Feeling salty

I'm not usually one who seeks hardcore nature adventure experiences, but the Salar de Uyuni was an exception. I'm not gonna go into too much detail explaining what it is because you can look it up on the internet, but it's basically the largest salt flat in the world and it all belongs to Bolivia. It's basically the thing to see if you're traveling through Bolivia because it's so otherworldly and strange, and there's almost nothing else like it in the world.

Since I wasn't able to make it all the way there during my first trip to Bolivia, I knew at some point I had to see it on this one. So I recruited Ignacio (aka the first Bolivian I ever met) as my travel buddy and made him promise to go with me, since he hadn't been there either, and he's also a traveler and adventurer so I knew that making the trip with him would be really fun. I mean, we did meet traveling, on our exchange in France almost five years ago! Thus, last Wednesday night, his mom drove us to Cochabamba's bus terminal, and it was there our mishaps started.

Ignacio is a tall guy and so wanted to ask what bus company would have the most comfortable options for an overnight bus ride. So he called the terminal that day, and they recommended Trans Copacabana lines, and that he take an overnight bus to Potosí departing at 9:30 pm and from there take a short bus ride to Uyuni, when we would arrive early in the morning. I'm the kind of person who wants to get all my tickets in advance and have everything taken care of, but that isn't necessarily how things work in Bolivia. You walk into the bus terminal, and it's insanely crowded (like, Philippines level crowded) and there's all these representatives from different bus lines yelling out names of different destinations and you kinda just have to go up to different kiosks to look at their hours and where the buses go. Anyway, we got to the terminal at around 9:00 pm and found out that actually, the buses would leave for Potosí at 9:00 pm and they didn't have any more space. One of the main reasons they didn't have any more space was that there was some kind of transportation blockade that day, so a lot of people were stranded and needed to get back to wherever they needed to go. Wow, such good timing. So we gave up on that and looked around the bus station and found out that there were no more buses leaving for Potosí, which meant we'd have to scrap that plan and take a bus to Oruro and from there see how we could get to Uyuni.

Great!

We were super frustrated and kind of angry, but we eventually found a 10:30 pm bus to Uyuni that would arrive in 4-5 hours. So we got our tickets, went to Panchita (a fast food chain), where Ignacio's mom got us dinner. From there, we got on the bus. It was a semi-cama bus, meaning that seats reclined pretty low (not as much as a complete cama or bed bus, but it was fine). Of course it didn't actually drive out of the terminal until around 11:30 pm. But we got to Oruro eventually, sleeping on and off. Ignacio got a sleeping pill but apparently it didn't do much for him, oh well.

Oruro is much colder than Cochabamba since it's at a higher elevation. It was below freezing when we got there, so we stayed on the bus for around two hours after it arrived and then sometime before 7 am got off and walked to the bus terminal. On the corner, we heard a man yelling "UYUNIIII!" while standing right next to a minibus/van, so we figured that we'd get to Uyuni that way. He still had space, so we got on for a ride that lasted around 4 hours. Finally, we made it to our destination, a small town called Uyuni at the edge of the salt flats.

It's a super touristic town even if it isn't that photogenic. It's full of foreigners and tour agencies, and there's a main square with a ton of restaurants that basically all serve the same things and are way higher priced than local places. We saw something familiar at the square...

Anyway, I was already feeling pretty cold and knew that the jeans I had wouldn't be sufficient in the middle of nowhere, so Ignacio and I went to the street market and both got leggings to wear under our pants. I think mine are pretty cute.

We visited several tour agencies to see if there were any three day tours we could go on, but the thing is most tours leave at 10:30 and we had gotten there at around 11:00 am, so they all left. We decided to just get a hostel for the night so we could rest well and leave for a two-day tour the next day. Ignacio seemed kind of disappointed, but I almost prefer that things ended up this day so that we didn't have to begin a long tour after unsuccessfully trying to sleep on an overnight bus. After hostel hunting we eventually ended up in one called Bunker Hostel and relaxed there a little before going out around the town some more and finding an agency to take a tour with. This is the view from our room on the 3rd floor!

