Bienvenidos a Bolivia-ita

We reached the border of Bolivia through La Quiaca and then took a supposedly 8h bus to Uyuni. The road was not paved and we though “hm.. that´s why this bus has jeep wheels and is much higher than usual ahaha”. At mid-night, the hour that we thought we would arrive, the first sights of what was going to be an adventure started. The bus was stopping a lot of times and no one could understand why. The answer came an hour later when the driver said “the engine is not working and a mechanic will arrive in 4 hours”. The bus stopped in the middle of the desert, without any heater and no sights of a nearby village. We were travelling with a French friend and a guy and a girl from Buenos Aires. 

At 4am, we woke up due to some guy that every 5m used to shout “puertaaaaa”, “vamossss”, “daleee”. What happen is that the bus ´windows were frozen and no news from the mechanic. At 6am, people started some fires outside to fight the cold that was invading the bus, and of course we went outside, the sky was amazing and so clear that the shooting starts were uncountable. The mechanic came at 7.30 but he could not fix the bus. We went back to the bus to sleep a bit more and wait for more news. Someone woke up us saying that the pick up outside would take us to Uyuni. We were 12 people in the car, 6 inside 6 outside, and 150km or 2hours away from Uyuni.

What was seen as a sign of “in 2hour we are eating our llama meat”, ended up in 4 hours because the car had a flat tire after 30m and without battery later on.

In Uyuni, we did eat our tasty llama. The next day we did the Salar tour which ended up being really worth it. During the first day we could only see white, white and white horizon, salt everywhere except when we stopped in a cactus island. A cactus island in the middle of nowhere, very unusual!! The first night was in a salt hotel, halls and beds made of salt. The next two days were through the desert with lagoons, flamingos, volcanos, geysers, hot springs, amazing sightseers! (but did not have the same impact on us because we had visited Atacama desert in the past, which is very similar but on the other side of Andes). On the second day we met a Portuguese that recognized there was a Portuguese after hearing a typical Portuguese “cabraoo!”, that came out of  Murta´s mouth when an animal passed by his precious lunch meal.

Even though Uyuni took almost 30% of our budget here in Bolivia we could say that our experience in the Salar was amazing. We did the tour with very nice companies and with a very outgoing guide Mateo. We also started using the so well known Hojas de Coca or Coca´s Leafs and please Martim, look out for your two traveler’s children.