We arrived in Uyuni earlier than expected, and the city was freezing. I had expected it to be cold,
but I now understood what other people were talking about with the temperature
before. Also, it was way early, and I didn’t know how to even begin to find a
tour company to do the Salt Flats tour with. Luckily, there was a small agency
right outside of the bus stop, so we walked in and booked a tour right there!
From what I had heard about the prices, what we got was pretty decent, so I
then took some time to walk around the city.
Uyuni is very small and very touristy. There is maybe one
museum, but dozens of hotels and hostels lining the central plaza. There was a
significant market right in the center of town when it started to get later,
and I stopped to get some yummy breakfast from the street stands – fried potato
filled with egg, and this rice/chicken combo. Delicious!
The tour started at 10:30, and though we had only a
Spanish-speaking driver/guide for the 7 of us, it turned out to be pretty good.
The group was 2 Brazilian friends who had lived in Bolivia for years and a
mother with her 20+ year old son and daughter. One of the Brazilians and the
son and daughter spoke English, and they were happy to translate for us if there
were things we didn’t understand.
Our first stop was the train cemetery. It was almost like an
adult playground – lots of old trains that you could walk around and climb!
The scenery was gorgeous – when we got to the actual salt
flat, I understood what people were talking about with the beauty. In the
winter, there’s no water and therefore no reflections, but it was still
incredible!
We stopped at a little artisan area to buy whatever we
needed, and I was over the moon that I could get two pairs of cute mittens to
go with my hats for 30 Bs – or less than $2.50 total!
We had some lunch before heading to the “island” of volcanic
rock (Isla Incahuasi) that was randomly in the middle of the salt flats. It was
filled with cacti, and had a beautiful view at the top!
We then got to see the sunset across the mountains, and
moved on to our accommodation for the night. It was this hotel, with the ground
covered in salt, and made of salt blocks for the structure and furniture – very
interesting! There was a little museum next door with mummies/skeletons of the
dead, which we toured. There was nothing special about the bones compared to
other skeletons I had seen in other museums, though.
At night, the two Brazilians brought out the alcohol and
basically got the party started. I was skeptical at first and didn’t want to
drink, but I decided to just go for it when everyone else (except the mother
and daughter, who went to sleep early) and the other tour group started
drinking. I remembered how fun it can be to drink – the other group, made of
French people who had varying degrees of Spanish ability, started teaching us
some games.
The first was like Taboo – we all write names of famous
people and split into teams, trying to get teammates to guess the people. For
the second round you could only say one word; for the third, charades; for the
last, a single post. We played for a while – in Spanish, no less – and then
split into two groups.
Eventually, we combined groups and started playing a “pass
the ball” sort of game, where you could choose to pass the ball, skip the
person next to you, or reverse the direction of the ball. For each one, you
have a specific word you have to use. When people are drunk, this becomes
incredibly fun – people start messing up and making up words, among other
things!
The last game we played was this drinking game, where
everyone is an animal and you basically call each other out until someone
messes up and has to take a drink. The phrase, which is “El caballo no bebe,
quien bebe es la mariposa” where you substitute animals, is great for
non-native Spanish speakers, because it’s really hard to get and speak quickly.
Needless to say, it was quite fun. Also, one of the French girls was so
impressed with my English, Chinese, Spanish, and French. I kept trying to
convince her that it wasn’t that special because my Spanish and French are
pretty terrible and I struggle a lot with Chinese in some respects, but she was
not having it. At least it made me feel good.
Eventually, we headed outside when we stopped having as much
fun with the games and drinking. The stars were amazing – you could see so, so
many! It was freezing but worth it to just take a look.
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