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After an overnight coach ride from La Paz to Uyuni, we arrived at around 7am to find the smallest and most desolute town on earth! It was incredible, and to be frank, a little eerie (think ghost town from a horror movie). We met up with our group and were told to be back at the tour operators for 10:30 which is when our jeep would arrive, and so went in search of a restaurant, or coffee shop, or ANYTHING! Finally after about an hour of waiting, a restaurant opened and we dashed in. It must have been below freezing outside!
At 10:30, back at the tour operators we waited, and waited and waited... apparently there was an issue with the jeep and so it was "slightly" delayed. Two hours later it turned up...!
Our group consisted of 7 people, Yaz and I, a hilarious Irish guy (Dennis) who now lives in Switzerland, a fantastic Finnish couple (Elliot and Petra) who live in the States, and a couple from Tokyo (Hero and Aime) who spoke little English or Spanish, but were hilarious all the same. In fact, if you`ve ever seen The Goonies, Hero was like "Slick Shoes"!! He had a gadget for everything!!!
Anyway, the salt lake was phenomenal! The actual salt that we were standing on is 20 meters deep, under which is water, and the lake itself is massive! We stopped for lunch on an "island" in the salt lake, and then carried on to Hotel De Sal, which is a small hotel made entirely of salt - the walls, the tables, the chairs, even the beds!!! Incredible, but very cold. In fact we were warned it could dip to -20C during the night, and there was no heating in the hotel... yikes!
We sat up for a while and played cards with everyone and then headed to bed for what turned out to be a surprisingly comfortable night`s sleep.
The events of the second day were hardly worth mentioning, so I won`t, but suffice to say, getting up at 5am was really not worth it...! The jeep broke down on several occasions including two flat tyres, and that afternoon we were taken to our "hostel" where we would spend the night in a dorm room with the others from our group. I have put `hostel`in speech marks for a reason. The place could more aptly be described as a concentration camp in the making. It was dreadful! and the food was even worse! Fortunately we had a good group and all made the most of it, but I can honestly say I have never had such an uncomfortable and freezing night before in my life....! On a positive note though, the next day was incredible. We were taken to geysers, and incredible mountain ranges, and beautiful lakes. It really was worth all the pain, and yes, the jeep broke down a further two times before the day was out. At one point the driver/guide/mechanic /chef (Juan) asked us to walk half a mile up the road to find two bolts that had fallen out of one of the wheels!!
After an incredibly bumpy, and somewhat painful jouney back to Uyuni, Yaz and I joined Elliot, Petra and Dennis for pizza (although after the bumpy ride I was unable to stomach anything), and then headed back to the coach station for our coach back to La Paz.
previous travel blog entry
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