My Trip to Salar de Uyuni
by Andrew
(United States)
The actual tour of Uyuni was incredible and a great experience.
It had been raining so the salt flats were covered in water which created a mirror effect. We had lots of fun taking funny photos that played with the mirror effect and perspective of being on a seemingly endless landscape. The days were hot and nights very cold, I would go from shorts and a t shirt to pants, 2 shirts and my coat at night. Our first night we slept in a hotel made entirely out of salt. Our full Salar de Uyuni experience can only be explained in person, but I will leave you with details of last part of our trip here.
Our return bus from Uyuni was to leave at 8pm on the 8th of March. When we got into town from finishing our tour at around 6pm we found that many buses had already left at 4pm. We found out that a storm was coming and the police told the bus operators that they had to leave by 4pm. Our bus did not leave at 4pm since it was full of tourists that hadn't gotten back from tours yet. Our bus was still leaving at 8pm but it was leaving illegally from a gas station just outside of town. Rather than get stuck in Uyuni for a few more days with nothing to do we decided to get on the bus and go for it. The ride was long but the weather didn't seem to be a problem, we past the areas that our last bus had problems with.
At about 2am in the morning the unthinkable happened, our bus had gotten stuck in a washed out section of road in the middle of the desert. We got off the bus and started to burn some desert shrubs for light and warmth while we waited for the drivers and mechanic to look at the problem. They had a towing cable on board but it was to short to reach to the other side where a truck or other bus could help pull us out.
After hours of waiting, a guy came with a longer cable that they hooked up to a waiting truck. The truck started pulling but our bus was stuck so deeply in the mud that the cable snapped! The bolivians tried other techniques but all failed.
The sun had now risen and the heat was coming. We diverted the water flowing through the road to start draining the water from around the wheels which is when we discovered how bad the problem was. The giant wheels were half covered with mud and the mud covered the rear wheel axel.
A fellow Canadian onboard started to organize things as the Bolivians had no idea what they were doing. With the water diverted, we started bailing out water and digging out the wheels and underneath the bus. Food and water were becoming a problem as no one expected to be stranded for so long. After 10 hours we finally got out.
The journey back to La Paz took us a total of 25 hours, instead of 12. It was later found out that the bus drivers had done a trip from La Paz to Uyuni, had 4 hours rest and then turned around and drove our group back to La Paz. This was a journey that we will never forget!
