Uyuni to San Pedro

3 - 4 November

Having finished the Salt Flats tour in Uyuni I did what everyone else does - try to get out of Uyuni as fast as possible.

The town has 2.5 redeeming features - an OK bar which had (an ever present) happy hour that provided a much needed beer; a pretty good pizza place; somewhere to sleep for a few hours before getting on a bus which left at 04:00. Spending b$60 (about 6 quid) for a bed for a few hours was well worth it - it means that I arrived in San Pedro as someone who was just tired and not brokenly tired.

I travelled to San Pedro with Petra, one of the people I had been on-tour with across the Salt Flats, which was great - in part for the good company, in part from safety (it is another pair of eyes and whilst I've not felt in danger in Bolivia, long-distance over-night buses can be "interesting") and in part as she has much much better Spanish than I do.

We had been told by the person who sold us the ticket that the bus leaves at 03:30, despite the sign behind her saying 04:00 and the ticket saying 04:00. We dutifully arrived at 03:15, having had 4-5 hours dozing sleep, to make sure we were there for 03:30. We weren't surprised when 03:30 came and went with no sign of our bus; we were also not surprised to find that it arrived just before 04:00.

Finding that our seats had been double-booked was a surprise, although one which worked out OK for us as we were already sat in them and our names were on the sheet which the office had (the bus bookings are paper-based for a lot of the smaller companies).
From Petra's translation I think (part of) the problem is that the other people had either booked for another day and/or cancelled their booking (it wasn't clear) and yet wanted to travel that day - like many other people on the bus that night, they crammed themselves in somewhere; there were many people who stood the whole way from Uyuni to Calama (12 hours) - a "nice" long distance bus this isn't; a local coach it is.

I slept, well - dozed, from Uyuni to the border, which was about all I was expecting.

The boarder crossing from Boliva to Chile (country 11) is fairly simple, although does involve a lot of waiting around on the Chilian side for no apparently good reason. No change there then.
The Bolivians wanted b$15 for "departure tax", which I couldn't work out if it was an official thing or just the guy with the stamp wanting lunch money - either way, it got rid of a few coins I'd otherwise not be able to exchange.

The Chileans were determined to go through all the bags to ensure no one brought things in to Chile we weren't allowed to. Traditionally this would mean drugs, and I'm sure they looked for them too, but they are far more interested in plant and animal products - something they are very strict about, in an effort to protect their agriculture (a major part of their economy).
Pro tip: if in doubt, tick "yes" to the "do you have..." questions on the customs forms for anything food/plant/animal related - the worst you'll get is questions about what you've got (a few snack bars in my case) and not a pile of hassle (read: you being accused of smuggling) for not declaring that you've got in your bags. The Chileans have no sense of humour when it comes to this.


The journey from the Chilean side of the boarder (noticeably different from the Bolivian side - Bolivia, a small run-down shed with a guy and a stamp; Chile - two "nice" buildings, which actually looked like Customs & Immigration buildings) was another many hours of uneventful sitting on a bus, with a mixture of snoozing and looking at the scenery float buy - the Atacama is beautiful.


I had been warned about Calama bus station in advance by Gil and Nyrzha that the station has a reputation for pick-pockets / theft and to be very aware of everyone and everything. This was backed-up when one of the staff at the bus station gave us the same warning (via sign language).
Thankfully there was only half an hour from when we arrived to when the next bus to San Pedro left, which gave enough time to use the facilities and find some form of snack. Another 1.45 hours on a bus, through more stunning scenery (if you like deserts that is, which I do).


By chance we were met at the bus station by a guy who was down there to promote the hostel to those just arrived off the bus; he seemed a little surprised when we said we had reservations, but showed us the way to what turned out to be a nice hostel (nice feel to the place, relaxed, hammocks, easy going staff, easy going travellers).


Dinner that night was simple thing, washed down with just over half a bottle of red. I went to bed early and slept well.

The Salt Flats

31st Oct - 3rd November

This is something which is hard to describe in words - a trip through the salt flats is a massively visual experience and something which words will fail to describe. Thankfully I have a lot of pictures - no really, lots. Hundreds. They are awaiting processing and now that I have my laptop with me I'll be working my way through them.


I spent 4 days travelling from Tupiza to Uyuni, travelling with Tupiza Tours, a tour company which comes recommended by Footprint and by Gil, who I suspect found reference to them in there. For what it's worth, I'd recommend them too.


Tupiza isn't the normal route across the salt flats - the normal route starts in Uyuni and has various end-points from there including San Pedro de Atacama, which is where I wanted to end-up. The advantage of starting in Tupiza is that you get to see parts of the area which you can't if you do the Utuni to San Pedro route and they are well worth seeing - stunning - well worth the detoured route of Potosi to Tupiza to Uyuni to San Pedro (via Calama).


