La Paz to the border

We spent the last day in La Paz sightseeing what were possibly the nicest bits, Plaza Morrilo and Calle Jean, and watching most of the Copa De America football final in a cafe that had become our home away from the hostel. We had enjoyed La Paz, but as with Cusco, we had begun to get itchy feet, feeling that perhaps we had spent too much time there - or perhaps it was from the dirty streets and their acrid stench of urine....

On our many bus journeys throughout Peru and Bolivia we have encountered an infuriating recurrence of stopping shortly after having already departed the main bus terminal later than scheduled. (Their timekeeping, like their notion of health and safety, is dire. Katy and I have been in our element - compared to these guys we are early for everything!) These stops are more often than not for petrol, but on occasion can be for driver toilet breaks, driver cigarette breaks, driver dinner breaks. 15mins into our journey from La Paz such a stop occurs. We are left waiting there for so long without explanation until I can't bear it any more and in my best non-existent Spanish (to the amusement of the Spanish speakers on the bus) demand to know what's happening. Katy sinks lower in her seat in embarrassment and pretends not to know me. Strop over, the bus finally moves on.

The road from La Paz to Oruru is a smooth tarmaced motorway, but after that, as it turns towards Uyuni, it becomes ANOTHER road from hell. The man in the travel agency had pre-empted this by informing us that it gets a bit "bumpy, bumpy".....Sitting there freezing in my semi-cama seat with windows rattling around us, suffering another bout of what Katy has come to term "spinal re-alignment" - I was reminded of the scene from "The Exorcist", where Regan is in her bed being thrown violently and unnaturally about the room. "Bumpy, bumpy" had said the master of the under-statement....

We arrived bleary-eyed in Uyuni at 6am and it is FREEZING. I don't think I've ever been this cold in my life. EVER. We'd arranged to be collected from the bus and were met by a woman wrapped head to toe in quilts and blankets, who led us through the deserted streets to her office. It was all of a 5 minute walk but by the time we got there I'd assumed my feet had dropped off, as I couldn't feel them anymore. After swiftly pulling on more layers, we were directed to a small homely shack selling "breakfast" (yup - bread and jam), which had a wood stove being hogged by other recent arrivals to Uyuni. I added to their warm glow by directing a burning gaze to the backs of their heads.
So after breakfast, we walked the big, wide empty streets, photographing the weird and sometimes grotesque looking statues and waited for our tour to begin through the welcoming warmth that came with the sunrise. Eventually we got lumped with another tour group. Having read various horror stories regarding this particular trip into the wilderness (involving wheels falling off dodgy vehicles, drunk drivers and other such perils that could leave you stranded in this vast expanse of land with only the searing desert heat and a thousand acres of salt for company) we'd spent most of our freezing morning assessing the condition of the various 4x4's and jeeps as they rolled into town and sped off with their respective customers on board. We assessed that ours was the worst we'd seen....

The first stop on the tour was the "train graveyard", which looked like an eerie scene from a macabre version of "Thomas The Tank Engine". The corpses of old steam engines lie in rows, redundant in the desert - testament to Uyuni's once glorious past as a significant Bolivian transport hub. Whilst the 4 girls accompanying us on the tour skipped off to pose for photos next to the rusting hulks, Katy and I begrudgingly traipsed along grumbling that the place would be quite picturesque were it not for the tourists and the graffiti...

The salt flats of Uyuni are an amazing sight to behold. Once you've got past the fields of strewn rubbish just outside of the town, the naff artisan market and the old salt hotel you are in a desert of endless white with shallow pools of water mirroring the azure blue sky. We get driven the 2 hour journey across the thick crust of salt to Isla de Pescada (without incident!) and marvel at the remote island overgrown with giant cacti. It's strange to look over the vast expanse of white and remind yourself that it's not snow - even though it's still bitterly cold beneath the brilliant sun. Funnily enough, it was due to snow that we couldn't do the full 3 day tour as originally planned....

We have become accustomed to the trend for wacky photo opportunities at iconic landmarks, and Uyuni is no different. The idea here is to maximise the potential of the "perspective shot". (See photos). After a rather pathetic attempt at this phenomenon, we were hurried back into the jeep for the trip back and a last chance to marvel at this otherworldly landscape.

Dean 15/08/11