Bolivia - Uyuni - Part One: You Know It's Too Hot Outside When The Aussie Starts Complaining

Several cranky hours later, we pulled into the town of Uyuni at about 5am. Almost instantly, Mick and I were justified in our decision to go straight into the tour instead of overnighting it in town and heading out the next morning. Uyuni was about four streets large, with no shops opening until 9am. If theres one thing to make a sleep deprived Holly even more cranky, its hunger. I havent been so glad to see breakfast in quite some time.

We booked the three day 4WD tour of the salt flats that would get us to the northern Chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama with Ripley Tours. Yep, just as sketchy as it sounds. It actually turned out to not matter - when they can´t fill up a Jeep, they merge with other companies anyways. In fact, none of the people in our Jeep even booked with the operator, Colque Tours. Go figure.





Day One was pretty cool, although much of the amazement of the Salar, the salt flats, was dimmed by my overwhelming exhaustion from not sleeping the night before. The Salar is 200 square km, 12 feet deep, with salt as far as the eye can see. We began by seeing the Train Cemetery, a glorified junkyard that was incredibly unimpressive. It was the site of the first rails between Bolivia and Chile and they used to build and repair all the cars there. Now its a railway, some rusty old cars and a whole lot of desert plains.

The salt flats were very cool, though blinding. Is there such thing as salt blindness? Was very glad for my sunglasses, though even they weren´t enough at times. We learned lots of trivia about salt production, none of which I can remember now, but mostly we just took pictures.

Four stops later, we finally got to the lunch stop, where we became familiar with meal expectations for the next three days. The driver pulls out a cooler. With NO ICE. From which he removes pork chops, cheese, pasta, veggies and ketchup. Now I had some delicious eats in Copacobana, some mediocre in La Paz, but Uyuni tour food was the pits. Ive taken to referring to stale white bread as Bolivian. That is how often the bread was not delicious. I picked at the pasta and veggies and steered clear of the sketchy meat.

Our driver then informs us that we have an hour and a half to explore and hike our current location, the Isla del Pescado, so named because it is shaped like a fish. Let me paint the picture for you... middle of a salt desert, blinding sun and salt, middle of the summer daytime heat, and cactus shade only. Mick and I parked it in the car for almost that entire time. If its too hot for the Australian to be outside, it is definitely no place for my northern icicle self. Thermometer informed us that outside the car in the sun, it was over 45 degrees.