Salt, salt everywhere and not a chip to eat

Tupiza to Uyuni, Bolivia

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One of the biggest draws to this part of the world is the Salar D'Uyuni Salt Flats, which apparently are flat, made of salt and near a place called Uyuni. Quirky! Southwest Bolivia also has some spectacular lakes and the best way to see all these things is to take a 4 day jeep safari from Tupiza on a circuitous route finishing in Uyuni. This is what we chose to do and booked it with a local tour operator that had been recommended through various channels. All we knew prior to setting off was that we would be sharing a 4x4 with a driver, a cook and four other punters, two of which we were reliably informed were an English couple who spoke fluent Spanish. A good sign because the driver/guide and cook didn't speak a word of it. It all sounded a bit cramped but what the hell.

Day 1
We all congregated at the agents in the morning and piled our luggage onto the roof of what looked like a 1937 Charabanc. It didn't look too reliable and I assumed they piled so many of us in there so that if it broke down there would be plenty of bodies to push. Our driver, Hugo, was a very pleasant chap, but not too big. In fact, he looked like a nine year old with a skin condition, but he knew everything there was to know about our steam powered car and he was probably stronger than the six of us combined. Our cook was a Bolivian lass called Damacia. She was always smiling and she handed around a big bag of lollipops after we set off which made her alright in my book. The English couple, David and Juliette, turned out not to be fluent in Spanish after all, but apparently they had been told that Cara and I were the Spanish speakers. As it turned out, they still spoke better Spanish than us, which I suppose made us the bigger disappointment. The last two passengers were a Dutch couple, called Silke and his name was something I could only pronounce if I had the last quarter inch of my tongue removed and a large build up of phlegm.

Half an hour into the journey, whilst driving along a narrow road winding around the sides of a steep canyon, we stopped on the roadside whilst Damacia layed flowers at the spot where her twenty seven year old brother had been killed the previous year when his car left the road and rolled down the canyon. This was a rather sobering start to the trip and after that we all paid a little more attention to Hugo's driving until we were safely out of the mountains. The rest of the first day was fairly uneventful until we arrived at our night's "accommodation". We were at an altitude of about 4500 metres by this point and when the sun went down, so did the thermometer. All six of us were sharing an unheated, mudbrick room in the middle of a small village. While we waited for dinner, Cara and I took a walk through the village and tried to take some photos of the sunset and the surrounding countryside. A group of curious local kids, their interest picqued by the sight of two giants wandering through town, came over to check us out and we had a little chat. They wanted to know where we came from and what it was like there. Then they wanted to know what animals we had in England. Did we have llamas and armadillos and condors? We said no, but then struggled to explain what badgers and squirrels are. In the end we gave up and pretended the green pastures of Blighty were home to wandering lions, elephants and snakes. Cara doing her best impression of each beast to the howling laughter of the kids. We all had a laugh, but I can't help thinking these poor kid's fragile litle minds will be forever warped into believing England is located 60 miles west of Nairobi! Back at our hut, during an act of petty vandalism, both David and I tried to smash up the top of the toilet doorframe, me with the top of my head and David with the corner of his eyesocket. Despite both drawing blood, neither of us managed any real damage and in the end we gave up and went to bed.

Day 2 - New Year's Eve
The second day was the longest of all. Despite having very little sleep we spent the best part of twelve hours in the back of the 4x4. To try and make things more comfortable, I detached my legs and put them on the roofrack. The next time I climbed out of the car I forgot about the legs and fell flat on my face. I would have rolled down the hill too if Cara hadn't grabbed me by my ears. During the morning, Silke discovered I had a layman's interest in popular science and from that moment on the questions came thick and fast. "Why is the sky blue?", "Why do we have wind?" and "Why doesn't the second law of thermodynamics preclude the evolution of complex organisms?". After several hours of that, the rest of the passengers were ready to kill both of us and throw us into a ditch.

During the course of the day, we visited various lakes and lagoons (no I can't tell you the difference) and I managed to take 2435 photos of flamingoes. We finished the afternoon at a natural hotsprings, where everyone took a dip or at least dipped their toes in (me), and then some geysers. By this time we were at 4875 metres above sea level, although I don't know if that measurement was taken while the tide was in or out. 4875 metres above sea level feels like about 500 metres above the point where the atmosphere ends. To put this in context, if I stood on tiptoes and stretched my arms in the air, I risked losing my fingertips to a passing aeroplane. Being at altitude is a strange sensation. I assumed it would just be like being a bit out of breath, but we should be so lucky. First off, I can't sleep and spend hours on end having bizarre waking dreams. Secondly, I get really fidgety and have to turn over every thirty seconds when I'm in bed. Third, and most serious of all, I lose my appetite. Now nobody told me that when I signed up for this!

