BOLIVIA- Uyuni tour

Day 3 - Salar de Uyuni

The second night of the tour was spent in the small town of Uyuni, the gateway to the infamous Bolivian salt flats.  We parked the car in the grounds of a mechanics workshop next door, dumped our stuff in our lovely and super cheap room and headed out to a local pizza restaurant a block away. Rumours were abounding about a town protest against the current mayor who was apparently not living up to local expectations. This protest would almost certainly take the form of a roadblock stopping anyone entering or leaving Uyuni town for 24 hours. Despite roadblocks being an extremely popular form of protesting for Bolivians and a frequent occurrence, this one would be the first one in Uyuni for several years and - just as luck would have it - was scheduled for the next day.

The following morning we were up at the crack of dawn to the sound of the army doing their morning salute at the barracks next door. Our tour guide Alejandro appeared a few minutes later and announced that the road blocks were indeed on - no-one was coming in and no-one was going out of Uyuni - but that he knew a way round the blocks and our salt flat tour today was still on!! Immense excitement took hold, not least because other tour groups weren't having as much luck and their guides were reluctant to break the ban and get into trouble. (Trouble took the form of being stoned by those guarding the town if seen attempting to break past the blocks)

We set off in anticipation at 8am and took an awesome off-road back route out of the town with binoculars in hand to look out for any groups of angry townpeople who might see us. It wasn't long before we were at the small village of Colchani and then on the small road that led to the salt plains.

Before driving onto the plains we stopped for a moment to survey the immense area of shimmering whiteness in front of us  and to break off some salt crystals to examine them more closely. Michael and E- had reached dizzying new heights of excitement at this point and were almost unable to contain themselves. Video camera and digital SLR in E-J's shaking hands, MG started the motor and slowly followed Alejandro onto the plains. The water was deep at first and then levelled out and it wasn't long before michael was speeding ahead yelling with delight while E-J waved her video camera round in excitement. Several camera stops were needed and we handed over our cameras to Alejandro's car and asked the group to take photos and video of us driving. Then it was off to the salt hotel where everyone else parked up and we spent the next hour driving round and taking the shots you see below...

It was undeniably beautiful and like nowhere else we'd ever seen before.  We were lucky to be there during the rainy season on a sunny morning, so that reflections were awesome and pictures amazing!

 

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After a couple of hours of driving round and round and getting people to take photos of us, we finally headed back to land. After a bite to eat, Alejandro transferred his car of tourists to another car as they were heading back to Chile and we discussed what to do next. Getting out of Uyuni was going to be tricky with the road blocks but we were very keen to head out towards the mining town of Potosi as time was precious and we didn't have much time in Bolivia. The decision was made to do some more off-roading and to try and drive through a few fields to get round the road blocks to get onto the main road to Potosi. However, after an hour of negotiating trees, shrubs, rocks and the like it was finally conceded that it was going to be impossible. Half the town seemed to be on road block guard and they were looking tough. There was a river in our way and there was nothing we could do but turn back. Time to try out MG's best negotiating skills and talk our way round. We said our thank you's and good bye's to Alejandro and left him to try and sneak his way back into Uyuni without getting stones thrown at him. Approaching the blocks, we were suddenly surrounded by locals who put wood behind our wheels to stop us from moving and looked moodily at us. The chief came forward and Michael proceeded to try and put our case before him (with a few elaborations about meeting our parents in Potosi) to see if we could be an exception and drive through. No such luck. After much discussion and debate, the answer was consistently No. It seemed we had to wait until the following morning when it was all over. Dejected we turned round and headed back into Uyuni. A wasted day turned into a great excuse to catch up on sleep so that's what we did!