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Published: August 5th 2010
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It has been an adventure from beginning to end. It’s difficult to describe the miserable 12 hour bus journey to Uyuni other than it was so cold I froze to the window and Steve’s knees were grumbling due to no leg room because we were in the front.
Anywhoo, we arrived bright and breezy in Uyuni at 8am and immediately picked up a tour (a 835km trip around the lakes of the Andes and the Salar de Uyuni) leaving a couple of hours later - no rest for the wicked. We had about an hour to kill so we went in search of something hot in some place warm.
After a cooked brekkie we went to meet the rest of the group we were about to spend the next few days with. There were two Germans, two Frenches, two Brits (us) and a Spaniard (Ivan - our driver, cook and guide). Luckily English was the common denominator, but sometimes it was amazing to hear a French girl teaching a German boy a Spanish phrase in English.
We covered so much ground seeing lakes, geysers, volcanoes, mountains and much more. The trip was overwhelmingly good and although we would
occasionally bump in to other tourists, most of the time we were travelling through huge areas of wilderness alone.
Meals were provided by Ivan. For the first lunch we stopped off at a family home where they hung their meat out on washing lines next to their clothes. We both had our first taste of llama, it was OK, a bit like chewy beef. The evening meals were served up in common areas in the hostels and were pretty good.
We had decided to do the tour the opposite way around to the norm so that the highlight, the Salar de Uyuni, was last on the agenda. This meant that the first night we went straight up to 4800m to our first hostel which didn’t have any heating and the dorm beds were made of concrete. Dinner was served at 9pm and after scoffing down the food we went straight to bed fully clothed trying to conserve the heat. -20C it got to that night, we were extremely pleased that we’d hired sleeping bags when we saw that the hostel only provided 2 blankets!
The second night was by far the best. We stayed in a hostel
made entirely out of salt, even the chairs, tables and beds were salt. The temperature was much less frosty and we had a good old chuckle at the poor people who were going the opposite way to us and was feeling cold here, they were in for a shock the next night.
The Salar was awesome, nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. We spent a couple of hours messing around, taking photos. There’s an island in the middle which is full of very large cacti, we climbed up to the top and sat trying to absorb the view. The silence is striking in the Salar and around the rest of the places we’d been too.
We got back to Uyuni at around 3pm, it would’ve been 2pm but we ran out of fuel and had to wait for someone to pass by and give us some. Luckily they did.. twice (we ran out again after the first one!). After a close shave with the bus tickets because some buses were delayed for at least a day due to blockades on the roads, we eventually managed to get ourselves on one of the few
leaving that night.
After setting off at 8pm we came to a stop half an hour down the road. It turned out that for us to leave Uyuni safely we had to cross the Salar (ie off roading in the middle of a salt pan at night in a 60 seater bus). We had come to a stop because we were waiting for two other buses so we could do it in convoy. Well, we fell asleep after that, but an hour later got woken up to our bus at a 45 degree angle bombing over bushes and what felt like canyons in the salt. This went on for a couple of hours punctuated with stops so the drivers could have a powwow and, I’m guessing, figure out which way to go.
Hats off to the driver though, we arrived in La Paz 14 hours later, alive to tell the tale. That was 7 hours ago. We’d not had a shower since we were last in La Paz (I know - but it was sooooo cold and the hostels didn’t have showers anyway) but we are now in a proper bed having had a gorgeous hot shower.
Steve has come down with a cold unfortunately and is trying to rest up before we head off on our 18 hour bus journey tomorrow to the Amazon basin for a bit of jungle fun. Crazy? Yes, I think so.
Lots and lots of love
S&S
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M&D
non-member comment
Golly, what an amazing experience for you both. Some good photography there! Concrete beds? We're waiting to see where you will be sleeping in the jungle......have fun and we hope Steve soon feels much better. Lots of love to you both. xxxxxxxxxxx