Breath-taking Part 3: South by Southwest - Through the Salt Flats and Southern Wastelands

It was a quick turnaround from our fairly exhausting two-day, 50km trek through the mountains and jungle near La Paz to our next trip to the South of Bolivia. We managed to make our way back to La Paz before midnight on Tuesday and we had to catch a train leaving the town of Oruro, about two hours south of the city, at 7pm on Wednesday. We were thankful to be able to get a good night sleep in a real bed and we figured we would have most of the day in La Paz to rest, get some good food, and return the camping gear we had rented for the trek.

The jeep would become our second home for the next three days - representing TUXC

As it would be, as we left the hostel to go return our tent et al after a great, restful sleep, the receptionist in our hotel told us that we ought to leave right now if we wanted to catch our train. Unclear of why we would need to leave so early, she explained that the news had said that mining protestors were planning to create a roadblock - a common, but unfortunate form of protest in South America - on the road between La Paz and Oruro. And, being Bolivia, there was no alternate route to the city. She said it may already be too late, but if we hurried we might make it.

So, we made our way to the center of town to return our stuff as quickly as possible, packed our things up at the hostel, and caught the first taxi we could find to the bus station. We got there around noon and found one company that would sell us a ticket for the 2pm bus to Oruro, swearing to us that it was actually going to leave.

In the mean time, we relaxed in the station, got some food, and as the 2pm departure time approached, we made our way back towards the office that had sold us the tickets. The woman called us over telling us that, no, actually, the bus would not be leaving because of the road blocks. At least she refunded our tickets.

The Salt Flats were supposed to be one of the highlights of the country

At this point, we had a decision to make. There were direct buses to Uyuni - where our train was supposed to take us - which left at 6pm. We could still try to take a bus to Oruro, but if the road blocks didn´t clear in the next couple hours it would be a moot point because we wouldn´t make our train anyways. We were worried that if we waited too long, the Uyuni buses would sell out, but we´d already paid for the train and were really looking forward to it, so we were torn. Either way, we had a 3-day tour of the famous Salar de Uyuni - the high Salt Flats and surrounding desert and barren wasteland that surrounded it, for which we needed to be in Uyuni by about 10am Thursday morning. We decided it wasn´t worth risking missing the tour - which we had also already paid for - so we gave up on the train and bought two tickets on the 12 hour night bus to Uyuni.

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, wandering around the city a bit to kill some time, and finally made our way back to the bus station around 6:30pm. Unforunately, Sam´s stomach problems from the trek seemed to be persisting, and as we sat in the bus station just minutes before we were supposed to leave, we found ourselves debating whether we should go at all. Unsure of whether he could survive 12 hours in a bumpy bus with no bathroom (and then three days driving around the desert in a 4x4), we were literally waiting until the minutes before the bus left to decide. Finally, he decided to go for it and we boarded the bus and were on our way.

The jeeps where we would spend most of our time during the trip

Perhaps because we were expecting a terrible journey, it ended up not being too awful. The bus was well heated and we were given blankets and we both managed to sleep decently well - maybe because we were both still exhausted from the trek and being sick. We arrived in Uyuni before 6am, still totally pitch black and freezing cold. We waited on the warm bus until we were kicked off as dawn was just starting to break through the dark, cold night. Wearing our warmest, huge down jackets, we stepped off the bus onto solid ground and, bleary-eyed, began to look for somewhere warm where we might be able to just sit and rest.

We followed the line of tourists into the center of the town, which was still totally empty and silent, until we stumbled upon what appeared to be the only establishment that was open in the entire town - a small cafe where we got big hot breakfasts of juice, eggs, toast, tea, and coffee. Well worth the tourist prices that we had to pay just to sit in their warm living room in front of the space heater.

We lingered over the meal for as long as possible and as we left, the sleepy desert town had awoken and warmed and suddenly it seemed much more feasible to face this day. The sky was cloudless and the late morning sun beat down as we walked through the streets of the old mining town. Uyuni had served as an essential train-yard town on the line from the Bolivian mines in the south to the ocean where the exports were shipped off around the world. But when Chile and Bolivia had gone to war over that small length of coastline, the Bolivians had lost their only access to the ocean and became land-locked. With that, the rail line died, operating only once a week instead of several times a day because of the high tarriffs imposed by Chile for using the port that used to be their own. With the railroad went Uyuni. What had been a bustling metropolis became a ghost town in the middle of a giant expanse of harsh desert. It wasn´t until tourism started to take off with tours of the salt flats and surrounding spectacular scenery that the town began to recover slightly. Even still, Uyuni comes off as a town long past its prime; an old wild west outpost which has long been left by its original inhabitants.