The tour itself is via off-road vehicle, where almost every operator uses Toyota Landcruisers; there were a few Nissan's, but the vast majority were Landcruisers. No surprises there.

The normal setup with Tupiza Tours is that a vehicle has 1 driver & guide, 1 cook and 4 passengers - which is another reason for using them / starting in Tupiza; tours from Uyuni often have 6 passengers in a truck and that would be a uncomfortably tight. Our Landcruiser didn't have a cook as there were two vehicles leaving from the Tupiza Tours at the same time, so we shared cooks and had a 5th passenger in our vehicle.

The days reminded me of my time in Daisy and Archie - hours upon hours of driving through stunning scenery, where there is nothing else to do but sit back and marvel at the sights. Heaven.

The sights themselves can only really be experienced by seeing them, which I'd encourage everyone who is anywhere near Bolivia to do. Until then I've got a lot of pictures to process, including on one of the best, if not the best, sunsets I've ever seen, and one which we only saw because the Landcruiser got upset due to the altitude (about 4000m, if memory serves).

One of common issues discussed on the likes of Trip Advisor for salt flats tours is the quality of the vehicle - there are plenty of companies out there with poor vehicles and (very) dodgy drivers - there are plenty of stories about drunken drivers.
Tupiza Tours has a good reputation, in part due to its vehicles, but no mechanical system is perfect and no matter now much maintenance goes into the vehicles they will sometimes go wrong (see Daisy for details). And on our first day out of Tupiza our (nameless) vehicle had a few issues - she'd conk-out, run very slowly, not manage to get up hills and generally wasn't a happy bunny.

The inevitable happened and our vehicle broke down. Our driver, the driver of the other Tupiza Tours vehicle and, in part because we were blocking the road and no one could get past, the drivers from other tour companies helped to fix our Cruiser. The other part to the drivers from other companies helping is that it is what you do out in the salt flats and as you overland elsewhere in the world, especially in remote parts (e.g. Mongolia) - you help those you find in trouble, as one day it could be you. Pay it forwards, in advance.


After about an hour we were on the move again, where, unsurprisingly, we broke down again a whopping 1300m later, which had taken us 10+ min to drive - there is a reason behind the total lack of surprise in the breakdown. We blocked the road again, got a group fix again and didn't lose too much more time.

At the third break-down (again, not very far later) the driver from our Cruiser had each of the 5 passengers from his vehicle find a seat in the 5 other Landcruisers we kept blocking - we were all heading for the same place, so at least this way we'd get there. Interestingly *all* of our luggage, which in the case of all of us was *everything* we were travelling with, was still on the roof of the increasingly unhappy Landcruiser.

We had been driving for about 30 min in our other cars when we stopped for a quick picture stop - a lagoon, if memory serves. During the drive we'd lost sight of the Landcruiser with our stuff on it, which was interesting, so I had no expectation of seeing it for a while.
Stepping out of the vehicle to take a few snaps and the cold hit me. The others from my original vehicle had been saying how cold it was getting, but I was still happy in my shirt; stepping out of the vehicle I was "hitching" a ride with and the wind hit me and stole all my body heat. The desert is cold when it wants to be, especially when at ~4000m, and it wanted me to be cold - and I was. Very - chattering teeth and the works.

To my utter surprise "my" Landcruiser turned up a couple of min later, with all my lovely warm clothing - I may have broken a record for how quickly you can put on a warm jacket. I got lucky, as otherwise I'd be stuck without any warm clothing in an increasingly cold desert - not good.
(Side note: if you want a really good down jacket and don't want to pay £lots for it - I highly recommend Alpkit's Filo jacket - seriously warm, amazing value and have kept me warm on some *cold* days at serious altitude. Their sleeping bags are great too - it is what I took through Central Asia.)

It turns out that, as with humans, sometimes the altitude gets the better of the vehicles, even if normally OK. The thing just started working properly, for no apparently good reason.


Continuing the rest of the journey in "my" vehicle, collecting the others as we passed their borrowed vehicles, the sun began to set. Cue what is one of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen.

I have no words to describe it and you will all have to wait for the pictures - just imagine an amazing sunset in the desert and it was better than that. Had the Landcruiser not broken down we would have been as the hostel for the night and missed the views.

In the words introduced to me by Mark (of many hats) in Uzbek - Good Luck. Bad Luck. Only time will tell.


The rest of the journey is one that I'll try and tell in pictures.

Alive and well

It has been a few weeks since posting anything, so a quick update to let you all know I'm alive and well.

