Crossing into Bolivia, Tupiza and the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flat)

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Due to the protest in Humahuaca, the buses to La Quiaca were delayed, and when they eventually left, there was standing room only. But the important thing was that it got us to La Quiaca on time. La Quiaca is the Argentinean border town, with Villazón (Bolivia) on the other side of the river. Nothing to see or do in La Quiaca; it was more or less a ghost town. The border crossing was easy enough, though took a while to get through the queues. On the Bolivian side, all there was for as far as the eye could see were cheap market stalls and currency changers. But past this area, the rest of the town wasn’t that bad - definitely nicer than La Quiaca. I had crossed the border on a specific day (Saturday) as to get to my next stop, Tupiza, the best way was to take the train (shockingly Bolivia actually still has an operating, albeit small, rail network!). There are only 4 trains a week, otherwise I would have crossed the day before. Bolivia is one hour behind Argentina, so I had plenty of time to book the train, which was supposed to leave at 3:30. Unfortunately, I was completely unaware of the complete chaos Bolivia is in at the moment. The miners in the department are on strike, and are blockading both the railways and the road. In short, there were no trains. Luckily there were buses to Tupiza, so I didn’t get stuck in Villazón. I met plenty of other travellers trying to get further afield, but most buses were cancelled as the roads were blocked. As for my prehistoric bus to Tupiza, it took 3 hours along a dusty, unpaved road, and was ridiculously cheap (just over £1). I learned that I had timed my arrival in Bolivia quite badly, having arrived one day after the national holiday (marking their independence), with even Villazón playing host to a vivid street party the day before (so I was told).

Arriving in Tupiza, I was immediately pounced on by someone from a hostel, coincidentally the hostel I was going to anyway. The reason for my visit to Tupiza was to do a tour of the Salar de Uyuni, or the Uyuni Salt Flat, probably the biggest attraction in the country. I spent the afternoon going around the different agencies in town comparing prices (everyone had the exact same 4 day package) before managing to get the agency at my hostel (Valle Hermoso tours) to match the price of the cheapest agency I could find, as I had read that this agency was one of the more reliable ones. They were desperate to sign me up for the tour the next day, as they already had 3 people and can’t go without 4. Total cost for the 4 day tour was 1150 bolivianos (just over £100), including food, accommodation and transportation in the 4x4, haggled down from 1250. I also managed to persuade them to give me a lift back to Tupiza at the end of the tour, as officially the tour ends in the town of Uyuni. The reason being that after the tour I wanted to go to the city of Potosí, and I was told that the road from Uyuni to Potosí was blocked.

Bright and early the next morning our tour set out from Tupiza. Besides myself, there was a German couple and an American, as well as our driver/guide and our cook. The first day, we passed through spectacular mountain scenery as we made our way southwest of Tupiza towards the border with Chile and Argentina. Three vehicles left Tupiza on the same day, so we stuck reasonably close together in case of breakdowns. All the vehicles doing the tour were Toyota Landcruisers, and ours was the most modern (1996), whereas the one with the biggest agency (Tupiza Tours) was from 1986 and kept having to stop (they had major brake issues!). Besides the desert and mountain scenery, we passed through a few isolated villages, all really small, where the inhabitants all make a living from raising llamas. Most of the countryside was filled with herds of llamas, with just the occasional shepherd. We spent the first night in one of these villages, in rather rustic accommodation. Incredibly isolated, with Tupiza being the only town nearby, and that being 6 or 7 hours away. No heating in the accommodation, but for me it was comfortable enough with layer upon layer of blanket. Others, in my group and the others travelling with us, had big problems with the altitude (just over 4000m), but luckily I was acclimatised to the altitude having come from the Argentinean Andes.

On the second day, after breakfast in the freezing temperatures, we left before sunrise, continuing towards the far southwest of the country. Still in the dark, we reached the ghost town of San Antonio, full of half ruined houses and churches. A bit strange having a look around in the gloom. We then reached the national park which covers a large area of this part of Bolivia (Parque Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, 150 bolivianos or just under £15 to get in). The whole area is ruggedly beautiful, with few villages and many beautiful lagoons and volcanoes. Right on the triple frontier with Chile and Argentina was Licanbur Volcano, with the Laguna Verde at its base. The lagoon is coloured green from heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and copper. There were other coloured lagoons, but this was definitely the most beautiful. At this point the roads seemed to be full of 4x4s, as tours leaving from Uyuni as well as Chile also cover this area. The thermal baths in particular, which were located next to a mini salt flat, were jammed with tourists.

Our tour continued to some nearby geysers, where you could see the smoke rising from the ground and hear water bubbling below. Pretty amazing, except for the nasty stench of sulphur. From the geysers we continued to the Laguna Colorada, a lagoon with a dark red tint. Here there were many groups of flamingoes in the distance, though they were very timid and flew away when anyone came within a couple of hundred metres. At this time of year, 95% of the flamingoes which inhabit this area have already migrated to the Peruvian and Chilean coasts, but for some reason a few stay behind. Also at the lagoon were some vicuñas (a smaller relative of the llama which has never been domesticated), but these were incredibly difficult to get near to as well. Our accommodation for the second night was nearby to the lagoon. The temperature at night outside dropped to between -20 and -25 degrees Celsius, though it stayed above freezing inside, and with a sleeping bag and 5 thick blankets it wasn’t that bad. Getting up before sunrise wasn’t fun though. Our exhaust had broken the day before, so our driver had spent 3 hours in the dark and freezing temperatures fixing the problem, yet he seemed cheerful throughout. When we tried to leave in the morning he noticed we had a flat tyre, and the jack was frozen solid, so he had to boil water to warm up the jack before then changing the tyre.

