Into Bolivia, Uyuni, and the great wilderness of the Salt Lake

We crossed the overland border from Argentina into Bolivia on 27th May 2005. I always find land border crossings stressful as there are always 100's of people milling around, a good number of them waiting to scam you in some way before you've managed to work out the correct exchange rate! Then having to negotiate the immigration procedures in a foreign language and endure the eternally rude immigration officers. On the Argentinian side there were indeed 100's of people, forming a huge queue, and nearly all of them with huge sacks of produce on their backs. Ignorance is sometimes bliss so we strolled past everyone and were ushered straight into the immigration office where the officers actually gave us a smile! On the Bolivian side not a single person hassled us and we had a quiet stroll to the bus to take us to our first stop at Topiza.

From the border town of Villazon onwards it was only dirt roads and the landscape became more and more dramatic, climbing high into the mountains. Bolivia has the most incredible scenery I´ve seen anywhere in the world and such a variety. Some of
the tiny villages are very primitive. The mountain passes are awesome and the rocks are multi-coloured, red, green, sandy, black, brown. One minute there are sand dunes and cacti
then salt flats then jagged rocks with ice.

In the bus we had the dubious pleasure of the company of 4 drunk guys, one of whom became increasingly aggressive, shouting and swearing, trying to climb out the window, and looking like he was going to throw up on us at any moment! On leaving the bus he tried to climb all over me so I gave him a hefty push back into his seat which seemed to shock him into some sobriety!

We stayed one night in Topiza in quite a nice hotel but next to a deafening disco with some maniac on a microphone! The next day we caught a bus to Uyuni. Uyuni is not the sort of place tourists would stop at if it wasn´t for the extraordinary salt lake nearby. The town itself is at a high altitude and is cold at night and none of the hotels seem to have heating!

We took a jeep with a Japanese girl onto the Salar de Uyuni (largest Salt lake in the world) and stayed overnight in a hotel made entirely from salt (including the bed, chairs and tables)! Had a nice lunch of Vicuna (a type of deer) steak given to us, Denise remarked that she thought Vicuna were rare, which is in fact true and they are a protected species, probably because people like us keep eating them! It was freezing cold and again there was no heating. At night, outside, the sky was crystal clear and the array of stars was incredible. That day we also visited an ´island´ full of giant cacti and took lots of photos! Then we drove onto a volcano island and visited some caves with mummies inside, which shocked the life out of Denise! There were lots of llamas on the volcano and pink flamingoes mingled by the salt lake edge. Talking of llamas, I had a great spicy llama pizza with roasted peppers at a restaurant run by an American in Uyuni!

On the second day of the tour we visited the local salt processing shed (it wasn´t much more than a shed) and some stalls where they sell products made from salt, like little llamas and ashtrays. The kids from the village were enjoying themselves sledging down small hills of salt on plastic bottles! Then we visited the Uyuni train cemetery, which I found highly photogenic but Denise was slightly mystified as to how this could be a tourist attraction!

Little did we know that as we were enjoying ourselves on the cool salt lakes the farmers and workers of Bolivia were brewing up a heady concoction of road blocks and riots which would ultimately put a stop to our casual jaunts around their bonny country!



(If you wish to purchase any of the photos shown please click here)

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