That evening we got street sandwiches for dinner and then went to a place to hang out and get dessert or something. It also had board games, and I couldn't help but laugh at this Bolivian version of Monopoly called Evonopoly, whose real estate places were different Bolivian landmarks...

We were so tired that we went back to the hostel soon after that and slept at 9 pm. We were definitely well rested the next day, and pretty happy with the breakfast the hostel offered. At breakfast, we ended up meeting a trio of French people only slightly older than us, and had a lot of fun speaking in French with them and talking to them about how we met in France a while ago. Sadly, they weren't on the same tour as us, but we hoped to run into them at some points during the tour, since a lot of the companies stop by the same places.

From there, we went to the office of Oasis, the agency we booked the tour with.

 

At that point nobody else had signed up for the two day tour, but we did end up going with a group! Not as young as we would have liked, but we still had a good time. There was a Swiss couple with their 4-year-old daughter (so I got to speak in German with them whoo-hoo!!), a Korean teenager who was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, so he's actually a Bolivian national and speaks both Spanish and Korean, his older brother visiting from Korea, and an older woman from Paraguay.

The first stop on the tour was the train cemetery, which was just ruins of trains which were left there from the past. Sucky explanation, but you can look it up if you really wanna know more. I thought they made for some pretty cool pictures, even if I kinda sucked at climbing up. (Okay, I'm like barely over five feet tall and Ignacio is more than six feet so who's gonna have an easier time?)

There, we ran into the French people again! They were also on the first stop of their tour, but theirs was going to be four days long. We hoped to run into them again at some point somewhere... 

From there, we went to a little artisan village called Colchani. There's basically a long street with a ton of stalls selling various goods. I got something for my parents there, the usual fridge magnet, so no surprises. 

After that, it was lunchtime. We went to the first salt hotel, one that also has this flag plaza. Sadly there was no Philippine flag. Maybe I should have brought one. 

I was feeling really salty at that point because my phone randomly died and wouldn't turn back on. For almost the rest of the day, I used Ignacio's phone. Because what are travel buddies for if not to mooch off of their camera for photos? Plus he had just gotten a new phone with a really sweet camera. 

After eating llama chop for lunch, we drove to the Isla Incahuasi. Of course when I heard "isla" I naïvely thought we were gonna visit some island in a lagoon or something. But no–it was just this random island in the middle of the salt desert. What's more, as we drove right next to it, we could see that it was almost covered in cacti. Our tour guide told us that the cacti were a thousand years old and that they grow a centimeter each year. It was such a weird sight. But I find cacti strangely adorable so I got pretty excited to get on the island and explore a bit. 

Ignacio and I trekked our way to the top and took some pictures. It was there though, where our differences kind of got the best of us, and against his mother's wishes we separated from one another, oh noooo. I thought our tour guide had said we had to be back at the 4WD at 5 pm, and Ignacio thought he said something like, "We're going to leave around when the sun starts to set." It was around 4:45 and Ignacio still wanted to take pictures, even though I was getting kind of antsy to leave, but I didn't want to separate from him so I just reluctantly stayed even if it meant being late. Finally, when he was kind of done with taking pictures, I headed towards the marked path to get down the island, but he went back to where we had arrived. "It's where we came up, we can go back down through there!" he said. Somewhat irritated I replied, "Yeah but it's where everyone goes up and you're gonna get in their way! Nobody goes down through there!" He didn't seem to care though, so he continued on his merry way undoubtedly running into people trying to get up and making it harder for them, while I went down the path where everyone else was going down and not being a nuisance to anyone. Suck it Igna!  

All in all though, that was the only time we were actually in conflict with one another, which is decent. Yay for traveling with people. After that we all piled back into the car. I talked about how my phone had been dead for pretty much the entire afternoon, and the Swiss guy said that his phone was too, and it was an iPhone, and he was able to successfully restart it. I was like, "Really?" so I handed him my phone, and after he simultaneously pressed the power and home button it worked! I was so relieved. It was just in time to take photos with the sunset, too. 

