Uyuni and the Salar de Uyuni or Salt Flats, Bolivia

We hopped on a 7am bus from Potosí’s old terminal with American for the 4 hour, 30 BOB trip to Uyuni. Uyuni’s bus ‘terminal’ is essentially a street with a few bus companies, about a 5 minute walk from the main square, Plaza Arce. We stayed at the Hotel (not so much) Avenida (100 BOB) just off the main square. Uyuni is all about the Salt Flats so once we arrived we set about getting some prices for seeing them. We decided to do a 1 Day Tour as we don’t really have the standard 4 days free at the moment. We went with Cordillera Travel and paid 200 BOB per person and there were 7 of us in total. Tight squeeze if you’re in the back! Our guide was crap but we didn’t break down which I believe is unusual. He didn’t speak any English and actually gave out to us for not staying together every time he stopped the 4×4. Not one bit of notice was taken of this!

We stayed in Uyuni for 2 nights and the only food place worth talking about is Minuteman Pizza, located in the Toñito Hotel a few blocks from the main plaza. It’s owned by a lovely man from Boston who couldn’t do enough for all his customers. John had the pizza and I went with a quinoa pasta – both tasty.

At Uyuni’s Train Station

Uyuni’s Train Station

Derelict but beautiful

They’re crazy for the Dakar Rally

Uyuni’s Clock Tower

Local Grafitti

Typical Hair-Do

This is pretty much how the locals look

Salar de Uyuni

Our tour started at 11.15am (call time was actually 10.30am) and we first went to visit an old train graveyard (5 minutes from Uyuni) where the rest of the universe was also congregated. Not sure why to be honest. We then had to go to our drivers house as he forgot his jumper. Ahem. The salt flats is the opposite direction to the train graveyard so back we went to Uyuni and on to our first proper view of some salt at some salt cones. We had to take off our shoes to walk around here and it was FREEZING!! Mighty exfoliation though. We then took an hours drive to a cactus-covered island in the middle of the salt flats called Inca Huasi (30 BOB entrance fee) which was pretty cool. Plenty of photo opps here. We had lunch here (cooked by the guide) in the lovely sunshine and after about an hour we got back in the 4×4 and went to see a Salt Hotel, now a museum. We got back to Uyuni about 6pm.