Train tracks, still used, leading off towards the horizon

Despite the rather depressing backstory, Uyuni does seem to be on the upswing with the increase in tourism over the last few decades. The main street is line with tour agencies charging anywhere from USD100 to 1000 for 4x4 tours of the breath-taking salt flats and high desert. It was on this street where we finally found our own agency, with whom we had reserved our spot in La Paz. As usual, this agency seemed confused and didn´t seem to expect us, and so pawned us off to another agency - Red Planet Tours - which, we would find out later, is one of the nicest agencies in town and charges more than double what we paid and staffs only English speaking guides - we had purposefully not paid the extra B$300 for the English-speaking guide. I figured I could be a perfectly good translator.

As we got to Red Planet, we were introduced to our guide, Israel - a firendly, out-going 20-something Bolivian - and our jeep-mates for the next three days: Spencer was a 30 year old Brit, a friendly, out-going guy with a strong accent who was traveling with Allie (Alistair), a 19 year old Brit who was in Bolivia traveling around as part of a gap year. The final member of our jeep was Eliza, a Korean woman whose age we never figured out but would have guessed anywhere between 30 and 45. It was an interesting mix, but we seemed to get along fine.

That first day, we drove first to the outskirts of town to what they call the train cemetery - basically a big plot of land where a bunch of trains came to die. The old rusted out bodies have been spray painted and are falling apart, but it´s still pretty cool, especially against the harsh, expansive background. The tracks - still in use a few times a month - are also pretty cool, as they just continue in a perfectly straight line as far as the eye can see.

The train cemetery

We then piled back into the jeep and headed out of Uyuni, on the dirt ¨highway¨ towards the Salar de Uyuni - the 12,000 square kilometer salt flats which were the main tourist attraction in the area. We stopped on the edge of the flats and Israel took us into a building which showed the process of how the salt was taken from the ground to being purified and packaged. Finally, back in the jeep, we drove away from the building and the ground made a quick transition from brown to white and suddenly we were driving atop a sea of salt.

Salt piled into little mounds where it is dried by the sun before being purified

The salt hotel where we stopped for lunch

It´s hard to really give credit to how strange this envirornment is. Within a mile or so, the brown horizon is gone and all you can see in every direction is a perfectly flat expanse of white salt with mountains poking up on the horizon. As we drove along, looking out the window honestly felt like being in an airplane above a layer of clouds, with the mountains poking through them off in the distance.

Flying over the clouds

An ocean of perfectly flat salt

It´s also incredibly hard to judge distance or scale because the pure white makes it almost impossible to judge depth. I had no idea how fast we were driving (not helped because the spedometer was broken) and I also had no sense of whether a mountain on the horizon was a small hill a few hundred meters away or whether it was a giant peak miles and miles in the distance. It´s a strange feeling.

We stopped for lunch and then proceeded to an ¨island¨ which sits in the middle of the salt flats. A pretty strange site, the island pokes up out of the perfectly flat salt and is a decent sized hill covered in rock and cacti. We hiked up to the top and the view was insane. It really did feel like being on and island. It was also nice to get a bit of walking in, after a good amount of sitting in the jeep.

View from the top of the cactus island

Finally, we all piled back in one more time to head to our lodging for the night. We drove through the Salar as the sun was setting - pretty spectacular - and promptly blew out a tire. It started to get very cold once the sun started to approach the horizon, so we were all happy that our driver was a champ and could change a tire very quickly. We were in the hotel in no time.

Our drive changing a tire like a boss

The hotel was itself an interesting place, made entirely from big bricks of salt. The walls, supporting pillars, even the beds, were made of these big salt bricks. Salt is not a great conductor of heat, so it was pretty cold inside, but luckily the beds had very warm, thick blankets on them and we had sleeping bags as well if we got too cold. We spent a long time talking with the people in our group who had lots of interesting stories before crawling into our nice warm beds.

Our room in the salt hotel

The second day was a tour through the deserted wastelands of Southern Bolivia. We were off the salt flats at this point (except for a brief drive through another small salt flat on the way out of the hotel), and it was a lot of driving. Luckily, our group seemed to get along really well and we passed the time in the car well. The car had an ipod hook-up and Allie - who had been sick and quiet the first day - turned out to be a very charasmatic and extroverted kid and was our car´s DJ for most of the trip. He and Spencer also but a bottle of rum and some coca-cola when we stopped at a town at around 11am and were pouring everyone in the car drinks pretty much every time we stopped from there on.

Sam and Spencer relaxing in the shade on one of our many stops on the second day

We drove through stunning vistas of expansive plateaus and high, snow-capped mountains, stopping in a few particularly magnificent vistas to get out, stretch the legs, and take some photos. The main stops were visits to a few different lakes, some of which were strangely inhabited by flamingos which were endemic to the region. Odd...

