Uyuni

After a snails pace in La Paz slowed down even more by illness, we dramatically ramped it up with a dash across Bolivia to the Uyuni salt flats. Having figured out that you can basically only travel anywhere in the country by bus and at night, we decided on two back to back night buses to take us to and out of Uyuni, with the day in between to visit the salt flats, which we'd both had as a "cannot miss" on our South America plans.

We had an incredibly comfortable first night bus (complete with meal service, blankets and lots of American tourists) and were suddenly plunged back into backpacker world when we arrived and were led off on a tour.

Uyuni used to be the main hub for Bolivia's train network, until (as our guide pointed out) the previously British run company was reformed by Sánchez de Lozada in the 1990s and made it shit. Which is why we took the night bus (there was one train, but it arrived at 3am and only went once a week, which is so useless I don't know where to begin). So instead now all the tourists go to the Uyuni train graveyard which is a big heap of rusting metal, but it is both scenic and a lot of fun to be de facto allowed to climb all over them (you wouldn't be allowed to do that at home).

Then onwards and we rolled off the edge of the road onto the salt flat, into a huge sea of nothingy whiteness. It is honestly like nothing either of us have ever seen - a frankly mind bending expanse of salty white and we drove at 100km for about an hour into more white. It hurts your brain if you try to look at it for too long and when we asked how people don't get lost there, we were told that they apparently get lost all the time. Probably for the best that we didn't hire a car this time.

Stopped at the Incahuasi island which is a similarly dramatic and fantastic sight (and is full of coral from when the salt flats were indeed a lake) and ate a comically undersalted lunch.

We were let loose on the salt flats to explore and take photos and then to be subjected to obligatory group activities, which we could cope with for the first part, although which got a bit much by the time it was 7pm and we were in wellies in inches of water. At least by that point everyone else was exhausted by the whole thing, and we were given wine. To our sadness, we got back too late to be able to find any proper food before sprinting back to the bus station for night bus number 2. Our only salvation was the woman who Elli persuaded to make us egg and chips (instead of salchipapas, which is normally covered in sausage) and a packet of chocolate biscuits before an incredibly sweaty night's sleep onwards to Cochabamba.

All in all though, Uyuni is definitely worth going to and probably not worth hanging around in so we think we did pretty well all told, just don't look at the bus safety records if you want to get any sleep.Читать далее