La Paz to Uyuni

Today was the first day of our Perla de Bolivia, three day tour. Rich woke up with a normal heart rate and no hives which was good! It was an early start though, with a taxi booked for six to get us to the airport for our short flight to Uyuni. The taxi ride took us right to the top of La Paz and through El Alto at around 4150m, the second biggest Bolivian city whose name means The Heights. It is the highest major metropolis in the world.

It was a gorgeous early morning view and, from the road on the mountains that surround La Paz, you could see the clouds covering half of the city below. Not a view you get to see everyday. The clouds looked like they were going to just swallow the city up. We got to the airport with plenty of time and chilled out with some food and a cuppa. Waffles and croissants with some nice warm drinks. I think somewhere along the way of ordering our Spanish was not so great though, as I ended up with three different drinks, juice, tea and coffee. It also made me laugh that there was an out of order elevator by the toilets that was just left open for anyone to fall into, except for the small amount of skull and cross bones death tape over it...not so sure that would pass as acceptable in the UK lol.

Security was scarce, me and Rich actually realised we had got through several checks with each others tickets, so not sure what they were checking. We then tried to board at the wrong time and were sent back to our seats to await the call for our plane. We were convinced that we would be leaving late, as has become the norm, considering the flight boarding at our gate before ours was due to leave only 10 mins before us. After about 10 mins though Rob heard our names over the tanoy and it turns out they had been boarding our flight without updating the boards. Glad we didn't know this before as Rob would have had a serious stress on had we known, instead he felt like a bit of a daredevil for being so late as to need our names calling out haha.

The flight actually left 3 mins early...what a shock! The views were amazing, looking down at the city amongst the mountains, and the plateau we were over that seemed to just drop and disappear into the abyss of the city below. Such a unique place.
We had a moody looking hostess who was crazy tall for a Bolivian, at least six foot, and she walked up an down with her arms folded and her head and nose held high with a disapproving glare. Wouldn't have wanted to get on her bad side that's for sure. It was a short flight at least and we were soon landing in Uyuni. This place was vast and we could barely spot any civilisation from the plane, just sandy desert to the left and bright white salt flats to the right. The landing was a little rocky, as it was a fairly empty flight a lot of the seats were rocking about on landing which made a loud and not at all concerning rickety noise. It is also really noticeable how planes at this height take a lot longer to both get off the ground, and to stop on landing due to the reduced air pressure, it seemed to take an age to slow down! All in all another pretty good flight though, and far less panicky for me than being on a bus for hours.

The airport has to be the smallest we have ever seen and our bags were just loaded straight from the plane and dropped off at the door through which we had entered off the tarmac. We found a taxi outside and off we went to the town centre. Such a small but quaint little town. We headed to find the tour company on the directions of a local. They weren't quite right but we found it in the end and were relieved after the chaos of yesterday to finally be there.

Here we met the rest of our group for the next three days, Marion from Quebec, Canada and Micheal and Anna from Ireland and England. A nice bunch, and we were already getting new advice from Anna and Micheal as to how to travel New Zealand... turns out we might be buying a campervan now!

We waited a while and stocked up on a few supplies before meeting our guide, Pablo and driver, Edgar (or Chino if you want to call him by Pablos nickname - because he looks Chinese). We loaded up our Jeep, big bags and supplies on top, and then squeezed in with our day bags shoved into any gaps we could find. It was pretty cosy! With the front seat Dj in charge of the tunes we were ready to roll!Read more