The overnight bus journey from La Paz to Uyuni was the most bone-shaking experience of my life. Emerging blinking into the morning sun like a newborn fawn, sleep deprived and with aching bones from the rocky and laughably named 'road' I thought "This bloody trip had better be worth it's salt". We had a couple of hours to kill before the Jeep was to take us on our way, so we pottered around the early morning market, surveying the diversity of complete tat being peddled. Our newly acquired Canadian friends and our companions for the Uyuni adventure, Meg and Fed agreed that garish-coloured plastic dinosaurs would be an ideal prop for the silly perspective pictures we were looking forward to taking later that day. How original, we congratulated ourselves. No one else is going to have these. Not so, as it later transpired that the Salt Flats had more dinosaurs than Jurassic Park. That Prehistoric plastic vendor must make an absolute killing from fatigue-addled gringos freshly stumbled from the Hell Bus, such as we were. Dinos duly purchased, the four of us tramped off to meet our driver and guide for the next two days. Elias is a quiet, gently spoken chap with floppy hair, Roy Orbison shades, a fine alpaca jumper, and no determinate age. Our first stop is the Cave del Diablo, a low-ceilinged grotto with several square holes carved into the ground. These were said to be the tombs that housed the local dead, although the bodies mysteriously no longer lie there. Legend has it that the Devil possessed the bodies, taking them with him to hell, a typical example of imaginative Bolivian folklore. Nearby are 'the Galaxias', another cave, this time filled with astonishingly fragile rock formations, uncannily resembling corroded mammal bones. The fun didn't stop at marvelling at extraordinary rocks. Oh no. We then entertained ourselves no end by looking at the perfectly formed salt pyramids harvested by the salt miners and then going and standing upon them. A most diverting exercise. What japes! Lunchtime brought us to a salt hotel. At first glance a very basic structure with craggy and uncomfortable furniture, it is remarkable for the fact that everything - walls, chairs, tables, though mercifully not the bog - is made from compacted salt blocks. It came as no real surprise to our group of by now seasoned travellers, accustomed to the quirky illogicality peculiar to the South American peoples, that there was no salt made available for consumption with lunch. It was all we could do to resist stealing a pinch from the floor to enhance our essentially flavourless meal. My main reason for wanting to visit the Bolivian Salt Flats had always been that they afforded the opportunity to pose for and compose ridiculous perspective photographs. Puerile, I know. Imagine my childlike glee when after lunch we drove to an optimum spot for taking just such a frivolous collection of snapshots, the Islas Pescados. After cavorting about on the crunchy salt crystals like ecstatic five year olds in the first snow, Meg, Fed, Matty and I set about the task of trying to make our little dinosaurs look gigantic and menacing against the expanse of blinding white landscape and brilliant blue sky. Like the other two hundred and forty eight people wielding toy dinosaurs alas, we failed, as evidenced by the unconvincing menagerie enclosed below. Other props we utilised to better effect were: a corkscrew (On account of the blog title), a bottle of wine, a Rough Guide to South America, a pair of sunglasses and a borrowed house of cards. By some incredible magic we discovered that, if we positioned ourselves at certain distances on the salt, it would appear that a tiny me was standing on a giant Matty's hand or a miniscule he was dangling from the fingertips of a gargantuan me. We played about for ages and revelled in the tremendous environment of the Salt Flats. They possess a bizarre and surreal quality, reflecting the mountains of the horizon, giving them the effect of floating on air. It's really like nothing you've ever seen, as cliche as this must sound.
On day two of the Uyuni trip a series of events unfurled that made us grateful for our reliable guide Elias, the follicularly blessed and well-sunglassed. The first was an encounter with another tourist Jeep sporting totally threadbare tyres, one of which had unsurprisingly given up the ghost. It was obviously written into the Uyuni Tour Guide Code Of Honour that, upon encountering a colleague in vehicular peril, one must stop to help. Elias did just that, supplying the unfortunate driver with a jack, thus facilitating his assuming a very precarious position with his head beneath the offending Jeep. If jacks are as unreliable as every other article on this wonderful continent we didn't hold out much hope for him. Still, the incident passed without fatality and freed our party on the way to the next debacle. We had on our travels often heard tale of the relaxed attitude Bolivian drivers have to abstaining from alcohol. In that they don't bother. So we encountered another tour group, most chagrined at having been forced to send their driver home. It was ten in the morning and he was pissed as a newt. Perhaps he had forgotten to spit out his mouthwash that morning but, given the general profile of driving folk in Bolivia, this seemed unlikely. Anyway, back to our trip, with the thankfully sober and well tyred Elias. Next stop was the mummy cave. There is no small amount of pleasure to be gained from seeing a rock with an arrow pointing the way and the legend 'Mummies' painted on it with white paint. Or it could have been Tippex. The mummies were exceptional and creepy. The story we heard from the guide was that a nocturnal people had perished when they were forced from their cave into the sunlight and incurred terrible burns. This didn't exactly ring true but the event seems entirely un-Google-able. Answers on a postcard please. Speaking of holiday correspondence, the happy news came today from Matty's sister, Lucy and her beloved, Neil that they had only just received the postcard we sent two and a half months ago from Argentina. God love the South American postal system! Yes, the mummies. We gawked at the strangely preserved, gnarled and grotesque bodies for some time, wondering how on earth they manage to retain their hair when all around us living specimens fail to do so. I would never recommend trekking up a volcano in flip flops, much less at an altitude of 4, 200 meters. At this height, every step