aka Salt flats…..
We arrived in Uyuni in the evening and found the town to be a complete shithole! We managed to find a cheap room with ‘hot’ showers 24hours.
A mini rant here……
I’m not sure if the Bolivians actually know what ‘HOT‘ means.. Uyuni was absolutely freezing, the coldest place we visited by far and yet to have cold showers is just not on. I certainly take the hot water for granted back at home..
Anyway… After checking in the room and putting on lots of layers, we ventured out to find some decent food. We were starving after 10 hour journey with no food or a toilet break! Went in a busy pizza joint and ordered food. Ciarán even stole a slice of pizza from a plate waiting to be cleared up next to us ha! After the meal, we investigated a couple tour operators for the three day Uyuni tour and researched on the internet for the best Company to go with. After failing to find tips & reviews, we gave up and we went to bed like 8pm… Too cold to be anywhere but the bed!
Next morning, we went out to find a tour operator to leave in the morning as we wanted to get out of the shithole as soon as possible. Choosing an operator is a shot in the dark basically, they all offer the same thing and similar prices. You hear horror stories about Jeeps crashing, tourists dying, horrible accommodations, crappy drivers and barely any food between the group.. anyway we eventually went with Mont Blanc and paid B|580 ($80) and hoped for the best.
Went for breakfast and collected our bags, headed to the office at 10am and waited for TWO hours for the Jeep to turn up, also we were moved into another company’s Red Planet group and the guides telling us not to mention the prices between the groups which we weren’t pleased with . After meeting the group, a mix of Australians, British, Americans and the token Irish person; we all bundled in two Jeeps and set off to the first stop which was the train graveyard. Yep you heard it, a train graveyard. It was crap!
The next stop was the Uyuni salt flats which was brilliantly white and fun. We visited two salt hotels, you heard of Ice hotels, same thing but built with salt. It was decorated in Christmas manner for some reason! We posed for the silly photos and left for our first night stopover which was at a basic house, 11 of us split in three rooms and had our dinner 10pm…! Ciarán filled in the waiting time by suggesting to play Uno and found out that most rules weren’t the same as the rules he had taught me. The new rules were more fairer, not like Ciaran’s!
Next day was filled with driving to lakes.. the lakes aren’t special to be honest. We were also taken to some rocky formation land caused by lava eruption, which we all took posed photos. The accommodation for the second night was a joke, basically a half finished construction with cracked windows with lots of rooms with beds in them. No heating, the light comes on from 7pm to 10pm and we sat in the ‘dining’ room eating biscuits, drinking tea in almost darkness. Ciarán and I couldn’t join in most conversations until the light came on which was a bummer. Chatted away with the group until the dinner was served, pasta with tomato sauce that everyone barely ate. We just drank the free wine and hopped in bed by 9 with having to be up at 5.30am in the morning.
Last day, up early and ate crappy breakfast in the dark with our spotlights on. Drove to some volcanic active grounds. The place was huge with sulphur flumes giving away the rotten eggs smell and lots of craters with bubbling mud, afterwards we headed to the hot thermal pool. At first I didn’t want to strip down to my bikini with being absolutely freezing outdoors, Ciarán managed to persuade me by saying its worth it and he was right. It was like being a massive bath!! We even got to the point where we felt too hot and got out in the freezing temperatures without feeling cold whilst getting changed, totally was worth getting into. The rest of the day was spent driving back to Uyuni and resulted in almost getting killed..
The Aussies were getting dropped off at Bolivia/Chile border and we had to swap around in the cars, the car we were in was not the car we had for the first two days. The driver of the car was quite old and spoke only Spanish. The car itself did not have seatbelts, heating or a door handle on one of the doors opposed to the other car which had seatbelts, heating and music. Obviously noted this as we got in and we couldn’t do anything about it..
On the way back to Uyuni, we stopped for a toilet break and the driver checking the wheels rocking it back and forth which was obviously dodgy and yet carried on driving. Couple miles down the road, the driver lost control and one of the front wheels fell off causing us veering across the road dangerously rocking over the sides and almost flipped over into a side ditch. All being shaken up and blessed our blessings that we did not flip over, fallen down a cliff or crashed into a coming truck ahead. Scary thought.
(Ciaran’s review – http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=2061929)
The other car was waiting for us about a mile up the road and could see the road we were driving on, noticed that we stopped and another car stopped after us came back down to us. Being fucked off we were and the other passengers was horrified with what happened, we all squashed up in the main car and went back to Uyuni. The company office did not apologise for what happened and causally said you’re ok so everything is fine. This enraged one of the guys, he basically said the basic standards of a car simply should be that the wheels don’t fall off! He requested for a least compensation or something, Ciarán here shot his mouth off and said you have every right to ask for compensation seeing the fact that we paid half of what you did.. The company got quite angry with us and the group didn’t look impressed. We ran off and hid in a restaurant and hoped the guides wouldn’t come after us. Ah well! Just glad we’re safe and sound now.
My advice is, definitely ask other tourists on what company they went with and do a thorough research!
Adois x
Too much of a wanderer... 