Laura Beth & Maurits World Trip: Tupiza & Salar de Uyuni

Sun November 11- A long travel day to get to Tupiza in the South of Bolivia; first a bus and then a train-ride. At 11am we bussed from La Paz to Oruro. The 4-hour ride was hot, the windows would not open and the bathroom was broken.. (fairly common in Bolivia).. but we lived and got to Oruro at 3pm. We could have taken a later bus to prevent the 4-hour wait, but Oruro was celebrating the start of Carnaval and we did not want to take any chances missing our 7pm train to Tupiza. After we hung out at the dated, but charming Oruro train-station, the even more dated (and not so charming) "Wara Wara del Sur" train left right on time. The 14-hour train-ride was incredibly bumpy; left, right, up, down, etc. In addition LB's "executive" seat would not recline and it was almost as dusty inside the train as the outside-desert. But the dinner-car was a lot of fun! We had dinner and breakfast just like back in the day! O yes.. and the bathrooms worked fine.. :-)

Flowering cactus

LB is pointing out the smoke from the volcano

Mon November 12- We arrived at Tupiza 'Central Station' around 9am and checked in at Hotel Mitru. We were pretty tired and most of the day we hung out on the patio, under the blossoming trees, next to the pool. Very nice! In the afternoon we explored the town, signed up for two 'Tupiza Tours' and had a surprisingly good Bolivian wine.

Rocks

Jumping across the mini salt flat

Tue November 13- Tupiza is set in a beautiful 'wild-west' landscape; high-desert, red rock, canyons, etc. Very pretty! As an interesting, but useless fact: Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid met their end in a very small pueblo near Tupiza.. At 9:30 we got picked up to go on the 'Triathlon' day-trip; a combination of a 4x4 'Jeep-ride' (a Ford van), a horse-ride and a downhill bike-ride. With a fun group of 11 people we cruised around the beautiful wild-west scenery of Tupiza and made some stops for short walks and pictures. After lunch we rode very tame horses through the red canyons and with a sore bottom we finished the day with a 17km downhill bike ride. Good fun!

Horse riding in the canyons

LB on the 'death road' in Tupiza

Thu November 15- Salar day1- The first day of a 4 day Jeep-tour through the South-West of Bolivia; a beautiful high-desert area with colorful lakes, volcanoes, red rock and the Salar de Uyuni (largest salt flat in the world). We left Tupiza with two Landcruisers; in our car Roman (driver - "vamos chicos!") and Frank & Janine (a German couple) and in the other car ...?... (driver), Mora (cook), Maura & Eileen (two Irish sisters) and Caoimhe & Gordon (couple from London). There were no big highlights this first day, but we had a fun group and we saw beautiful canyons, rock formations, cacti and nearby volcanoes. Around 4pm we got to our hospedaje in San Antonio de Lipez and despite Romans loud music and sometimes crazy driving, it had been a very good day! But then ... after dinner we got the bad news that as of today all entrances to the National Park were blocked by angry locals! They want(ed) more money from the National Park entrance fees (150 Bs). Very disappointing of course.. Now we would miss the good stuff! No laguna colorada, verde and blanca, no bathing in the hot springs, no arbol de piedra :-( And the fact that the drivers and the tour company already knew the park was going to be blocked before we left Tupiza, but did not tell us - 'no es mi problema' - did not help... After this event our relationship with the drivers was never good again... Such a shame!

Sulfur

The group (Maurits, LB, Eileen, Maura, Caoimhe, Gordon, Janine, Frank)

Fri November 16- Salar day 2- Early 5am rise for a long day in the car. Since we could not enter the park, we had to drive around it on some pretty bad unpaved and very dusty tracks (it was super dusty the whole trip). The scenery was similar to the first day, with the addition of 1,000's of llamas (the baby-llamas were very cute!) and as highlight the Valle de Rocas (valley of rocks). We once again stayed at a fine hospedaje in Alota, had fun hanging out and had great food.

Llama baby

Flamingoes

Sat November 17- Salar day 3- The first really good day of the tour! In addition to all the rocks, we saw a beautiful sulfur lake with many flamingos (Hedionda), a smoking volcano and a small salt flat! On top of this we stayed in a salt-hotel (building made of salt)! A very nice day!

Flamingo lake

No flying flamingoes ?!?

Sun November 18- Salar day 4- We got up at 4:30 and saw the sunrise from the Salar de Uyuni; absolutely spectacular! We climbed an 'island' with 900+ year old cacti, had breakfast and spent a lot of time trying to make the classic salt-flat 'out-of-perspective' pictures. We had a lot of fun! After lunch we said goodbye to Maura, Eileen, Caoimhe & Gordon - and via the Uyuni train-graveyard we drove back to Tupiza. And what a drive it was! Very beautiful, but Roman's kamikaze driving style was terrifying! He did not get a tip... All in all not the greatest trip; our fellow travelers were a ton of fun, and the salar was beautiful, but we do not recommend Tupiza Tours. However, we can not feel sorry for people who travel for a year...