you take feels like a sprint and by golly, I was exceedingly out of breath approx. two steps in. Our youthful guide Elias, who we shamefully found to be no less than fifty years old, coursed up the volcano with nary a wheeze. Imagine my consternation when Meg and I, she a mere twenty three years of age and I (only 20!) found it a right challenge to get anywhere at all. The scenery was beautiful, as far as I managed to gather from the inexplicable altitude induced hayfever symptoms. Many a cute ear-tasselled llama dotted the landscape, as did the odd lurid red quinoa field. The views of the salt flats below, the many-hued orange, red, grey and green volcano and the birds eye aspect of the Salt Flats and it's mysterious floating mountains all made this a voyage worthy of the considerable effort. Fed and Matty were given the chance to drive the Jeep across the Salt Flats. Now, I'm not a driver myself, but even I knew that this is no mundane motoring experience. The salt is almost completely unmarked and navigation is done by simply staring at and following the tracks left by the previous vehicles. This must be soporific in the extreme. Since you rarely pass anything by there is no frame of reference as to how fast the car is going, and obviously it would have been foolish to expect anything as ordinary as a functioning speedometer aboard our Jeep. Against all the odds we made it to our final port of call, the Train Cemetery in Uyuni. Here lie an abundance of once-glorious, now rust-coloured and abandoned steam locomotives. Decrepit as the old trains are, they still appear very striking against a Western movie-style backdrop of parched red earth and deep blue sky. One local couple found this antiquated bygone scene the perfect place to canoodle, while the four of us found the anachronism stark, sad but very beautiful. One comedian graffitti artist had scrawled in Spanish on one of the decaying machines 'Mechanic urgently required'. Clearly that ship had sailed but it was a nice concept.
On day two of the Uyuni trip a series of events unfurled that made us grateful for our reliable guide Elias, the follicularly blessed and well-sunglassed. The first was an encounter with another tourist Jeep sporting totally threadbare tyres, one of which had unsurprisingly given up the ghost. It was obviously written into the Uyuni Tour Guide Code Of Honour that, upon encountering a colleague in vehicular peril, one must stop to help. Elias did just that, supplying the unfortunate driver with a jack, thus facilitating his assuming a very precarious position with his head beneath the offending Jeep. If jacks are as unreliable as every other article on this wonderful continent we didn't hold out much hope for him. Still, the incident passed without fatality and freed our party on the way to the next debacle. We had on our travels often heard tale of the relaxed attitude Bolivian drivers have to abstaining from alcohol. In that they don't bother. So we encountered another tour group, most chagrined at having been forced to send their driver home. It was ten in the morning and he was pissed as a newt. Perhaps he had forgotten to spit out his mouthwash that morning but, given the general profile of driving folk in Bolivia, this seemed unlikely. Anyway, back to our trip, with the thankfully sober and well tyred Elias. Next stop was the mummy cave. There is no small amount of pleasure to be gained from seeing a rock with an arrow pointing the way and the legend 'Mummies' painted on it with white paint. Or it could have been Tippex. The mummies were exceptional and creepy. The story we heard from the guide was that a nocturnal people had perished when they were forced from their cave into the sunlight and incurred terrible burns. This didn't exactly ring true but the event seems entirely un-Google-able. Answers on a postcard please. Speaking of holiday correspondence, the happy news came today from Matty's sister, Lucy and her beloved, Neil that they had only just received the postcard we sent two and a half months ago from Argentina. God love the South American postal system! Yes, the mummies. We gawked at the strangely preserved, gnarled and grotesque bodies for some time, wondering how on earth they manage to retain their hair when all around us living specimens fail to do so. I would never recommend trekking up a volcano in flip flops, much less at an altitude of 4, 200 meters. At this height, every step you take feels like a sprint and by golly, I was exceedingly out of breath approx. two steps in. Our youthful guide Elias, who we shamefully found to be no less than fifty years old, coursed up the volcano with nary a wheeze. Imagine my consternation when Meg and I, she a mere twenty three years of age and I (only 20!) found it a right challenge to get anywhere at all. The scenery was beautiful, as far as I managed to gather from the inexplicable altitude induced hayfever symptoms. Many a cute ear-tasselled llama dotted the landscape, as did the odd lurid red quinoa field. The views of the salt flats below, the many-hued orange, red, grey and green volcano and the birds eye aspect of the Salt Flats and it's mysterious floating mountains all made this a voyage worthy of the considerable effort. Fed and Matty were given the chance to drive the Jeep across the Salt Flats. Now, I'm not a driver myself, but even I knew that this is no mundane motoring experience. The salt is almost completely unmarked and navigation is done by simply staring at and following the tracks left by the previous vehicles. This must be soporific in the extreme. Since you rarely pass anything by there is no frame of reference as to how fast the car is going, and obviously it would have been foolish to expect anything as ordinary as a functioning speedometer aboard our Jeep. Against all the odds we made it to our final port of call, the Train Cemetery in Uyuni. Here lie an abundance of once-glorious, now rust-coloured and abandoned steam locomotives. Decrepit as the old trains are, they still appear very striking against a Western movie-style backdrop of parched red earth and deep blue sky. One local couple found this antiquated bygone scene the perfect place to canoodle, while the four of us found the anachronism stark, sad but very beautiful. One comedian graffitti artist had scrawled in Spanish on one of the decaying machines 'Mechanic urgently required'. Clearly that ship had sailed but it was a nice concept.
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