We slept through sunrise, but I was so tired, I did not care. After we had our gear packed and loaded on the jeep, we had to help the other jeep that had 2 flat tires and a bent rim. All the guys were trying to help, pounding away on the tire rim with a hammer.
Finally, we were on our way to the enormous Uyuni Salt Flat ahead of us. The sight of the Salar de Uyuni made the last 2 difficult days worth every moment. There was no end in sight. A vast white expanse went on for miles and miles. We did not even see another jeep until we stopped at Pescado Island. Pescado Island is small mountain, sticking up thru the salt flat, on which very old cactus grow. It is completely out of place. Today, however, there was a heated meeting taking place at the trail head of the island. Two tribes from Uyuni were meeting there to dispute the ownership of this small piece of land. We are not sure why they wish to dispute the ownership, because the only thing on the “island” is the cactus. There are no other resources there. We were warned not to go near the group dispute since tempers seemed to be flared.
We had a great time photographing the salt flat and taking pictures of each other doing silly things. It was a fun time with our little family of 6 travelers. After crossing the Salar, we stopped an extremely poor pueblo for lunch. It was hard to believe that people could actually exist in such a harsh environment. We had chicken and pasta for lunch. We joked that it was actually flamingo instead of chicken. “Dessert” was canned peaches. Matt and I passed on the peaches, which turned out to be a good idea since Greg found a worm in his.
We had one more stop along the Salar. There were piles of salt that were raked into cone-shaped piles in order to “harvest the salt.” I tasted it and it was just like kosher salt. Onward we traveled to Uyuni, but before heading into the town center, we stopped at the “Train Museum.” It was really a train graveyard with about 50 old mining trains just rusting away in the desert.
Finally around 3:30pm we arrived in Uyuni. Emilio pointed out the immigration office and with our packs in hand, we trudged over to the office to get our visas and pay $100 each. Greg and Jose kindly offered to help with the translation just in case we had any problems similar to when we crossed the border into Bolivia. The plan was to purchase our Visas, buy a bus ticket and be on the overnight bus to La Paz. Here is where our itinerary got completely derailed. Professora Guzman prepared me well for South America, but Spanish 1 & 2 could not have prepared me for the rapid conversation that ensued over our immigration. With the life-saving help of Jose, we were told that there were no more visa stickers. Due to the border closing 5 days earlier, they were out of stickers and we would have to surrender our passports and wait in Uyuni for 2 days when “possibly” more Visa stamps would arrive. My heart just sank. We asked if we cold purchase our Visas in La Paz, but were flatly denied. Meanwhile, Barbarah and Simon went to the bus station to purchase their tickets to Sucre and inquired about our bus to La Paz. The bus to LaPaz was booked solid for 2 days, despite the fact that we were assured multiple times back in San Pedro, that there would be plenty of room.
While the immigration officer made random phone calls and the military marched up and down the street outside, Jose eavesdropped and told us things were not looking good. The immigration official told us that if Jose would run down the street and Xerox our passports, we would be allowed to return to Chile immediately. With our only options being to stay in Uyuni for 2 days (not a safe town, nothing to do, and despicable/filthy/dirty hotel options) or returning to Chile, we chose in an instant to get right back into the jeep we had just spent three days in and return to Chile. Fortunately, there were 2 seats left on the return jeep. Greg and Jose were already planning to return to San Pedro, so, except for Barbara and Simon, our little family adventure was going to continue. We ran out of the immigration office before the official changed his mind and then tried to buy our return tickets on the jeep. This too was problematic, since the agency in Bolivia would not accept credit cards, Chilean dollars or Bolivian dollars. Seeing us as American’s, they only would accept $60 in USD in PERFECT $20 bills. We had exactly $60 in cash, but Matt’s bills were not pristine. They also would not accept any of my perfect $1 bills. Fortunately, Greg had a $50 and $10 in USD bills, and we swapped our wrinkly money with him. Still, the agency complained about the tiniest of a tear in the $10 bill, and wouldn’t accept it. Again, with Greg and Jose’s help, we were able to talk them into accepting the $10 bill, and made it out of Uyuni by literally running to the jeep before the immigration or travel agency changed their mind. The hopes of seeing La Paz were over. The itinerary was severely de-railed. We had to get back into 2 days of 4WD. Despite this, we knew it was what we had to do to get back into a safer country.
Being back in the jeep, bouncing along the terrain, was the last place anyone wanted to be, however, Greg, Jose, Celine and Mark (from the other in-bound jeep) helped us find the humor in the ordeal. Somehow, we were about to do the 3 day crossing via a different route in 10 hours. 30 minutes into the drive, we came across 2 jeeps that had broken down. One was out of gas and I don’t know what was up with the other. Our driver siphoned off some of our gas for the stranded vehicle. After completing our good deed, we climbed back into our jeep, only to find that now our jeep would not start! With the hood popped, Matt was stunned at the condition of the engine. Plastic potato sack strips were used as hose clamps. It sounded like the starter was dead/stuck. The 6 of us hopped out and began pushing the jeep and managed to pop-start it. We all jumped in the moving jeep and into the long, cold night we drove and drove and drove. Sometimes the road seemed completely impassible due to random rivers covering the “road”. We were all terrified that the jeep would stall in the middle of nowhere. Along with this, the few vehicles we did see, did not seem to understand the concept of sharing the road and we would all just close our eyes hoping to avoid a collision. Driving in the dark was really scary and the temperature was plummeting. Around 9pm we arrived in a pueblo that had a gate and our driver seemed to be negotiating our entrance. The driver had no idea where to go, it was pitch black, so he knocked on a door, grabbed a little boy who climbed into the front seat and became our personal GPS system. The hostel was a single room with 6 beds and a bathroom outside. The pueblo turned on the generator, so we had a little bit of light. Dinner was hotdogs and soup. The generator ran out of gas in the middle of dinner, so we ate by candlelight.
Our driver told us that we would be leaving at 4:30am. We had to be back at the Bolivian border by 9am for the next batch of naïve, outbound travelers. The altitude was hitting Matt hard again. I hated the fact that we had to go back up in altitude because he had suffered so much earlier and never seemed to acclimatize. That night was miserable. Matt was feeling sick again, it was incredibly cold, the beds were NASTY, but fortunately we had our friends and our bed liners (our bed liners have gotten a lot of use on this trip!) As we got in our beds, Greg went through his nighttime routine which included moisturizing with Noxema. It was so funny, that in the middle of nowhere, our French friend pulled out Noxema to moisturize. We taught him a new word, “MetroSexual.” It was absolutely a miserable night, but we turned off the lights laughing together.
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