As soon as we hopped off the bus in Uyuni we were targeted by a half a dozen tour promoters who we turned down firmly to go search for a hotel room and make decisions later. Uyuni, located 3670m above sea level, is a town that exists for one purpose only: to accommodate the needs of the 60 000 tourists yearly visiting the world's largest salt flats, the Salar de Uyuni.
We spent the night at the hotel Mosel(?) right next to the main square (50Bv per person, 20Bv extra for a heater) had lama for dinner and booked an all inclusive three day tour in the deserts at an office recommended to us by another traveller for 550Bv (55€) per person. After some last minute gloves and woolen sock shopping we started our tour at 10am the next morning sharing a jeep with a Bolivian-Brazilian family and our guide Waldo. I wasn't too impressed to see that nearly all operators headed out at exactly the same time so that our jeep was never alone but a part of a ten jeep caravan travelling from one touristy stop to another. According to Waldo we were lucky we didn't come a month later when the number of jeeps would be around 30.
After seeing a train cemetery with English metal corpses from the 19th century near Uyuni and visiting a former salt hotel (which polluted the salt flat badly), currently functioning as a museum, we played with proportions taking pics on the salt flat.
We spend the first night at a hotel made of salt; hopefully a less environmentally hazardous one than the museum. Sheets in our bed were covered with hairs of the previous inhabitant but the staff claimed they had been changed. We slept in our clothes inside sleeping bags anyway so there was no need to make a big deal out of it but when I returned to our room in the morning just before we took off to see if we forgot something and saw that the beds were again made with same sheets, I couldn't help advising Waldo to pick a different hotel next time.
The second day began my personal nightmare of 4 days. First day's slight headache was nothing compared to the stomach ache, dizziness and continous nausea I got to suffer from half-laying inside our jeep while others got off to see some colourful lagoons, incredible rock formations and had lunch while I stack to my cup of Coca tea and local ecological toilet. It was clear I wasn't made for high altitudes.
Talking about toilets might not be anyone's favourite topic, but in these deserts it's actually something that should be taken seriously. The 60 000 people visiting the salt flats and the beautiful lagoons in the same region all need to go a few times a day. In the desert, where baños don't come by every two minutes, many opt to go to the nature, and too many forget what that means to the land where there's no dirt to take up this type of fertiliser no matter how organic it is. Basically, my guess is that the green lagoon used to be blue. (It didn't, but you get the idea.) And I won't even go into the hundreds of pieces of toilet paper and even a few tampons we saw left next to some big rocks where someone has been taking cover from the eyes of the rest of the tourist caravan. This is when the first outrageously sounding 5Bv (0,5€) toilet fee charged by the truly responsible ecological hotel staff will become a pleasure to pay. In so many ways.
My question to the tour operators of Uyuni all offering exactly identical tours is why none of them have started offering ecological tours where the tourism's and pollution's effects on the nature could be discussed along the way – it wouldn't cost anyone a dime but could offer them a benefit in competing against other agencies, and just perhaps even make a small difference in a few years time. (If you take a tour to the Salar, mentioning this wouldn't hurt, right...?)
The third morning in the cold desert came along as surely as they always do even though the amount of food I got in me over dinner the previous evening wasn't worth mentioning. We took off to the direction of Laguna Colorada just after 6am and no clothes nor blankets could keep us from freezing in the jeep in the -15c degrees that we were lucky to have – Waldo said it could've been -25c. We steam cleaned our shoes in geysers and Erik and Eilis skated on the (only 70% arsenic!) lake while I tried to stay on my feet for a few minutes before heading back to the jeep again. 
The next stop was my absolute favourite on this tour – aguas termales – hot fountains! Getting undressed was freezing and getting dressed after the dip difficult, but in between these two it was pure bliss. I wanted to stay in this hot tub for a day or two, but for some reason they didn't let me.
Poor Eilis managed to take one of her sneakers for a mud dip just before getting back in the jeep, but it's a good thing my furry socks and Erik's flip flops look great in Irish feet too.
On the way back we crossed sceneries that looked like they were painted by Dali but my stomach didn't care and only got worse and worse making the last few hours of our journey back to Uyuni and desperate hotel hunt as we got there quite an unpleasant experience (no panties lost though). Hotel Julia (double 150 Bv) right opposite to the train station with its proper heating and cable tv with a solid stream of movies in English was the best pick for us even though city council surprised us as well as the hotel staff by organising all night lasting town birthday celebrations right next to it making good use for some ear plugs. I only needed a small burger to eat and lots of rest and toilet paper to get me through the two days we spend gathering strength in Uyuni, while Eilis and Erik got the know the town better and saw the world cup final.
On Monday 12th I finally managed to get out of bed to book seats for the most expensive night bus to La Paz (120Bv) which the company said would have both cama, fully declinable, seats and good heating. They must've waited until we got out of the office before they said ”NOT!”. (Sorry, Borat still hunts me). More about that lovely journey on the next entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment