Advertisement
Published: February 18th 2006
Salar de Uyuni, in style
Is there a better way to travel while driving through a few inches of water...Well, the arduous journey to get to Uyuni, and more importantly, the salt flats of southern Bolivia, has come to an end. Fortunately, the drawn out process was worth the wait. Once again, we succombed to the ease of the "tourist package", and signed ourselves up for a three day trip with one of the many companies that seem to dominate the small town of Uyuni. We ended up being paired up with four other fellas for our journey. When you also added a driver and a cook, the old Landcruiser didn´t have much leg room to spare.
Our first destination was Salar de Uyuni. Being the rainy season, the salt flats were flooded, creating a surreal mirror that stretches as far as the eye can see. As beautiful as the salt lake was, it also caused a lot of drama for a few more unfortunate tourists. A number of reports were circulating about companies that had decided against better judgement to venture to the inner salt lake destinations. One group didn´t get back for a couple of days. Sure enough, while we were there, we met up with a pair of travellers who endured the worst case scenario: their bus
Guess Who!
It just seemed like a good idea at the time... had died while driving in the deeper parts of the salt lake, and the passengers were forced to walk waist-deep in salt water for two hours in the dark before arriving at a place where some jeeps could be radioed to drive them back to town. Our tour learned from the mistakes of others and simply stuck to the edge.
The next day involved an amazing drive through the altiplano. The landscape was ethereal, with wide expanses of desolate flatlands being interrupted periodically by dramatic sandstone outcrops, and all forms of volcanic formations. The bizarre rocks were begging me to jump ship, set up camp and call home for my climbing shoes. I haven´t seen such untapped bouldering opportunities in my life. Next time, I´m going to spend some time here. Mixed in with the rock and sand were various lagoons. These were filled with hundreds of flamingos. These birds are so freaking cool! The biggest complaint was that we didn´t have more time to spend at each stop.
This wish was almost granted unexpectedly when we started to experience a few difficulties with our jeep. We had to pull over quite a few times to have the driver fiddle
Comfy!
There was 6 full sized guys in the back of this landcruiser, a cook and a diver... with the fuses and jiggle a few electrical connections. The electrical problems were only one of many issues with our jeep, but tended to be the most debilitating. No worries... we survived and made it to our destination at the end of each day.
Our last day was a torturous affair, having to retrace all of our previous progress south. We set off early to watch the sun rise while watching geysers blow their steam then followed it up with a nice soak in some natural hotsprings. Then came the grueling drive back. This meant driving a third of Bolivia in one day, all on gravel roads.
So, after driving the whole way back, we were pretty glad to leave the jeep behind. Those middle seats of the Landcruiser were neither soft nor roomy, especially when sharing with 5 other full-grown guys. My ass was sore and legs were cramped for days afterwards. Ah, the troubles of travelling.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 16; qc: 59; dbt: 0.0532s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
