Salty brass monkeys

So everything was going to plan perfectly for our last few days in Bolivia. In order not to spend any more time drifting, we booked our train ticket from Oururo to Uyuni before we left for Rurrenabaque, because we heard they sell out pretty quickly. We just had to catch a bus to Oururo from La Paz the day after we got back from the rainforest. Super. Except our flight back from Rurrenabaque was cancelled. No explanation. We were told we had a seat on a flight the following day, but that was the day we were meant to be catching the bus and the train too. No explanations or apologies. It seems there was a bit of a backlog of bumped passengers. Rurrenabaque was full of disgruntled tourists wondering how they were ever going to get out of the jungle.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth over scuppered plans (mainly by Milly) we calmed down. Worst case scenario, our train tickets would be wasted and we´d have to wait an extra day or so in La Paz before we could get another train, or take the plunge and go all the way to Uyuni on the bus, which is meant to be one of the coldest most exhausting bus rides in Bolivia. Flippin´ Bolivian transport we thought to ourselves. That´ll teach us for being organised.

As it turned out, after spending a blissful extra day lounging by a pool and snoozing in hammocks in Rurre, we caught our flight the next day. On time. No hassles. We were in a cab and heading for the hotel in La Paz to pick up our stored luggage within 10 minutes of landing. The hotel didn´t charge us for the room we reserved but hadn´t needed. Turns out there had been a lot of snow over the mountains during the last few days and that is what had disrupted all the flights.

We then had a couple of hours to kill before heading to the bus station. Straight on the bus. The bus took us directly to the train station in Ouruo where we got straight on our waiting train. We arrived in Uyuni a little behind schedule at 3 a.m. but couldn´t really complain. Plane, taxi, bus, train. We couldn´t help thinking there was no way so much public transport in one day would have gone as smoothly in the UK.

We hadn´t been so organised that we´d booked our trip of the Salar de Uyuni in advance, so we took a day to get over all that travelling. It turned out to be a big day of celebration in Uyuni. All the school children from miles around were parading through the streets. A podium of local dignitaries watched over the proceedings. The brass bands in the area decided they were going to play at once too. South American marching bands have astonished us while we´ve been here. Everybody plays roughly the same tune together, at roughly the same tempo, without really bothering to tune their instruments. There are no arrangements or solos. Just one big ´blast off´. And when two or more bands want to play at the same time - they just do. Different tunes mind you. If you can call them tunes in the first place. Enough to make your ears bleed.

We consoled ourselves with Minuteman Pizza. Quite frankly, one of the best pizzas we have ever had. Rome, New York, Uyuni. It´s up there. Delicious breakfasts too. We bumped into a friend we had made on the Colca Canyon trek in Peru, so we joined him and some friends from NZ for a smashing dinner and again for granola, pancakes and cappucinos the next morning. Highly civilised. It wasn´t to last.

We booked a three day tour of the Uyuni Salar with Tonito Tours - another highly efficient agency. Our driver, Gabriel, owner of the finest teeth in Bolivia, and our cook, known only as ´Cookie´ but possibly Mrs Gabriel, were our guides. Six of us squashed ourselves into the back of a Land Cruiser. The back seat was just about tolerable, but the tiny second back seat crammed into the boot was agony. None of us were short-legged. We actually had horizontal bruises just below our knee-caps after the trip from being so squashed up. But it was worth all the pain and discomfort for the chance to see some truly remarkable landscape.

Day 1 takes you through a train cemetary, where you can get out, climb all over the rusty wreckage and bump your head really hard on nasty sharp objects (Milly). After a short drive, you arrive at the edge of the salar. It is a huge lake with a 1mt thick crust of salt, strong enough to drive over. During the wet season, the lake is covered in water from all the snow that falls on the salt and melts instantly. The salt is gathered up and refined by the locals, packaged up and sold all over Bolivia. It was very strange to get out of the truck and stand on hard salty ground. We all tasted it to make sure it wasn´t a trick.

After spending most of the day driving around on the salt, taking pictures and stopping at a cactus covered island in the middle of the lake, we arrived at our first night accommodation. A perfectly acceptable hostel. We had all heard horror stories of poor conditions on the salar trip, but so far so good. Cookie proved to be a top chef and Gabriel offered to drive to the nearest village to get us some beer. It was cold, but not unbearable. Made use of the hot water bottle though and slept pretty well.

Day 2 involved a tolerably early start, then a long drive to view an active volcano and on to the lakes. We passed by lots of lakes during the day. Most with mysterious milky waters, or clear turquoise depths. Flamingos, snow capped peaks, weird rocky formations and barren wastelands. It was remote, cold and alien but very beautiful. Our last stop was at the Laguna Colorada, with its glowing red waters. It looked highly toxic, but the flamingos were obviously fond of the strange algae that gave it the red colour.

By now it was freezing. We were up at well over 4000 mts and our hostel was not quite as nice as the previous night. Still not as bad as some stories we have heard with people having to sleep on concrete, rooms with broken windows, etc. We had beds and blankets, but they were pretty ropey. There were also about 30 of us in one hostel, with two broken toilets between us and no running water. By the morning the loos were in a gag-inducing state of uncleanliness. It also dropped down to below minus 15 degrees during the night. We wore everything we had with us. And sleeping bags and blankets. It was still cold. The hot water bottle was a godsend though.

Gabriel woke us at a little after 5 a.m. to go to see the geysers, at their best early in the morning. Unlike us. Another bone rattling ride. Not for the first time, some of us could be heard muttering about the fact that we were actually paying for this treatment. We smelled the geysers before we saw them. Pure sulphur. The steam was amazing though. No health and safety regulations or anything, you could walk all over the site and stick your face as close as you dared to the gushing steam. We reached our highest altitude here and Gabriel told us it gets as cold as minus 22 deg. Even with everything on - the heat just leached from our bodies the minute we stood still. The ice on the inside of the jeep didn´t start to melt until the sun came up. After the geysers, we stopped at a thermal spring for breakfast. Some crazy types stripped off and jumped in. Our group was a little reluctant. The water was warm and lovely, but we couldn´t bear the thought of shivering at the side of the pool and trying to dry off in such freezing temperatures. Some of us braved putting our feet in. Just enough.

We finished our tour at the Laguna Verde, another stunning lake on the Chilean border. We waved goodbye to Gabriel, Cookie and our fellow trippers who were going all the way back to Uyuni, and headed off to catch the bus to San Pedro de Atacama, our first stop in Chile. Within a mile or so, we were over the border. It was such a relief to be out of the jeep. We sat back and relaxed as Bolivian dirt tracks gave way to luxury Chilean tarmac, and dreamed of the good food and fine wines waiting for us just a few miles down the road.

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