Our acommodation for New Year's Eve was to be a room in a large block on the edge of Laguna Colorada, which you can find in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica under "Arse end of nowhere". It was so cold that we were forced to wear our hats gloves and scarves, even indoors. Damacia treated us by cooking 250kgs of meat on a barbeque, although when she brought the barbeque inside it filled the whole sleeping block with smoke. This caused an American lady down the corridor to fly into an apopectic fit that such a crime could be perpetrated against her and she spent 15 minutes hissing and swearing at everyone before eventually disappearing up her own arse. After meeting a few people from other tours, it made us realise what an amiable bunch we were travelling with and how unpleasant it could have been. We spent the rest of the night getting thoroughly plastered on Argentinian wine and at midnight everybody piled outside to watch fireworks being set off. The sky outside was completely clear, on account of there being no atmosphere this high, and I have never seen so many stars in the sky as I saw that night. The whole sky was a blanket of stars from one horizon to the other and the more you looked, the more you saw. It was quite a sight. At one point I tried counting them but lost count at 47, although that probably had more to do with the wine than anything else.

Day 3 - New Year's Day 2006
Despite nursing nasty heads, we were once again awoken at an obscene hour the next morning. Back on the road, our first stop was at a small rockface where we were to meet a family of friendly chinchillas, which are like a cross between a kangaroo and a squirrel (what a party that must have been). Despite all of us standing there making encouraging noises, we saw nothing. So remember Hugo, the next time I'm given the choice between an extra hour in bed and whistling at a rock, you know what my decision is. We visited a few more lagoons, or were they lakes, and I took 3956 more photos of flamingoes. We had lunch at the foot of a smoking volcano and then off into the eternal horizon once more.

At the end of the third day, just before we moved on to the highlight of the entire trip, the Dutch contingent, who turned out to be brother and sister (it was a while before we figured it out), decided they were going to bail out and catch a train into Chile. We have no idea why, but we were all grateful of the extra legroom in the back of the jeep. That evening we stayed in a salt hotel, which turned out to be a hotel made of salt. Who'd have guessed? And made out of salt it certainly was. Huge, solid blocks of the stuff. Except the toilet block, obviously. The shower cubicles might not have lasted too long if they were. Even the floors of every room were covered in a layer of coarse salt. Ironically, dinner that night was very bland. The four of us polished off some more wine and retired early.

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Day 4

We had to be up the next morning at 4.30am to get to the salt flats for sunrise. 4.30am! Let's just pause here and think about that for a moment. 4.30am. It even sounds strange when I say it out loud. 4.30am. This had better be bloody worth it. Fortunately for all concerned, it was. It was absolutely fantastic. The salt flats are enormous, very, very flat and incredibly white. Apparently, all this salt is a remnant of an enormous party back in the Mesolithic Period when a caveman called Og ordered too many beer snacks and refused to clear up afterwards. The rest, as they say, is history. When the sun rose over the horizon it looked like we were out at sea, as the first part of the salar we navigated was submerged under about 4 inches of water. We stopped for a while to watch the sunrise and take photos, and I cleverly dropped my camera getting out of the car and smashed the UV filter on the zoom lense, and the autofocus mechanism now doesn't work properly so forgive me if some of our pictures now look a little out of focus. After this we moved onto 'Fish Island', which apparently is so named because it's shape resembles a fish. It should be called Cactus Island because that is all there is there. However, the views from the top of the island were great and you could see the salar stretch off to the horizon, all perfectly flat and gleaming white. Damacia made us a a breakfast of freshly cooked doughnuts and a something called 'Api', which you drink and looks and tastes abit like runny jam. We spent 10 minutes dipping our doughnuts into the pan before they told us we were supposed to drink it. Although to be fair, even after they told us this, we still kept dipping into the pan as the doughnuts were too big for our cups. We spent the rest of the morning messing about on the salt flats and taking pictures. Once off the salar we headed for the town of Uyuni, which is about as exciting as a cavity search at a foreign airport. David and Juliette were heading back to Tupiza with Hugo and Damacia and we were due to spend the night here before making our way to Potozi to the East. We said our goodbyes immediatelywent to sleep in our hotel room forma few hours. When we woke up it was hailstoning outside. A good sign.

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Mik

And the prize for winner of this year's "Running in a very camp way" competition goes to Mr Michael Threlfall