Blogs from Uyuni, Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 2

From San Pedro de Atacama, we booked a three-day Uyuni jeep tour with Atacama Mistica. A friend we made in Santiago recommended them after travelling with them, and a tour agency in San Pedro also highly recommended them, hence we decided to go with this reputable company. We were picked up from our hostel and taken to the border of Chile and Bolivia. Both the Chilean and Bolivian immigration was very quick as the queue was not very big. We were given sandwiches with Coca tea for breakfast; Coca tea is pretty big in the Atacama region of Chile and in places of higher altitude in Bolivia to help the body to acclimatise. The Coca leaf is used to make cocaine, but the leaves have other health properties, as I've just mentioned. The tea itself, once ... read more

Hi All, As we were leaving Potosi today we decided to have a chilled morning, catching up on Internet, re-packing our bags and things like that. We went to for lunch at a little café we found near the main square; I had an omelet and Vick a pizza slice. Our bus was at 13:30 on the email confirmation we had, so we left Potosi at 12.30 to get to the terminal 30 mins early as normal…this is when things started to go wrong!!! The taxi driver took us to the wrong bus station, after we had worked that out (all in Spanish as no one spoke English), we got a taxi to the right station, (this one Vick panicked because a guy jumped into the passenger seat of the taxi just as we started to ... read more

Sarah (Friday 10th April): Right now we're in the middle of absolutely nowhere, drinking hot coffee and munching on sweet biscuits and I am wearing a llama cardigan which is keeping me really warm and very happy! Going back to Wednesday killing time in La Paz before our nightbus, we went back to the Dutch restaurant for lunch and had a good feed followed by a good hour or so of people watching from our upstairs window seat and reading, escaping the crazy streets. We may have also had to order some hot chocolates to keep us going... (Nick's was actually a delicious hot milk with a chocolate bar melted in and we may have picked up some Dutch sweet waffles on our way out... to keep us going on our 3 day salt flat tour, ... read more

The most obvious way to Bolivia from San Pedro de Atacama is via the salt flats of Uyuni. In San Pedro plenty of operators compete to take travelers through the southern Bolivian highland desert and across the salt flats to Uyuni. We quickly found out that this intense competition has lead to low prices, some times even too low as safety was comprised for the sake of lower prices. In 2008 this led to some accidents with fatalities. According to rumors there are also operators that use this tour to smuggle drugs across the border, and as a result don't care about the income from the actual tour but in turn the drivers aren't always sober and careful. Regardless of whether this was necessary or not, these things made us a bit concerned and led us ... read more

unter mildem sternschnuppen-beschuss brechen wir in schwarzer luft auf in die salar de uyuni. rechts von uns glimmt schon der morgen, die bergspitzen heben sich wie papierschnitt vom beginnenden gelb ab, während links von uns noch die sterne glitzern. innerhalb von nur wenigen momenten reicht jedoch das licht aus um die strahlend weiße salzwüste in angenehm helles licht zu tauchen. die morgendliche kälte treibt uns rasch, in handschuhe und daunen gewickelt, die isla incahuasi inmitten der wüste hinan. gerade rechtzeitig erreichen wir den höchsten punkt um die sonne aufgehen zu sehen - die helle einöde um uns und die zahlreichen kakteen werden in spektakulär warmes licht getaucht, der schatten der insel erstreckt sich noch über hunderte meter. die imposanten kakteen um uns wachsen nur 5mm pro jahr, einige von ihnen messen gut 4 meter - man ... read more