Uyuni Salar Tour, Southwest Bolivia

The day began with a beautiful breakfast at Hostel La Torre. We packed a light bag for the trip and left most of our belongings, including our little blue motos and all our motorbiking gear, at the hostel with the plan to return to Tupiza after the tour. Outside the hostel, four Toyota Land Cruisers were parked up with four Bolivian men frantically packing food, water, diesel, gear and eventually our bags into the back and onto the roof. There seemed to be a lot of tourists milling around. Like a school trip, our names were read out and we were sent to a Jeep. Straight away Jono and I began chatting to the other couple who were to be in the Jeep with us. Marcelle and Martijn were from Holland – she was a teacher in a school for children with chronic diseases and Martijn had given up a job as a project manager for a construction company that completed large scale commercial buildings. We hit it off straight away. Our driver and guide, Edwin, was very professional and knowledgeable, despite his mere 25 years, and turned out also to be a very safe driver and have a great sense of humour. Natalia, our cook, was a beautiful traditional looking Bolivian woman who maintained the long plaited hair, bowler hat and layers of skirts. She too enjoyed a good joke.

The first day was a long drive, but we covered land that constantly changed from being beautiful and fertile to vast and exposed. The rough road wound its way around high rolling mountains affording us a spectacular view of valleys and ridges. We saw llamas grazing, snow capped mountains, little children who wanted their photos taken in a tiny isolated village, wild chinchillas in a deserted Spanish mining town, vicunas (similar to a llama and a deer), and the vast mountain ranges that hit over 6000m. The first night we stayed in some accommodation run by a Bolivian family. To us, these tiny villages seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, but we slowly began to appreciate the job opportunities from the tourism industry as well as the farming and mining industries in the area. Natalia cooked us delicious hot meals for lunch and dinner and we slowly but surely ate out of comfort, warmth and taste, rather than hunger. The second day of the trip we drove through a surreal looking desert that they have aptly name Desierto de Dali. We stopped just before lunch at a natural thermal pool in a stunning location overlooking a lake and mountains. Sounds very similar to NZ, I know, but there is something also very different here. This may be due to the scale, as the hot pools were higher than our highest mountain, and also the wildlife. In the lake beyond the thermal pool were flamingos – of which we saw and photographed many over the few days of the tour. We stopped by Laguna Verde, Laguna Blanca, and Laguna Colorades (green, white and red lakes respectively), and got to our second night’s accommodation with plenty of time for a brisk walk with Marcelle and Martijn in the chilly evening air. I believe that it is the people you meet along the way that really make a trip, for example our time in Cuba would not have been so life changing had it not been for the people we met. It was so wonderful to be traveling with Martijn and Marcelle, and Sara from the US, and to have such a lovely guide and cook. While the scenery will obviously remain strong in our memories, so will the experiences with the people we have met along the way.

On the third day of the tour, after visiting some more lakes and rock formations, Jono got to put in practice his emergency medicine skills in a fairly dramatic scenario. As we were driving along a stretch of loose gravel road we spotted an overturned Land Cruiser up ahead. Jono was just about out of the car before we pulled up beside them, and immediately set about triaging the people. The driver had lost control on the gravel and fishtailed the vehicle off the side of the road, flipping it over onto its side. Jono was amazing and quickly took charge. We hardly noticed as other Jeeps pulled in around us and tourists looked on in disbelief. As luck would have it, the English family who were in the overturned Jeep were on the whole alright, however the 10 year old boy had ear pain and considerable shock, and the mother had pretty bad back pain. After examining her and dosing her up with a variety of painkillers, Jono recommended they head straight for the hospital in Uyuni for a check up and xrays. It was a shock to everyone to see how easily this could happen, and it was sobering to think of how much worse it could have been. Tourists were redistributed in the Jeeps and the family was taken off to the nearest hospital. Afterwards Jono and I talked through some of the contributing factors to the good out come – some of the Jeeps were carrying 6 tourists while this one only had three in it, many of the Jeeps carried fuel and gas for cooking on their rooves, many of the roads we had driven on were adjacent to a precipitous drop on one or both sides, and we were in the middle of nowhere with no cellphone reception. We laughed wryly about the possibility of using our SOS, but the thought of a phone call being made to our parents to see if they knew if we were alright before contacting the local emergency service was even more scary! It made us feel very lucky that Edwin, our driver and guide, was a safe driver, took his time, and was experienced on this road. Also, amazingly, once righted the drivers got under the bonnet of the crashed vehicle and did a fantastic job repairing the significantly damaged radiator and tyres, allowing the vehicle to drive itself out.

Not long after this excitement, we were driving along in front of another Jeep, when Edwin slowed down and watched them closely in his rear view mirror. As they were driving along, their rear wheel had completely come off and was rolling off the side of the road ahead of them. The drivers talked briefly, and we were off to find some repuestos, spare parts to join their wheel on again. With the wheel fixed, we were all on our way again. In some ways, it was comforting to know that there were many other Jeeps on the road with you, even if you couldn’t see them for miles, and that the drivers had a strong camaraderie and would look out for each other. On our last night together, Marcelle, Martijn, Jono and I had a lovely dinner together and a glass of wine with Edwin and Natalia.

Finally, on day four, we reached the salar in time for sunrise. It was incredible.