Uyuni, Bolivia

We got up with the sun today and finished changing the oil in the van before setting off towards Uyuni. The map showed two roads towards Uyuni, one short and direct, but gravel and then dirt, and the second route, twice as long, but paved most of the way, with the last part showing as gravel. We opted for the longer route since we didn’t know what we would be getting ourselves into in the dirt road. After committing to that way, we read in the guide book that we’d be going through Potosi, the world’s highest city (12,992 ft.) After getting turned around in town for about an hour and a half, we finally found the way out of town. It started out as brand new pavement, and we thought maybe we got lucky, but not more than fifteen minutes later, we ran into a construction crew and the end of the new road. From there, it deteriorated quickly; the worst roads we’ve encountered yet. We crept along at 20 mph, rattling everything in the van for over 100 miles. The terrain started as big open spaces with lots of wind, similar to Wyoming, but that eventually gave way to red sandstone desert, very similar to Utah. Once it started getting dark we pulled off into the desert to camp and watched as a large lightning show played off in the distance.

We got up and finished the rest of the drive to Uyuni this morning, and made it there in time for breakfast. Our next goal was to research what our options were for going out into the flats. Covering 12,000 sq. km, we didn’t think we should just go off and start driving out into it. After talking to a few different tour companies though, we changed our mind. We had seen how locals drive on the rough roads, and we weren’t going to be able to keep up. We also noticed that all of the guide vehicles (the town of Uyuni must be the Toyota Landcruiser capital of the world) had two to three large canisters for gas strapped to the top. Most tours consisted of three days, and we didn’t know if we really wanted to spend that much time out there anyway. In the end we decided to just follow the endless line of tour trucks heading out of town and go explore for a while and then camp out in the flats.

Once we got to the salt flats, we were thankful for the dark tire tracks that cut across the featureless white landscape that stretched for as far as you could see. It was one of the most incredible and bizarre landscapes that either of us had ever been in. While the sun was very intense, it was surprisingly cool in the shade of the van. We spent a few hours out there, stopping at the Salt Hotel (which is made entirely of salt blocks) and the place we were planning on camping, Isla de Pesca. We thought it would be the perfect place to camp out, but as we rounded the corner of the island, we were surprised by about twenty guide trucks parked, a bunch of people, and even a little hotel. So much for isolation! We moved on to see if we could try some other islands that were off in the distance. As we got closer, the salt started getting wet, and before we knew it we were pushing through large puddles of salt water due to the recent rains. We could see the salt starting to cake onto everything and started getting worried about possibly doing damage. After the van almost didn’t start after stopping to take some pictures, we were fully spooked and decided to head back to town to immediately try to find a car wash. By the time we got back, everything was stark white, and our doors barely would open. Just on the edge of town we found a llavendaria and a father/son went to work, diligently spraying the underside and every nook and cranny of the van.

We tried gassing up in preparation for the long drive to the border, but for some reason, the first station wouldn’t give us any and told us to go to the other station in town. We couldn’t understand what the attendant was telling us, but it had something to do with us not being from Bolivia, and it sounded like the supply was limited. We went to the next station, and there was a line of people filling up everything from 55 gallon drums to 2 liter coke bottles. When it came our turn, we got the same treatment; something about it was going to be very expensive because they were in precious mode or something. We said ‘no problema’ just as long as we got filled up and were able to get out of there!

By this point it was dark so we figured we’d get out of town a ways towards the border and camp for the night. The problem was that we couldn’t find the road out of town. Bolivia was terrible for signage, but we did find one road out that split to two different towns that we didn’t want to go to. Our guide book said that there was another road that was more direct to the border town. We had three maps and all of them had different cities on the way to the border. We also knew it was going to be a long drive, and we had been told there weren’t any more gas stations until we got into Chile. A quick check with some locals netted some info that the one road to the town we didn’t want to go to was the same road we were looking for, and there would be a turn off for the town we wanted. It sounded right, since the road out of town was pretty large, albeit gravel and full of washboards. We rattled down the road at 5 to 10 mph for about two and a half hours and still hadn’t seen a turn-off before we felt like this just couldn’t be the road, so we turned around and made it half-way back to Uyuni, where in the morning we would have to try to get more gas, and try to see if maybe we had somehow missed the other road.