23-26 November 2023

OK, so it was actually 4 days and 3 nights in the wilderness, and one of those days, as it turns out, was controversial (see 'Controversy About What Constitutes a Day' in Blog 14). It was also in Bolivia's high plains, one of the most visited tourist sites in Bolivia, but a wilderness if ever there was one. After 12 hours daily of 4WD at massive altitudes over sandy outback Bolivian tracks, I was definitely 40 days and nights older. And I also witnessed a struggle with the devil, not personally, but vicariously; more about our 'tour guide' below.

The Bed Bus from La Paz

Unlike the biblical story, my sojourn in the wilderness began with an overnight 'Bed Bus' from La Paz to Uyuni in Bolivia's south-west. A 'Bed Bus' is something I've never encountered before, a huge double-storeyed bus with very comfortable seats that almost fully recline. With a toilet, hot meals, a blanket, a pillow, a foot-warmer and a hilarious, totally inadequate curtain for 'privacy', it was actually more comfortable than LATAM airlines business class.

Getting to the bus depot in La Paz was my first adventure. I had to be there at 8.30pm, so 'to save time' (refer Cusco Entrepreneurialism, Blog 2) the taxi driver took an hour and a half over 'short cuts' that involved most of La Paz's cobble-stone laneways - by the time I arrived at the bus depot most of my fillings had fallen out.

The bus depot. What can I say. It was the size of Vic Market, had a similar appearance, and inside, hundreds of bus company agents were shouting bargains and last minute tickets and boarding instructions in Spanish into the atrium, creating the same cacophony as Vic Mkt's meat and fish hall on a Saturday morning. Thankfully the taxi driver had a kind heart and asked around for my company's stand, carrying my case over the insanely impractical cobblestones in the hall.

I would never have found the agency on my own, mostly because it wasn't in the hall at all, but a block away, down a dark alley. With his excellent help I got there, and I tipped the taxi driver generously, he had really gone above and beyond. I would say he is now on a disability pension after carrying my case for 30 minutes.

Right on time, at 8.30pm, we boarded the bus. I was upstairs, 13C, seated by the window, next to a lady from Rumania. I was expecting a night of twisting and turning (from me, not so much the Rumanian lady), but I was wrong: the overnight buses are driven very gently and quite slowly to provide as much comfort as possible to passengers. After a quick meal watching the spectacular lights of La Paz fade into the night, my Rumanian acquaintance told me she wasn't a vampire (in my book that means she totally was one), then drew the curtain and settled down for a sleep. And I slept too! I got a full 5 hours and no neck-bites. Remarkable. There should be Bed Buses in Blackburn.

Uyuni

I was awake from about 3.00am onwards and watched the glow of dawn form at the edges of the blackness. Around 4.00, I could start to make out the world outside, and what a world it was, it could have been Mars. There were shadows of mountains on the horizon; high ones too, and on the flats, desert grasses and red dirt, much like Alice Springs. As the dawn broke, an orange barren world emerged. We were now over 4000m above sea level.

We stopped 30 minutes out of Uyuni for a stretch and to watch the sun rise and eat the very simple breakfast provided (a quinoa bar and a coffee).

A few minutes later we were introduced to Uyuni. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Dusty, hot, impoverished and remote would be four words that spring to mind.

After dragging our cases halfway over the town, we were ushered into the agency office offered coffee, divided into groups, and introduced to our tour guides. The guy in charge explained where we would be going over the next few days, the dangers, the altitudes, the accommodation and basic safety procedures; as well as (for our group) the border procedures at Chile. We were told we must wear seatbelts at all times. We were then told to drag our cases back over half the town to the bus depot again; which we did.

The group was divided into three carloads of approximately 9 people, two carloads going on to Chile, one carload scheduled to return to Uyuni on the last day of the tour. The Chile brigade was almost all blokes, with the exception of one German lady, Juliette, who was travelling with her partner Oliver. There were two Olivers, various young guys around gap year age, and a range of others in their 30s and 40s from the four corners of the globe. The guys I got to know best were Andreas from Sweden, Tiernan from Ireland, James from Launceston and the two Germans. In the days that followed we would discuss a lot of ethics around veganism, the various attributes of different anaesthetics, hospital cafeteria food, habits that lead to obesity, and James's fairly obsessive fitness regime which seemed to involve a lot of extreme sport. We would also analyse the tour guide quite frequently, because right from the start it was fairly clear he was was battling demons. Despite us all paying extra for an English-speaking guide, his English was about as proficient as my Spanish (i.e. negligible).

