After a 4 hour bus followed by a 7 hour night train, we arrived from La Paz to Uyuni at about 2.30am. Awesome.
Uyuni is partly a military area, so there were signs everywhere in the hotel warning NOT to take photos! Yikes. Well, there was nothing to see at 2.30am anyway.
Turns out there was nothing to see the next morning either. Uyuni is pretty awful place. Dirt roads, unfinished buildings, rubbish EVERYWHERE. Pretty dismal. And a pretty dismal life too, I imagine.
But, Uyuni is the place from which you get to the salt flats - Salar de Uyuni - the largest salt flats in the world. (Not forgetting the highest, altitude fans!)
However, because of the intense rain the few days before we arrived, most of the salt flats had turned into a salt lake, so our little excursion had to change a little.
So itinerary went: driving by 4x4 through the Altiplano (High Plains) looking at strange and interesting rock formations, finding and looking at flamingos, an overnight stay in a tiny hostel ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, then on to the salt flats to have lunch at a salt hotel and to see the flats that weren´t too much underwater.
Now, to repeat myself again and again, it was amazing. The Altiplano stretches on into miles or nothingness. Well, desert-like landscapes. It was like being in an American film where they drive for hours on end through endless deserts. The tiny "town" we stayed in did indeed seem like the end of the world, as it consisted of two streets in the middle of nowhere. Obviously the salt flats were amazing and strange. The bright white reflects the light from the sky, and the horizons play with your perception, meaning that you can take funny photos. Which of course we did. Gringos that we are. I must also mention that the conditions in which the people who ¨mine¨the salt were appalling. The salt just piled on the floor, scraped into bags. Rubbish scattered everywhere. Everything was pretty dire. I suppose the locals simply continue to do everything as it has always been done, meaning that there is very little progress in anything they do there, and very little hope as far as I can tell.
On a lighter note, I need to write about our driver Armando. A right character. Cheeky guy, looking at the girls out of the window, and stopping off to give chocolate bars at a house. He had a maniacal laugh as he drove at 120kmh through the bumpy dirt road across the plain. His laugh was infectious, the more he laughed, the more we laughed, the more he laughed. I can´t really put across just how hilarious this guy is. He was chewing coca leaves all the way, dancing to his South American hip hop, and randomly deciding to stop to wash the 4x4 (before driving through mud and wet salt.....?!) Running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere was fun, although not as much fun as watching him siphoning gasolina out of the tank and spitting it out by the mouthful, before laughing like a crazy person and driving off leaving a trail of black fumes and dust in his wake.
Honestly, even though everything didn´t go to plan (´disastrous´was a word bandied around by the more unadventurous of the group) I haven´t laughed so much in a long time.
The fact that the hotel had completely run out of water when we got back rounded it off nicely! Although Jackie, Irene and I simply laughed even harder over our bottle of wine.