Flamingos at 4500m above sea level

Mostly, though, it was a lot of driving. The drives were pretty spectacular, but there were a lot of long stretches of being in the cramped back of the jeep (which could have only been worse for Sam, who´s 6'4"). Luckily, our car got along so well that the time passed pretty well, and we got a good chance to get to know all of the people in our car really well. Even Elisa, who was constantly asking to stop to take a photo, seemed to do all right with us crazy youngins.

Crazy rock formations in the high desert

After a long day, we arrived at our lodging for the night. We had heard that this second night was unbelievably cold, and as we got there and the sun was setting, it was easy to believe. We were on a high plateau some 4500m above sea level in the middle of the dry, harsh desert. It was decided by the group that the best way for us to stay warm would be to get something strong to drink from the tiny store outside of the hotel. So, already a bit tipsy from being poured rum and coke all day, we found ourselves sitting with everyone else from our tour at a table covered in wine, licoeur de coca (a Peruvian specialty which our guide showed us how to mix), and beer.

It was a fun night and it was great to sit with everyone (incuding our guide, Israel) and tell stories. We managed to fight off the cold pretty well, and by the time we climbed into our beds, which we had prepped by leaving a hot water bottle in the sheets, I was actually not too cold. We slept pretty well despite the altitude at the cold.



The next morning, we had to wake up early for the last leg of our tour. It was 5am and still pitch dark as we packed up our things and loaded into the jeep. We drove about an hour through the black night, during which time most of us were asleep, before we pulled over for our first stop.

It was still dark and freezing, but we managed to get ourselves out of the jeep with our headlamps on. Israel showed us why we had stopped - a dozen or so natural geisers spurted up boiling mud and sulfur. It was actually pretty amazing, especially in my still dazed and bleary-eyed state. I really felt like we had driven to another planet as we looked at the big craters with bubbling mud and steam rising from the centers. It was pretty wild and I was glad I'd braved the cold and gotten out of the car.

We then continued driving through the desert as light began to force its way up around the mountains to the east. We stopped at a lake on the way to watch the sun poke up above the high peaks for a truly magnificent sunrise. With that, we continued heading south, to the very fartheset southwest corner of Bolivia, just a stone's throw from the Chilean border. We stopped at a lake, el lago verde - the green lake - which was, unforunately, frozen and thus not particularly green. It was still another impressive vista, but some of our jeep mates were still grumbling about being woken up so early.

Sunrise on the last day over the hot springs and lake

About an hour north, we made our final stop of the tour at a set of natural hot springs. We had breakfast in a small shelter next to the springs and then had the option to go take a soak. It was still very cold out, so I was reticent to really submerge myself, fearing the frigid air once I would have to get out. But somehow, the others convinced me and I was glad they did.

The water was hot and steamy and it felt great to just soak my tired body in the natural mineral water. I didn't want to get out, but eventually we were herded out and back into the jeep. The cool air didn't even feel that bad as my skin was still so hot from the water. It made the brutal early morning wake-up worth it and really changed the tone of that last day.

We were all in high spirits as we piled back into the jeep for the long drive back to Uyuni. As it turned out, Elisa had gotten sick of our young antics and loud music, and had asked to switch jeeps. So, we ended up with another 20-something Brit, who we'd spent a lot of the previous night talking with and we knew we all got along.

It was a long drive through the desert, but we stopped a few times for pee-breaks, lunch, and photo ops. Plus, we had a great group of kids now and the drive seemed to go by quickly. The Brits - always the drinkers - had brought some of the leftover alcohol from the night before and were passing around bottles of wine as we drove through the barren countryside. It ended up being a pretty goofy and fun car ride, but we were all happy to get back to Uyuni.

Having a good time singing American pop songs as we drove through the desert

We had a couple of hours in Uyuni before our night bus for La Paz left, so we all decided to meet up in a restaurant recommended by Israel the guide and have some dinner and drinks before we all parted ways. It was a great last little gathering, and we all realized that our paths might cross again, as a lot of us were heading from La Paz onto Cusco. We exchanged email addreses and facebook names and said we'd all meet up in Cusco the next weekend for a night on the town.

(Quick Aside: As it turned out, it would only be Allie and me that would end up meeting in Cusco. Sam was sick in Pisaq, Spencer was on his trip to Machu Picchu when we were there, and poor Debbie, who had joined our car at the last minute, ended up spending about a week in a hospital in La Paz with a nasty parasite.)

We took the same bus company back to La Paz, after our relatively comfortable trip down. This ended up to be a mistake as the bus we took back was not the same type of bus and was in much worse condition. My seat was broken and didn't recline, so it was a fairly sleepless night.

Luckily, we had a couple of days to relax in La Paz before our last big trip.

Coming up next: Our last big adventure, a summit bid on Huayna Potosi, a 6,110m (20.045 ft) mountain 25km outside of La Paz.