The demons became apparent when, prior to departing Uyuni at roughly 10 in the morning, he loaded the car with beer, and as we departed polished off a can and rolled himself a joint. The first stop was the 'Railway Museum', a collection of rusting train carcases on the outskirst of Uyuni. It features heavily in Bolivian promotional material, but I really couldn't see why, there is no explanation of what you're looking at, just a bunch of rusting metal, and when I asked our guide if there was some sort of history to the site, or an explanation of the engines somewhere, he answered 'Yes', said 'come this way', and led me to a shed, where an old man in an overcoat squeezed a fresh orange juice for me and charged me 20 boleros (around 5 dollars). I learned throughout the next three days, that this was our guide's tactic whenever I asked a question he couldn't understand or couldn't answer; he would pretend he had an answer, lead me away from the rest of the group, then leave me alone with a photo opportunity, a stranger, or drinks or food I wasn't expecting.

People wondering WTF is the significance of the trains

After standing in the hot sun looking at rusting trains for a disproportionate amount of time, we returned to the Landrovers, where we discovered the guide and the driver (a young thick-set kid with missing teeth who did a stirling job of getting us through the desert over the next few days) attempting to jump-start one of the three vehicles. Needless to say, it didn't bode well for a trip into the remotest parts of Bolivia that a vehicle had broken down in the first 15 minutes. The three drivers tried everything they could to turn over the engine, then finally got all of us to push it in neutral to jump start it. It worked, then stalled, worked, stalled, then on the third try the engine started. Tiernan and the German couple considered returning to Uyuni and cancelling their tours.

They didn't; and as it turns out the landrover had no further issues that day. The bigger issue would be actually losing one of the vehicles out in the desert on Day 2, but more about that in the next blog.

We sped off from Uyuni into the desert in our three-car convoy, none of us in the backseats wearing seatbelts, as there were no seatbelts. By now our guide had started his weed-inspired, insanely loud singing, which would feature prominently over the remaining days. Between cans and joints and singing, he dropped a few facts about the desert, the altitude, what geologically had happened to cause the salt lakes and so on. It was all interesting, but there wasn't much of it; the other cars had serious guides who were way more informative, some with degrees in Geology. Ours disturbingly told us all he could sometimes be 'a wild gringo' out on tours, and as the day progressed he got increasingly tanked, increasingly loud and increasingly impatient.

A pretty accurate cinematic depiction of The Gringo

On the edge of the salt plains, we visited a hotel made completely of salt. I was told off by The Gringo for going to the banyo (toilet) when he was about to start his rant on why he likes salt.

The salt hotel (made completely of salt)/Me holding up what remained of the Aus flag outside

We ate lunch at the hotel, then piled into the vehicles for our first taste of the famous Uyuni salt plain.

Just wow. We drove literally all day across it, that's how vast it is, stopping at the Isle de Cactuses (or something similar) in the centre of the lake to climb vertical and rugged outcrops and take 360 photos of the lake below. Words can't adequately describe the feeling of that white vastness; framed by giant volcanoes stretching to bright blue horizons on all sides. It truly is a wonder of the world (sorry Peru, there actually are others). Spectacular mirages and light effects in every direction. I took 878 photos and seven videos. Here are a few of the best pics.

After a while at the island, we took off again at high speed over the salt flats. The speed was necessary simply to get across the lake before sunset. That didn't stop The Gringo from stopping and getting us to take some crazy pics using the 'altered state' of the salt pan to create special effects. He was actually very good at organising pics like this one:

A few more cans, joints and songs later, we stopped on the far side of the lake to watch a truly amazing sunset over the salt plains. The Gringo literally fell out of the Landrover and began rolling around in the salt giggling. We all took pics of each other with varying degrees of artistic interpretation. A soccer ball was produced. It was all pretty chill.

That's actually me. I know. Pretty dramatic for me.

Absolutley awesome

We drove for an hour or so in the dark and finally arrived at the first of our accommodations in the desert, a kind of permanent camp in perhaps the remotest and most primitive village I have ever seen, an adobe town with a tiny church square literally in the middle of nowhere. It was rudimentary, we were paired up to share two-bed huts, each with an ensuite with running water and beds that were big, warm and comfortable. A hot meal was waiting for us in the main hall - it was just soup I think, but substantial, and filling. There was no power after the meal, so we made our way to our huts and went to bed. It was now very cold in the desert, good for sleeping.

The huts. I took this pic next morning.