We flew to Uyuni from La Paz which was a cool flight with great views (my flute survived another journey). When we arrived to Uyuni, we were staying in this cool hotel in middle of nowhere. The layout resembled a prison but the rooms were decent and the restaurant was very good.
The owner/manager of the restaurant was from Boston and it was a pizzeria so I wasn’t hopeful of getting anything decent. In the queue he somewhere acquired the knowledge that I hated cheese and had never eaten a pizza in my life. As I got to the front he declared he would make me a cheese free pizza so I could have my first ever pizza, he reeled off I liked this meat, that meat etc then said leave it with him.
Then came the big moment in history, my first pizza ever was a calzone type thing I am told because it was covered too. It was really good fair play and not a bit of cheese in sight. It was basically like a meat pastie but I am still claiming it as my first pizza ever. After dinner a few of us opted to go for a drink out in the small town.
The town is hard to describe but it’s the middle of nowhere and this bar was a hippy dump hole. One wall was covered in photos of peoples arses who had drunk there and one of the rooms was filled with dirty sand. Unfortunately, the alcohol matched which was absolute filth, like cordial crap. Our tour leader was with us and one of his colleagues was out with his group, but he was obliterated. To say he was shit faced wouldn’t be going it justice and he had some screeching young Australians with him too. They had a proper early flight in the morning and the state of this small group was amusing, not in the present tense but knowing the state they’ll be in when they fly a little later was somewhat comforting. When we got back to the hotel, the tour leader (not ours) was sprawled out on the hotel doorway absolutely howling and the girls spent the evening chundering as heard by everybody else in the hotel.
Early start for salt flats tomorrow, start of a few days slumming it but amazing scenery is expected.
Woke up in the morning ready for the salt flats day, and started off with a bit of morning karaoke with Victor. . Bursting out the Queen hits to the adoring public in neighbouring rooms and floors, pretty standard start to the day with me and Victor to be fair. After the Welsh and Maltese choir concluded, it was off to the 4×4 ready for our exploration of the fmats/desert.
We had a few fallen soldiers today, Jamie was in ruins and Katey wasn’t much better either. We were hoping neither were viruses and were going to spread because Uyuni had bad facilities and zero medical capability really. Our first stop was the train graveyard, which on the face of it may sound a bit naff but it was quite interesting to hear about its origin and quite fun to climb all over the trains for photos.
Next stop was the Colchani salt plant which basically extracts, processes and ships out the salt. As well as the mini tour of the place to see how it all works, there was also a market here where we could buy all sorts of goods made out of the salt from the flats.
Then we continued our amazing 4×4 tour witnessing unreal scenery which I’m never going to see again, to the salt flats. 10,500km of salt flats with an estimated 10 billion tons of salt is impressive. As eye catching and spectacular it was, we were all keen to crack on with the infamous photos due to the weird and wonderful things the salt does to the perspective through a camera.
The drivers had all the props but we had two Brazilian girls with us on the bus and they hogged our driver taking photos so I don’t think we got as many of the cool photos as others. Plus, Natalie and I were absolutely terrible in taking the photos so the ones we do have are either blurry or not worth writing home about. We did get some decent ones to be fair and then we all did the cool group video dancing out and back into a Pringles tube which was fun. I did attempt me pissing on a man Utd cap so I’m keen to see how that comes out when I get the photos from the guys.
After the salt flats we set off again and randomly in the middle of all those salt flats/tiles is a random island. Our last stop of the day was a cactus island which again had great views and a random island of cactai which could be exploited for inappropriate photos.
At the end of the day, it was roasting all day but the temperature really drops at night. All the accommodation around these salt flats was understandably basic, so we were not expecting much. Our ‘hotel’ had salt for floor and exposed stone slab walls. Showers were a no go but again all this was told to us up front so we soldiered on despite knowing it was going to be a few days of being a hobo. I forgot to mention where we stopped for lunch too, we had Llama which was OK, but the toilets were yet again a source of nightmares. I have now been in a good few Stephen King horror novel toilets in my time in South America, this one definitely was on the list.
The next day was desert day, and Bolivia despite it’s lack of swanky hotels in these remote areas, certainly has scenery. We saw smoking volcanoes, countless beautiful lagoons with multiple breeds of flamingos at each lagoon and mountains that allegedly look like a Salvador Dali painting.
The day was a bit of a slog to be honest, the scenery was spectacular but we were a hanging and the lunches weren’t really hitting the spot. The evening was going to be spent in shared accommodation, boys in one and girls in another. Boys night was on and at least we had that to look forward to. It was going to be strange for some of our couples to be prized apart for a night but to be honest, at least it was something different after we were all feeling a bit rotten after the days in the salt, dust and sand.
The accommodation was as basic as it comes, yet again the days are beautiful and warm but freezing in the evenings. The stars in the sky here was incredible though but I would have swapped the stars for a hot shower if truth be told.
We managed to find a little boys club with table tennis and pool. We discovered that our Japanese guy Aki on tour with us had brought his own table tennis bat travelling with him, how completely random (which he was, but an absolute legend) and he also had personalised table tennis balls. The evening was spent playing bad table tennis and pool and our resident Japanese ping pong pro (albeit slightly intoxicated from dinner) managed to lose to an Australian and also a Canadian who’d never seen a ping pong table before, all the gear but no idea sprung to mind. After a decent boys night, we went to sleep (I had a stone bloody headboard) ready for a four am start in the morning for our last day out in the wild.
We were up at sparrow’s fart and back onto the 4×4 to see some natural volcanic springs and another lagoon. We climbed to 5,000m above sea level which even trumps the altitude we did on the Inca Trek. At the end of the mornings escapades we ended up in the heavenly hot spring and I was straight in there. Three day of salt, sand dust and living like a hobo, I cannot tell you how refreshed and energised I felt after our half an hour in the hot spring before we were going to disappear over to Chile.
Feeling fresh as a daisy after the hot spring we headed to the border where we were heading for country number 3, Chile and San Pedro de Atacama, which has some of the clearest skies in the world and is used for space exploration and astronomy geeks worldwide.
I forgot to mention that one of the drivers loaded up the food on top for my majestic flute and damaged it but all it needs doing is re-elasticating the Toucan so as annoying as it is, it’s not a big job at all.
We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama and even though we are still in the desert, there’s like a resort here and the hotel was great so we were all buzzing to be back to civilisation. We did a brief orientation walk and the set off to wander around and grab some lunch. The beef and avocado sandwich with chips I had felt like heaven, almost as good as the shower in the hotel.
It was roasting in San Pedro, and was a nice place to wander around but not much to see. I intended to do the star gazing tomorrow because everybody was going this evening and I was at the point where I needed some time away from the group. Unfortunately though, everybody changed their minds and booked for the following day too. Denise and I went to dinner in some bar recommended but everybody was pretty knackered so it was early nights all around after a gruelling few days.
Was buzzing to be in the home of Alexis Sanchez now though, third country and ready for the leg of tour with lots of free time and big cities. I was plotting to ditch the Mendoza part of the tour and go straight to Buenos Aires giving me a break from the group tour element too, but that required a bit of planning and wasn’t sure if it was possible yet.
