Uyuni part 1, the story of the little engine that couldn´t....

Well, this was a strategic decision. As the whole salt flats and lagunes experience was overfilled with natural beauty, we thought it best to create a separate story for all the frustration built up during the 3 day journey...... So here goes.

There's only so many things you can do as a tourist to safeguard yourself from any sort of bad/mal-practice, fraud, robbery (not that that happened so far), lies, etc etc, and we thought we had many of our i's dotted and t's crossed. Not in this one.

OK, it was a Toyota LandCruiser, generally the most reliable 4WD you can get, but it's colour hadded faded already because of it's age. Hard to tell, especially when you start of in sunny conditions, on a very flat salt lake. So no bad news on day one, maybe a bit cramped in the back for the 3 guys.

Day 2 was announced as the day with the worst roads, so we were prepared, sort of, as we were now in that back seat (with a German friend). And already some signs, crawling up some hills at sub-20km/h speeds. It wasn´t bad that he shifted to a lower gear (L, as it was an automatic, oh dear) going down hill, which is not a bad idea to save the brakes. However, later in the afternoon, as we were climbing up to greater altitudes, all of a sudden Juan stops and turns the car back in the other direction.... To face the wind to cool the engine down.... ahum, hard to see how an engine could overheat here, the temperature was between 10 and 15 celcius, and the gauge was long way of the red.

Also worthy of noticing that we'd agreed to be the first up and about that morning at 7am, to beet the rest of the tourist convoy at phot ops! Considering the speed with which we crawled uphill, this effort was more or less wasted when otehr cars came flying bye.

Also, because of that speed difference we were agin one of the last at the lodges, and even though WE had booked weeks in advance, THEY had not booked anything at the lodges... Anyone for camping at sub zero temperatures? Think not. But I do think we got the last room at that lodge.

So again, agree to be up first for day 3, leaving at 5.15am! Anyone who knows me knows that this needs a lot of convincing at my door.

Some more facts: they could've just decided to start the engine a bit earlier to warm it and the rest of the car up, and leaving with frosted windscreen is never a safe idea, let alone in the dark on a hilly dirt road, let alone with a driver with a slight form of cataract in one eye.... So we're all freezing in the car, but he won't turn on the heating (no air con at this age of car yet), as it doesn't work. Last time I checked, this aged car heating works of the engine, so would have at least produced some heat to defrost the windows.

We drive with a 50cm radius cleared "viewing hole" on the frosty windscreen for almost an hour, as car after car hurdles bye..... Not knowing, but there were a lot of cars ahead of us when we reached 4800m altitude and the geysers..... And then were rushed onwards by Juan to decend towards the hotsprings. Meaning, that we got to enjoy the sunrise from the cramped back seat of the car...... which is not whay you get up at 4.45am.....

Needless to say we get to the hotsprings nearly last.

At this point the down buttons for the electric window mechanism in the rear seats still work, but the UP buttons have died.... strange but true.

The front tires are SUV quality, meaning they belong in any rich subburb, but not in this sort of rough terrain.

Something that doesn't help in building confidence is seeing other people struggle with old run down 4WDs either. Seems like anyone here has a story to tell about bad experiences with cars, drivers, or both. Getting ripped of is one of them. Some telling tales of cars without disk brakes didn't help, or cars with replacement small engines.

Anyway, we're looking at the 7 hour return journey, knowing that we have a bus ticket for the 8pm express to La Paz. Time's ticking.... and we blow a few fuses at Juan after about 1hour of plotting uphill. Please do note that it was hard to see any "angle" of going uphill, but still the car was hardly getting up to 30km/h....... So fuse blown, a long discussion, but no gain in speed......

We made it in the end, just after 7pm, all to glad to hop of, forget about showers for another night, and sit down in the luxury of an overnight tourist bus seat... with pillow and blanket !


So in short, when going to Uyuni, book with a large touring company, and ask others (or check at the local office) for recommendations!

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