessant banging due to a broken latch. Poor Chuck suffered in the window seat as I was feeling quite sick (badly-cooked llama at the Salt Hotel?) and wanted to be able to get to the bathroom quickly if needed! We stopped in the middle of the night at a toilet which could have been the set for "The Worst Toilet in Scotland" in Trainspotting.

We arrived in La Paz after about 18 hours, at 8:10 am or so. We had been hoping to get a morning bus to Cusco and come back to explore La Paz later in our trip, but that bus had left at 8am! Resigned to spending another day in transit (and another day without a shower) we dumped our bags at the bus station and took a taxi into the city centre. La Paz, like Uyuni, was a nice surprise. We found a coffee shop and planned our relaxed tour, which started with a visit to the San Francisco monastery. We walked through the bustling, orderly Plaza Murillo and the incredibly noisy Plaza San Francisco to enter the quiet, serene cloisters of the monastery. We took the opportunity to brush our teeth in the church banos! A highlight of the monastery tour were the views of La Paz from the rooftops, above the noise and bustle of the streets. We wandered through the witchcraft market and nervously eyed the strange things available, like llama fetuses (I don't want to know what they use those for!), then had lunch at a sandwich shop before heading back to the bus station to catch our bus. An unexpected surprise on our bus trip was a parade that we passed along the way. I didn't get my camera out in time to get any great photos, but both men and women were elaborately dressed in huge costumes and were twirling in elegant formation to the loud street music. In all, these few days in Bolivia just whetted our appetites for more and I'm disappointed to report at this point in the trip that we did not get back to Bolivia as hoped. Oh well, we'll just have to come back!

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