Uyuni - there isn't much to say about this city except it is a place that is not benefiting from the discovery of lithium on their doorstep (where is all that money going ask the locals?). It's claim to fame is a very good pizza place and to get there we walked along broken cobbled footpaths and dirt roads and past a fair ground (complete with ferris wheel and kids rides).
The pizza place did not have a paper menu - not the first time we have struck this. Without roaming switched on (to avoid the $9 a day charge as we hadn't got an e-sim card) we had to look over the shoulders of others to decide what ingredients our pizzas should have. They were very large - we decided to share.
Uyuni is the stepping stone to three magical days in the Bolivian wilderness. Expect the unexpected.
Before I start to describe what we saw (and words will fail me miserably) I will share some of the things that were a tad less enjoyable. Very cold evenings which could have been bearable but the hotel rooms had no heaters, one had no hot water while another provided a hot water bottle - which was quaint and old worldy. By renting a sleeping bag we managed to keep quite warm in the dark (one hotel turned off the power at midnight, the other turned it on from 6 - 9 in the evenings). The meals were edible but not flash and to top it all off there were some seriously bad hat hair days.
Then there are the public banos (toilets). They ranged in price from 2 to 5 Boliviano (or bob), and not one had hot water, soap and towel - in fact most had only cold water. More than once I said a silent thank you to the inventor of the hand sanitizer.
All first world problems and all faded into insignificance with the sights we saw during our magical three day four wheel drive adventure.
We were picked up at 10 by four drivers and their drivers. With rosary beads swinging from the mirror we made our way forward to the place "where trains come to die". There is something sad about unwanted metal - all the people that spent time and energy building, maintaining, driving and travelling on the trains - now slowly rusting in a corner of the desert.
Not far from the trains was a market place, complete with trinkets, clothes and food. We wandered around a bit, but didn't find the jerseys with llamas, hats, scarves inviting enough to squeeze into our 15 kilo travel luggage.
We arrived at the beginning of the salt flats - 10,000 km of salt and at least 10 metres deep in places. Ironically, the Dakar rally has been held here and flags from many countries were flying near our lunch stop. New Zealand had a new clean flag which flew not far from a very tatty Australian one (yes we did point that out to the Aussie travellers and invited him to have their photo taken with the kiwi one). The drivers dropped us off to look at the flag poles (and some dancers who were filiming a you-tube video) while they dug out our lunch from chilly bags. Inside we sat on salt chairs and ate off a salt table, all surrounded by a building made of salt bricks. Quite novel. Veges and zucchini fritters with coke and apples for lunch. All good.
We drove on to the flats where there were no others and the group spent a long time taking lots of perspective photos using props like dinosaurs and coke cans. Harry amused himself a bit by insisting on pushing one of the cars, but then I was left alone to enjoy the scenery and treading on the thin salt to make puddles (small things amuse). At first the salt was similar to the ice found on ski fields (the stuff that can make quite a chaffing noise when skiers go over it), but then it turned into lots of little bumps - nothing like we had seen before and certainly not resembling ice or snow in any way.
There are a number of islands springing up from the salt floor. We were lucky to venture on to one. Apparently, 40 million years ago these islands were under the sea, and with various volcanic eruptions and earthquakes the islands formed little oasis's in the salt plain. They are made of coral and volcanic rock and are home to a number of cactus and alpine shrubs.
Our last stop on the salt flats was to see the sun sink behind the hills and with a shot of tequila (plenty of salt around), we toasted the end of a great day and a new night. That night we slept in our woolly hats.
No two days were alike - today we swapped the white of the salt plains to the brown dust of the plateau. There was no defined road that we could tell, just different tracks which spread before us like a quilted blanket. Even Google would have got lost giving directions if there had been GPS. At one point I played a game - would the driver go right, left or straight ahead and 99% of the time I got it wrong. There were no signs to follow (I lie we saw one sign in four hours). We did wonder how the sole cyclist we saw leave the town where we stayed the night would manage. Even the driver shook his head as he drove past in a cloud of dust.
Only once did the driver stop to consider where he was going - he had come to a small problem of a metre drop directly in front. We were lucky as we had been assigned to the lead car (most senior driver) with the tour guide and 1 other passenger which meant we did not follow in any one else's dust cloud. In a place like this the driver needed to be multi skilled eg mechanic, petrol filler (we carried the petrol cans under our bags in the back of the car), cleaner and of course an expert navigator.
Over the next couple of days we stopped at a number of lagoons. I can't remember their names, or in fact the order we saw them, but each was spectacular in its own way. They were all different colours (due to algae or minerals), some sported life (flamingos, aldean ducks, geese and yes sea gulls). And there were also a number of sightings of vicuna (a small deer), llama and vischea (like a hare) and foxes. All lagoons were a delight to see with the back drop of snowy mountains reflected in their water. At one viewing point we saw a wind funnel that tracked across the water before it expired on the other side.
And then over the hill from the desert plains we spied a geyser or two and then some mud pools - dirty grey mud bubbling away just like Rotorua. We had to enjoy the "health and safety" of the area - white stones strategically placed along the path - no warning notices or high fences to block the view here.
There was an opportunity to soak in the hot springs, but we decided to sit and enjoy the view and then wander around the little streams running into the lake (some steaming hot while others frozen).
Then it was time to cross to the Chile side of the mountains. We queued in an orderly fashion to be let out of Bolivia and queued again with our bags to be let into Chile some two kilometres down the road. Here the guide told us to smile for the customs officer (never have we been told that before). The customs officer sort of raised his eyebrows every time someone looked happy to see him. He handed back my passport, together with a docket called a PID (I assume personal identification document) which we were told we had to keep or we would not be allowed to leave Chile.
Suddenly, there were sealed roads - a steep decline with 13 emergency stop pits for vehicles with brake problems and some road cones. Heaps of street and speed signs, and with only one downward way to go, they almost seemed unnecessary given where we had come from. We think that the roading network and types of transport is often the "eye" into the state of a countries economy and Chile was no exception.
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