Blogs from Salar de Uyuni, Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 67

Getting to Uyuni Its Saturday the day before the Bolivian National Election and a massive exodus takes place from my hostel in La Paz. Mid morning and chatting with the in-house tourist guy I find the last buses south to Uyuni are at midday not the evening as I thought. shit. Luckily the guy manages to book me onto one of the last buses leaving. I throw everything into my bag and dash to the bus station. For the election the entire country is being shutdown, nobody is allowed to travel or sell alcohol during the 24 hours of the election day. On the bus I get chatting to a couple of wacky Canadians who are upping sticks planning to buy land in Argentina build a shack and grow vegetables. They´ve arranged a tour of the ... read more

Plaene sind dafuer da, sie zu aendern. Die Tour von San Pedro zum Salar de Uyuni in Bolivien wurde mir von einigen Leuten so empfohlen, dass ich sie unbedingt machen musste. Und ich hab es nicht bereut. Tag 1 Wir haben uns um 8 Uhr morgens bei Pamela Tours in San Pedro getroffen. Es stellte sich schnell heraus, dass ich eine sehr nette Gruppe erwischt habe. Lawrence und Amy aus England, Frans aus Holland, Katia aus der Schweiz und ich. Alle mehr oder weniger im gleichen Alter. Zunaechst bot uns der Veranstalter an, Geld zu wechseln. Das nette Angebot nahmen natuerlich alle gerne an un tauschten Bolivianos zum Kurs von 10 zu 1000. Leider sollten wir bereits beim ersten Stop feststellen, dass das der Obernepp war, denn der eigentliche Kurs ist ungefaehr 10 zu 500. Naja, ... read more

Leaving La Paz by early (again) morning bus, we changed at Oruro on to a Train. Despite facing backwards, there was amazing views of the barren landscape as we headed south to the town of Uyuni. The train stopped breifly and the lights went out for an unexplained rason, but after 7hours of trundling along, we arrived in Uyuni late at night and were relieved to see our bags had been checked on correctly and arrived there with us. Met off the train by our lady host, we checked into the hostel for our last decent nights sleep before the tour, as we'd been warned the accommodation would be 'basic' at best. In the morning, we met our fellow travellers, Alex, Dimitri & his wife, and Leo. Our driver/basic guide was called Primo and we also ... read more

Well we left Maryke & Pascal behind and headed down to Uyuni and the salt plains. The trip down was by bus and train. The train wasn´t too bad as the scenery was quite cool, with huge salt lakes and barren desert with mountians in the distance. We did get into Uyuni quite late, so needed to find a bed then get up early in the morning and hoped to find a tour leaving then. Well within 15 minutes of getting into uyuni at 10.30pm we had found both so were very happy! We even had a choice of groups, a mix of europeans or a bunch of irish and a token english girl. We went with the irish. The next day we soon realise we picked well. The irish were a bunch of 4 boys ... read more

In the south of Bolivia there is a well known tour called the The Solar Tour. It consists of 4 days in a very old Toyota Land Cruiser touring around the south west corner of Bolivia. Day 1 Consist of a 7 hour drive across the worlds highest and biggest salt lake. It is huge and very weird old inland sea. You get to stop of at a small island in the middle, which was previously a coral reef. And you can see a full 360 panoramic, at about 50 meters height, of most of the northern end of the lake, but it is so big you cannot see the southern end. As you drive along the edge of the lake you begin to notice that the edge is very much like many seascapes you get ... read more