From that spot in the middle of nowhere, we drove towards a volcano we saw on the horizon, where we were lodged in a hostel. Ignacio, the Korean boy (Pablo was his Spanish name), and the Paraguayan (Aracely) and I played pick-up sticks (note to self: I have never had patience for that game and never will) and then a game of cards. Later that night, Romer our tour guide took us out in the 4WD and drove out onto the middle of the salar to look at the stars. As we were driving out I couldn't see anything because the car was tinted, so once I stepped outside I was completely blown away. Not just by the cold, but by the vastness of the universe that I could see around me, all the way from one horizon to the other. I had never seen so many stars in my life, and you could even see the Milky Way. As I walked around with my head facing the sky, I felt some tears form in my eyes at the overwhelming beauty of it all. Never in my life until that moment had I felt so struck by something I saw. It's unexplainable, really. The fact that it's impossible to take a decent photo of it probably adds to how special it was, but so you have an idea, here's a picture I found on the internet. 

Another pretty surreal moment was when a guy around my age from our hostel asked to join our group to drive out to the salar, since the group he came with wasn't going to go out there with a car. Romer let him accompany us, and he had actually brought some mats to lay on the ground to be able to look straight above. Ignacio and I joined him, and we huddled together to try and keep warm. Ignacio eventually left since he got too cold, but I stayed a bit longer to keep talking to the guy. His name was John and he was a student from Bogotá studying tourism. We talked about what we were seeing, about travels, etc. and the thing is I never knew what he even looked like. I thought I saw him the next day at the hostel, but I wasn't sure, and he didn't acknowledge Ignacio or me so maybe it wasn't even him. Either way, sharing such a unique experience and speaking with someone whose appearance I never even got to know was what made it surreal. 

The next day I took some pictures of the hostel so I could have some kind of remembrance. (Even if we were basically freezing during the night due to lack of heating equipment.) Here's pictures of the room we stayed in, the common area, the view from our window, and the resident kitten. 

In the morning, Ignacio and I left the hostel and took a walk around the area. We saw a llama herd and decided to greet it. I thought the sight of them at the base of the Tunupa Volcano was a pretty idyllic scene, though we wondered what exactly from the ground they were eating because we didn't really see any shrubbery. 

The guided tour part of the day commenced when the group piled back into the 4WD and drove up the volcano to a cave that served as a cemetery for a civilization that used to live at the base of the volcano. The culture was called the Uruchipaya, and they spoke the Aymara language (still spoken today in Bolivia). Ignacio would excitedly declare, "Anthropology!" to me whenever Romer said cool everyday facts about them, and I appreciated his appreciation, haha. He's also really into learning about other cultures and people, which makes sense since we did meet on exchange after all! For the cave we had another guide, a local from that area, and he explained to us who the mummies were and that they were from around the year 1200 A.D. That's insane! They were super well preserved thanks to the cold. I could believe it. I felt like I could be pretty well preserved from the cold too trying unsuccessfully to sleep the night before.

I forgot to mention that as we were registering our names and countries, we saw three names above us, all from France. We recognized them as the Frenchies, and Ignacio and I thought that we were pretty lucky they were the only names above ours. We really hoped we would run into them somewhere. Spoiler alert, we did somewhere further up the volcano during a trek that only the Swiss couple, their daughter, and we made, but first we ran into more llamas. Who all ran away from Ignacio because he's a big scary man.

The hike upwards was kind of hard, especially considering we were already at a high altitude (more than 13,000 feet in the air), but on the way to one of the major lookouts, we at least ran into the Frenchies! Chatting with them I was able to take a breather and also speak in French, something that I will always love doing wherever in the world I am. Ignacio definitely enjoyed running into them again, and I personally loved the fact that of all the many random tour groups we could have run into, we got to see them. But yeah, the first lookout was pretty cool. The Swiss guy had brought two beers, so he and his wife shared one while Ignacio and I shared the other, and we toasted a spectacular view and amazing tour.

 

The descent was pleasant, but I had to watch my footing a lot because I am a clumsy babe. We returned to the hostel for lunch, and instead of the usual common area, we instead went to a room made entirely of salt, just like the one we went to for lunch the previous day. Guess you make the most out of the resources you have in abundance around you!