When we eventually got going, we headed for a series of lagoons, with the most impressive being Laguna Honda. The surface was nearly all frozen, except for a small area where the flamingoes were, so we managed to get much closer to them than at the previous lagoons. Continuing in the 4x4, our driver spotted an Andean Fox, so he threw out food to entice him to come nearer. Similarly, over lunch we left food out to encourage an animal called a vizcacha to come near. These are a larger relative of the chinchilla, but essentially look like rabbits with squirrels’ tails. And they were so used to being fed that they were really tame.

In the late afternoon we arrived at the edge of the Uyuni Salt Flat, where our hotel for the night was. The hotel was made almost entirely out of salt, and was much warmer than the other 2 places where we stayed. After a good night’s sleep, we left in the dark to watch the sunrise from the middle of the salt flat. It was a truly unforgettable experience. All you could see in every direction is white, with the peaks of mountains visible in some directions. As the salt flat is so big (12,000 sq km - it takes 3 hours to drive across it at speed), it is easy to get lost. Our driver said that one group spent 2 nights on the salt flat as it was foggy and the driver couldn’t use the distant mountains as bearings. We had breakfast, along with 20 or so other tour groups, on the Isla de los Pescados (Fishermen’s Island), which rises out of the salt lake, offering panoramic views. After breakfast we travelled across more of the salt flat towards the town of Uyuni.

In the centre of the salt flat, the salt is 10m thick, but at one point (known as Ojos del Agua) there are many pools of salt water just below the surface, in which crystals of salt form. Our driver extracted some of these beautiful white crystals for each of us, before then extracting pink salt crystals from another pool. The pink comes from the large lithium deposits below the salt, which in the future they may start mining.

Due to the blockade, we were not able to completely finish the tour, missing out a village near Uyuni where they sell pretty much anything made of salt, as well as the “Train graveyard” just outside Uyuni. But this was not a major concern at the time. The striking miners had blockaded the road into Uyuni from the Salt Flat at a point where the land around the road was not easily passable, even in our 4x4. The drivers of the different vehicles decided the best option was to approach the blockade as a convoy and try to negotiate with the strikers to let us through, but some made a run for it around the sides of the blockade, with a couple getting stuck. This just annoyed the blockaders, who refused to let us through. Our driver talked to them on and off for the next four hours, before deciding they weren’t going to let us through. He asked us to get out and walk on foot past the blockade whilst he drove through the sludge 500 metres or so to one side of the blockade, where the protesters couldn’t stop him. We walked past the protesters without any problem, and managed to get in the Toyota and drive off. We could see that some of the other vehicles tried to do the same, but didn’t make their passengers get out and walk, so got stuck in the mud as they were too heavy.

Eventually arriving at Uyuni, I was struck by how ugly the town was. Possibly one of the worst towns I’ve been to in South America. A dusty desert town, with wrecked cars everywhere, and virtually a ghost town as it was so difficult to get into at the time. There was no electricity in the town, presumably because of the protests. This meant the German couple couldn’t get money out of the cash machine to pay for the tour, and that we couldn’t buy petrol to get back to Tupiza (the driver thought we might not have enough, but we luckily did). As all roads out of Uyuni, except the one to Tupiza, were blocked, some tourists had been trapped there for days. We met 3 Japanese tourists who had just paid US$300 for a jeep to take them to Oruro, from where there are buses to La Paz, and were trying to convince us to share the ride with them, which the other 3 in my group did. I heard from them afterwards that their jeep ran through one of the blockades, with the protesters throwing fireworks at them in anger, which must have been a scary experience. But yet the tour agencies in Uyuni were still selling tours of the Salt Flat, even though we could see their vehicles stuck behind the blockades. Absolutely crazy.

The journey back to Tupiza took a good 5 and a half hours. The road was not great - dirt for most of the way, and an hour outside of Uyuni we ran into a sandstorm, which covered the road and made visibility virtually zero - we didn’t come that far from hitting a lorry which had no lights on. Due to the 4 hour delay at the blockade, we didn’t get back until 9:30, and the night bus I wanted to take left at 8:30, so I had to spend another night in Tupiza. But Tupiza was a nice town, at least compared to Uyuni, so I didn’t mind this too much.

The next day I booked my bus ticket. The only places I could go to were Uyuni, back to Argentina, or a city southeast of Tupiza called Tarija, which, as it’s not a mining town, is unaffected by the blockade. And from there I will hopefully be able to get buses to pretty much anywhere in the country. This left a full day in Tupiza though, and there really isn’t that much to do. The town is surrounded by lovely desert scenery, but I had done something to my foot on the Uyuni trip, so wasn’t keen to do much walking. I did do a bit, but got completely lost as the instructions and map from the person at the hostel just didn’t make sense. But that didn’t matter too much.

The next blog will come from my stopover in Tarija, and hopefully Bolivia’s second city of Santa Cruz, assuming I can get a bus there from Tarija.

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Photos

Thermal Baths
Traffic chaos!