Day 10: Monday, April 14th, 2008 (Tiny Dancer – Elton John)

I didn’t sleep much on the bus, partly because of the bumpiness, partly because it got super cold. We got to Uyuni around 4am and the driver let us stay on until around 6:30, but then he kicked everyone off.

6:42am – The bus arrived in Uyuni around 4am and we stayed on the bus until about 10 minutes ago. It was freezing cold and we had to stay on the bus and layer on clothes.

We found a lady who agreed to open her restaurant/hostel for us and we ordered some breakfast.

Another observation: Bolivians don’t take good care of their teeth. While I have seen at least one dentist’s office, I imagine most rural folks don’t go to one. A lot of them have gold fillings, or gold teeth.

8:30am – We ate an egg sandwich and coffee at a restaurant that a lady opened for us. We are now checking out tour companies.

Ranz had made arrangements with a tour group over the phone a few days before we had arrived; however, on our walk to find our tour group, another guy persuaded us to come and check out his tour company, so we decided to give him a chance. He talked us through the route he would take us (in English) and explained how it was better than the other companies. It did seem like a good deal, but Ranz wanted to go at least price compare with the other company. We split up with Ranz going to check out the other company and some of us staying at the new company.

After a little debate we decided the new company seemed like a better deal, so we told the guy we would do it, but that we wanted to check out one of his jeeps before we left. He told us to take care of paying while he went and got a jeep. He disappeared and we worked with this assistant lady to each pay separately, but she didn’t have change for some of us, so she left to go and get change. The office was now deserted except for us. No workers to be found. Those of us who needed change waited while the others went to get some food.

It got to be a half hour, then 45 minutes, then almost an hour and neither worker had returned. The guy had originally told us we would be leaving at 10:30, but 10:30 came and some other groups who were also supposed to leave at 10:30 showed up and they didn’t have a jeep or a driver yet either.

(the six of us waiting for our tour jeep. From left to right: Sydney, Kilo, me, Ranz, Naya, Katie).

Ranz was starting to be convinced that we had been ripped off, and I was feeling like something shady was going on, too, but finally the guy showed up with a jeep.

Ranz started to give it an inspection to make sure it looked all right. Just basics, like did it have a spare tire, was there anything noticeably wrong with it like a muffler falling off, etc. He asked the guy to pop the hood and he looked at the engine. Everything seemed in order, but when Ranz reached to check the oil dipstick the driver got really upset and started yelling at him, saying things like (and I’m relaying this secondhand as this was in Spanish) “You are insulting me! You disrespect me! You come here and you treat me poorly! This is not how you treat me!”

Ranz tried to say that he meant no harm, he just wanted to make sure the car was okay, but the driver would have none of it and drove off angrily.

Then the tour company guy said he would find us a new driver but asked us not to check the truck out next time. We were a little upset by all this, Ranz especially.

Eventually another jeep was found, the driver seemed cool, everything was in order, the jeep was loaded with supplies and our bags, and we were all set to go. We got squared away (for the most part) with getting our change and we were finally off a little after noon.

12:02pm – We found a company and paid and after a long wait we are finally loading up a truck. We thought we got ripped off, but it appears to be okay.

We headed out from Uyuni in our jeep. We agreed that we would change seating positions every half day. Our first stop was on the edge of town where a lot of the salt is mined and packaged. A guy explained how they prepare the salt for the consumer market. It is piled out on the salt flats, then they bring it in to the “factory” where they heat it from beneath in this oven thing to dry the water out of it. Then they iodize it and bag it. He then wanted money for having explained the process.

We stopped a little bit out onto the salt flats and took some pictures, but our guide told us there would be a better spot with less people later.

We stopped at this “rest stop” in the middle of the flats and our guide made us lunch: llama meat, tomatoes, cucumbers, and Coca Cola. The running meal-time joke during the tour was, “Does anyone have any salt?”

While we were eating lunch, we noticed the car that Ranz had tried to check the oil on. It was broken down and the guy was working on it. We then felt a lot better about not taking that car.

After lunch we headed north towards the northern edge of the salt flats. This is supposedly an area that most of the other tours don’t cover. We stopped and took a bunch of perspective shots.

3:45pm – We are stopped in the middle of the salt flats. After taking a bunch of pictures, we all spread out for our own private reflection time. It is so serene and quiet and the landscape so vast. It is crazy. I have never seen anything like it. The wind is blowing softly and the sun beating down.

Back in the jeep we drove towards the base of a volcano on the northern edge of the flats. The jeep had an input for an mp3 player, so we were listening to songs the whole time. We got really into it and were singing along with a lot of them. It was a good time.

When we finally arrived at our hostel, we put our stuff in our rooms and snacked on some cookies. There wasn’t much time until we set out to go watch the sunset. We drove back out onto the flats a little bit, watched the sunset, and were ready to head back because of the wind and cold.

Back at the hostel, we sat in our room and started drinking some wine. An Australian couple who were shaken up by what they perceived as a dangerous hike joined us in our room.

Eventually our dinner was served, and we went back out into the common room to eat it. It was an awkward dinner because the Australian couple was fighting at another table with an English couple they were traveling with. It was hard to pretend we weren’t listening or aware of what was going on.

We headed back to our rooms. The guys’ room was the hangout. We drank more wine and sang along to more songs on the iPods.

9:52pm – We arrived at our first hostel on the salt flats. We dropped our stuff off then drove back out to watch the sunset. We had coffee and tea and then drove back and started drinking wine and singing. We talked with some Australians, too.

The singing pretty much continued the rest of the night until we turned in for bed as people dropped off one by one.