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Published: August 27th 2011
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Monday For our night journey to Uyuni, the bus was advertise as the best in Bolivia. I would agree with that - it's not too hard to be the best. Once the seats were reclined, we were jammed in like sardines and my seat slowly returned to the upright position each hour. We were sitting in the second row, front row had lots of leg room and the guy in it stayed reclined well past dawn, even past breakfast. I had to tap him on the shoulder and ask him to give me a bit more room.
Bolivian buses are different from those in Peru. The driver is separated from the passengers who are shut in behind a curtained door, so, unlike the Peruvian buses there are no large windows up front to see the road and what's ahead. The last third of the journey was on gravel and when we hit that, the bus lurched and swayed through what I thought was a flat sandy landscape with lumpy rocks, seen in the yellow glow of the headlights. But as dawn broke, a 10cm covering of snow was revealed. A small group of vicuña fed on the scrubby vegetation in
the distance.
After checking into our hotel we wander around taking in the highlights of Uyuni - just the railway station and some metal sculpture in the street. There are some food markets but the produce is not very fresh. There are not many shops open. Uyuni is flat, it's wide streets are laid out in a grid. It looks and feels like a frontier town. Down one end of town lives the army. An old woman squats in the middle of an intersection to relieve herself. This practise appears quite common in the Andes and the people seem to have no qualms about it.
We have free internet on an old computer with a slow connection, by the front window. In the covered courtyard on the way to our room and the dining room, the hotel's dog sleeps beside an armadillo (dead and dried, that's the only kind we see). We play cards and darts in the dining room while we watch a movie and try to keep warm. Later we join a Dutch father and son and his Spanish wife for a pizza dinner and game of dice. The dad now lives in Bolivia and is
a well known sculptor.
Just heard that people going to Potosi, our next destination, are going in convoy with a tractor as they are worried about snow. And our agent said that buses are not leaving Sucre for Uyuni for same reason.
Tuesday The snow doesn´t seem to be very deep but because of it, our Salar trip is postponed for a day. We´ve already seen the highlights so we decide to walk out beyond the edge of town into the snowy wilds.
Tracks lead all over the place, trucks, dogs, wild animals, cars, bikes and people. (We find out later that this is the way back to La Paz) Kids everywhere are building big, dirty snowmen. We navigate our way back through the mud, snow, dog poo and pools of water to the paved roads.
They are not much better as there is no drainage so the intersections are awash with dirty water. Now that the snow has stopped, businesses are opening and people are emerging from behind closed doors.
I've already lost my woolie hat so I buy another. A dog follows us back to the hotel via our shopping route. We´ve been
assured that our tour will leave the next day but as the cloud is still low, I´m not sure how much we´ll see.
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