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Published: November 20th 2005
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Arrived in Uyuni early in the morning. The bus trip was relatively relaxing and I slept OK. I now had time to kill before my three day tour began.
Uyuni is a railway junction in the middle of the deserts of SW Bolivia. The railways have declined in use, but now the town does a trade in taking tourists to see the incredible scenery nearby. I walked just outside the town in the “Train Cemetery’ where I got some nice photographs of old trains and carriages that have been dumped here.
At about 11, we left on our tour. The first day was the incredible Salar de Uyuni. This is the world’s largest salt flat and is a huge expanse of white salt. Quite an incredible place! You just drive and drive and drive over this white, flat surface. In the distance are mountains, and because it’s such a high altitude they appear really clear, yet pass at a slow pace.
At lunch, we stopped at an island on the lake where they have giant cacti. The bigger the cacti, the older they are. And some are 1000 years old!
We spent the night in a hut
on the edge of the lake. It was in a tiny village and we ended up playing with the little kids. No adults appeared during that whole time. It was quite nice (and quite sad) to think how that such innocent fun would be thought suspicious in my country.
I was in a good group and we had a lot of good craic and played silly card games.
The next morning we got up early and headed out into the hills. The day was spent driving through the mountains on ever smaller tracks. I didn’t think it was possible to get a 4x4 up some of the slopes we did. We saw lakes with flamingos, volcanoes that were smoking and lots and lots of "smaller" hills, some of which it is possible have never been climbed (or maybe not more than once). Hillwalking at this altitude would be difficult though. The highest pass we went through was more than 5000m.
That night was spent in what had been described as a “basic refuge”. They were not joking! It was the coldest night of my trip. We had been told we could hire sleeping bags and as I
Amusingly shaped cactus
On sale outside Salar de Uyuni, where the people make a living extracting the salt. They also sold some really nice souvenirs made of solid salt, but I didn't think they would survive the journey back. didn’t have one intended to do so. However, they didn’t have enough and what they did have was too small even for shorter people than me. I ended up sleeping in two T-shirts, 2 tops, my alpaca jumper, wind fleece, two extra blankets and a poncho (I also used my insect repellent for the first time this trip as people we had met who’d been here previously had said there were bed bugs). I also nabbed some hot water from the thermos we were given for tea and made myself a hot water bottle. And I managed to fashion a set of curtains and use my travel clothesline as a curtain line. It was still cold, but I slept better than some. Everyone was jealous of the little pillow I’ve been carrying with me. Actually, we had a lot of conversations on the amount of kit you should take with you travelling. I’m getting a bit paranoid that I’m taking so much and amazed at how small some people’s packs are.
Had simple dinner of spaghetti and sauce made from tinned tomatoes. Had really good blow out! Pasta is my staple diet at home but it’s been so long
Salt ready for extraction
They pile up the salt into these piles and gradually they dry out. In Jan/Feb the salt lake is "wet". I've seen fantastic pictures where it looks like a giant mirror. since I’ve had it here.
The next day, we got up even earlier than previously. This was so we could see some geysers which are more spectacular if you see them in the morning. Everyone else in my group was crossing the border into Chile. I was going back to Uyuni so I ended up doing so with completely different people. They were a French Swiss couple who were doing the round trip, but from Chile. It’s funny; Switzerland is such a multi-lingual country, yet they only spoke French. I ended up translating between French and Spanish with our guides. Bit of a surreal experience for me!
It was a long journey with very few stops as we had a lot of ground to cover (the trip is usually a 4 day round trip, but they have recently started a 3-day one). It’s quite difficult to get my head around the altitude here. We would descend for ages and hit a plateau for a while. Then we’d descend more and more and I'd think we were near sea level, but then we'd descend more! Even when we got back to Uyuni, we were still at 3675m!
Our
4x4’s petrol filter broke just outside Uyuni. They managed to fix it OK, but we were lucky it didn’t happen in the middle of nowhere!
Back at Uyuni, I had a nice night in a hotel with hot water and a comfortable bed. Got ripped off on the price, but didn’t really mind as I needed comfort and it’s still way cheaper than it would be at home.
I also tried llama steak for the first time. Tastes a bit like lamb (as you’d expect) but a bit more beef-like. Not much fat in it though. Don’t know why there aren’t more llama farmers in Britain.
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