Bolivia - Uyuni - Part Two: Rooftop Chicken and the Flying Dutchman

Now on this whirlwind tour by Jeep of the Bolivian desert, I have already mentioned the cooler with no ice. What I failed to mention was that on top of the cooler with no ice was a plastic grocery bag. Contents - two raw chickens. Huh. Coincidentally, chicken was the main course for dinner that night. Even Mick was enthusiastic to embrace a vegetarian diet for the rest of the tour seeing the grey meat on the plate. Our fellow passenger Sebastian was more adventurous and ate said chicken that had sat on the 45 degree roof for hours in the sun before being cooked. And boy was he sorry the next day. ALL DAY.



Part way through the morning on day two, on our way to see a volcano, we came across a flood on the plains. Being told it was dangerous to cross alone as a vehicle because the road would sink, we waited on two other Jeeps to join us.


The second in the caravan was the red Jeep (which would later break down every 200m for the last four hours of their drive), who was accompanied on this trip by a biker, who we nicknamed the Flying Dutchman:



Surprise surprise, he is Dutch, and was working his way from New York to Tierra del Fuego on his motorcycle. Very impressive. However, he was also a teensy bit bipolar and tended to curse you out as easily as he told a story about biking through Colombia. Kind of hit or miss.

The third car in our caravan was the black Jeep. We learned from two irate Aussies in that car that the driver was new, not just to the salt tour, but to driving full stop. He in fact could not reverse the car. And it was an automatic. Yikes. So obviously, we had lucked out with our driver Edgar (who as it turned out was the owner of Colque tours... right).

I had seen enough cars bogged down offroading that I was relieved to know Edgar knew what he was doing. Until Mick pointed out that none of the three cars had a shovel or recovery equipment of any kind. Super. Thanks Mick. Cant you let me enjoy my false sense of security for even a nanosecond? It turned out not to matter, since ten minutes into driving through the flooded plain, Edgar decided it was too dangerous and redirected everyone to a detour route. So no volcano again. Im convinced its fated that Mick and I and a volcano can never be in the same place at the same time, since this was our fourth effort to see one.

The rest of the day was spent stopping at Laguna this and Laguna that. There were some flamingos, which were cool, but not whole day amusement kind of cool. Really, day two was a bit of a let down all in all.

Day three was mostly just an absurdly early morning. We were packed up in the FREEZING cold Jeep at 5am (for reference, everyone was huddled together in coats and blankets in their seats for at least two hours... and the blankets came outside with us when we stopped for photos). Except we had a tiny delay. Red and Black Jeeps were having issues. Black Jeep was dealing with a mutiny, as the Aussies were demanding to drive the car since their driver was so inexperienced. Red Jeep´s driver was still drunk from the night before, although our driver claimed ´he always walked stumbly like that´. Terrible lies. Anyhow once that was sorted, off we went. Saw some geysers, which were surprisingly loud and just as smelly as I imagined. I cant believe I got up at 5am to watch the earth pass gas. Really?

The landscape improved from there... we drove through the ´countryside of Dali´, i.e. the land where surrealist artist Salvador Dali got his inspiration.



The rocks and mountains are straight out of his paintings... or the other way around I guess. Very beautiful.




Another highlight was the Stone Tree, a rock thats eroded from wind and water into the shape of a tree.










There were also some hot springs that looked very inviting, but I was just too damn cold from the morning to even think about a swimsuit. Mick assures me it was worthwhile. The tour ended at Laguna Blanca with cheese sandwiches for breakfast. Yum, right? On Bolivian bread. Sigh.