I have a lot of blog posts from South America I still need to write, so I'll be doing that over the next few days - I want to finish writing about South America before I start writing about the next part of my adventures.

I also have my laptop with me, which means that photos should start appearing too.

The mines of Potosi

The main reason for going to Potosi is to do a tour of the Cerro Ricco mines - "The mountain which eats men".

For those interested in the mines then the movie The Devil's Miner is well worth watching.
I watched it at hostel, which at times was straight out of Faulty Towers. I had to buy a ticket from reception to watch the film, only to have the receptionist come and collect the tickets from you before he started the DVD. Nice enough hostel, but odd in places.

There are many different groups, co-ops, working different part of the mountain, some in small groups (3-6) and some in larger groups (high teens), depending on the type of mining they are doing (targeted, smaller scale, mining or larger-scale mass extraction).


This is something you have to do an organised tour for, where I chose Koala Tours based on their reputation. The other sensible option would be Big Deal, which is owned by the miners themselves - where one of the people I travelled with across the Salt Flats and to San Pedro with used them and gave good reviews. Either are worth considering and having a good tour operator is worth spending the shoe leather and cash on.
With our tour we were split in to groups of 6, with each group having 2 guides - one at each end of the group, providing a higher degree of safety and allowing someone to leave the group if needed (none in our group did, although one very tall chap (easily 6'6", if not more) from another group didn't make it - I'm surprised the tour company said he should have even considered it, in my absolutely inexpert guess he is just too tall - anyone over about 6' is going to struggle).

If you are considering going and are: 1) (very) tall; 2) have back problems 3) have breathing issues; 4) claustrophobic; 5) not physically strong enough to man-handle yourself around in small spaces - think twice; this isn't a theme park and there is no emergency exit - you have to get yourself in and out, dealing with whatever you find. I would recommend going, just think twice about if you can actually do it.


To visit the "face" you have to walk, stoop and in places crawl on all fours to get through the small, cramped, tunnels, and then climb down (and later, back up) rocks to get from the 1st (entrance) to the 3rd level, a decent of 60m according to the guide, which it didn't feel like, all whilst in a hot and dusty environment, having entered the mine at about 4200m.


I can't imagine having to do that twice a day, one of them after 12+ hours of back-breaking manual labour, drilling, smashing, blasting and sorting the rocks to collect the ore (mostly silver, but other minerals are also extracted), all for very little money (one miner said that on a good day he'd earn £10 for his work, but it isn't always good days and there are no fixed wages - it is all about how much ore they extract, its quality (percentage of ore to everything else) and the world silver/mineral markets).

Side note: I actually enjoyed the climb back up - added "climbing" to my list of things to try when I get home.


The "face" we visited was a small cave like space which had been blasted out, with three miners in there smashing and sorting the various rocks - trying to separate out the better, higher concentration of ore, rocks from the bulk - the better rocks being kept separately to the bulk, which was pushed down another blasted hole in the rock to a waiting cart. It wasn't clear, but I think all is sold and the "better" rocks get a better price, thus kept separately from the bulk.
Guys move the mined material around by hand - three guys move a 1 ton cart (2 push it, 1 pulls it) - and once that cart is moving everyone else has to get out of the way of it; there are no brakes and it will not stop for you. Our guides were very good at keeping an ear open for carts and ensuring we had moved to (and at times, ran to) a suitable passing place.


To say that this is a hard job is an understatement.

Strange experiences (part 2)

After 6.5 months on the road and using cash exclusively for almost all of that time, with the vast majority of that time being where cash was the only option, being able to pay for things with plastic and not having to worry about having enough cash in my wallet.

Strange experiences (part 1)

Being able to drink the tap water.

Medical problems

There is a medical problem which hits people almost indiscriminately - it doesn't matter how old you are; your gender makes no difference; skin colour isn't a factor and neither is sexual orientation. It hits without warning.

The only correlation which science has found that it tends to affect people in specific areas of the world, where pockets of South America are known to be high risk.

I am, of course, talking about the Meat Coma.

A Meat Coma is a serious problem and one where the only known preventative is worse than the actual illness - vegetarianism.

The illness is brought on by consuming large, some would say "too much", meat, such as the quantities found at a meat buffet in Mendoza.

Signs and symptoms include:

• The Meat Sweats
• Feeling overly full
• Lethargy

Other risk factors include:

• Drinking a half bottle of wine (with lunch)
• Using your "desert stomach" to consume tasty cake, despite knowing better
• Randomly stopping into a wine tasting and trying 11 different wines

The patient should be returned to a place of safety, often called "the hostal" and given a place to snooze, ideally with an ear full of tunes.