The final item on the agenda of the two-day tour was a photo session at some other point in the middle of nowhere. Some sweet perspective photos were taken, as well as general "Look how vast this place is" photos. Oh right, after that before going back to town, we also took some photos at the salt pyramids on the edge of the salar. 

The tour agency had a dinosaur toy in the car so we could take pics like this. 

Me with a map of Bolivia pointing to where I was at that moment

Ignacio and I had this giant 5L bottle of water and he came up with the idea for this photo. We wasted some water to get a good shot but we still had more than enough to last us all the way to Cochabamba!

Me while taking this photo: "I'm king of the world!" 

I felt super satisfied with the tour and that I finally finally FINALLY got to see the Salar de Uyuni! Before saying good bye to our tour mates and Romer, Ignacio and I wanted to get a photo with the born-traveler little Swiss girl (seriously, she was so well behaved the entire time and had already been traveling quite a bit with her parents) and were super happy when this adorable, incredibly friendly dog joined in. 

The tour ended around 4, and we had around eight hours to kill before we had to be at the train station. We did a little bit more shopping, roamed around Uyuni, and asked the tour agency to recommend some cheap local eats so we wouldn't have to pay tourist prices at the plaza. They directed us to a street where there were some grill places, and we were able to have a delicious dinner at a simple restaurant that served meat with fries and rice. A meal only cost 15 bolivianos! 

After that, we waited out around the last three or so hours in a lounge in the actual plaza. We needed to charge our phones, but the only outlet available was by this table a girl was sitting on. Ignacio had no issues with that and just went up to her and asked if we could sit with her. (He's a super social traveler. It's part of what has made the trip really worthwhile.) She ended up being really happy we asked, so we just spent our time at that place talking to her. She's from the UK and has been traveling around South America doing various work abroad projects and independent travel for five months. That day happened to be the five month anniversary of her arrival and the halfway point of her long trip, too! It was fun to talk about all our adventures, and she was glad to be able to spend part of her evening with company. Perhaps if I find myself around London one day I'll be able to meet her again. We left around 10:30 pm or so, and Ignacio and I headed tiredly to the train station.

Anyway, I thought we'd be able to get our train tickets and onto the train with no issues and that the adventure was coming to a close. But Ignacio knows his country and knew something would come up. By the time the ticket booth actually opened, it was maybe ten minutes after the train was supposed to leave, and the people who were waiting at the station were told there were no more spots. I was about ready to give up and get a hostel again and pay for it in full because I was so tired, but there was a woman who got really angry and even filmed the situation while narrating what was happening. She had to be in La Paz the next day and the train to Oruro was going to be the only way to go right at that point. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of me whining to Ignacio that I wanted to give up and not fight and do anything (and thinking that maybe this is why the Spaniards colonized the Philippines for longer than they colonized Bolivia lol), a lot of people getting angry at the ticket booth and the train station staff, and then when the train actually arrived it stalled a bit and then they randomly attached this extra wagon they had chilling on another track right next to the main one. Okay. We were all relieved to get on the train. Plus it was heated and the conductor provided pillows and thick blankets. I suppose I kinda slept decently. As well as I could sleep on public transportation, anyway. 

Ignacio and I the next day had a conversation about how I should learn how to get angry and not just be accepting of everything all the time. I think Bolivia's been trying to teach me a lot of that. 

But yeah, we made it to Oruro eventually, and then got on a bus to Cochabamba relatively quickly. I thought I was gonna write on my journal about the trip but I was exhausted so I just fell asleep on Ignacio's shoulder oops. Then later in the ride I tried to write, but the roads were super winding and mountainous, so I just doodled and had Ignacio contribute and wrote bullet points to refer to when I wrote this blog entry that I did not actually end up referring to. 

Despite all the trouble, the voyage was so, so worth it. I just had no time to properly write more about it because, well, right now I'm in Buenos Aires typing this and I need to get on a ferry to Uruguay in a matter of hours... but before I publish this let me adjust the date of this entry to make it seem like I wrote it right after I got back from the salar and didn't just spend all day of the 17th sleeping in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Okay cool. 

More to come later! Chau!