We
decided to splurge on our nights bus today, 10 hours, from La Paz to
the desolate town of Uyuni. Todo Turismo has the best reputation, so
for $25 per person, we get reclining seats, and a bus with heat. The
ride goes up over 5,000m and overnight busses in this region without
head will freeze all their passengers. So we board with our friends
Valerie and Bas. From the seat backs hang Merry Christmas decorations,
and our on board host, Mr. Smiley, dishes out our hot cooked dinner;
chicken, rice and veggie similar-to-plane meal. We are served and Mr.
Smiley clears our trash all n 15 minutes before the bus actually leaves
the station. We now understand why they served us dinner before the
bus started moving. After maybe one hour of relatively smooth, yet
very curvy paved roads, the ride turns to washboard terrain. At one
point in the ride, one of the overhead TV's falls out of it's hanging
holster onto a passenger below. Forget using the bathroom... no only
are there no handles to hold on to, but the group of very drunk guys
from the UK have made a complete mess of it, and it's worse than your
most frightening bathroom memory from frat parties in college. We stop
every few hours for the driver to check the tires. We continue to
bounce in and out of our seats for the ten hours, and I think our
internal organs are no longer in their proper spots.
When
the sun arises in the early morning hours we peer out at the eerie
desert landscape. We stop and a woman boards and serves us
breakfast... a box of apple juice and a snack packet of oreo cookies.
Nourishment! We hand over our wrappers and empty juice boxes and we
proceed to turn the corner into town where the bus stops... apparently
we are at our destination, 30 seconds after finishing our fine
breakfast. We disembark into an empty, dusty ghost town road. It's
7:00 a.m. and we had prearranged our Salar de Uyuni tour with a local
company who has a taxi waiting to pick us up, and takes us all of the
half mile to the company office. We quickly register and pay our $100
fee for the three day, two night trip, and pass a couple hours
strolling through the local market that's beginning to open up, chock
full of Christmas decorations and gifts. Hard to believe Christmas is
just around the corner now. Finally, 9:30 a.m., and the immigration
office has opened up, we walk through the line to get our exit stamps
imprinted in our passports so not to get fined for overstaying our days
once we reach the border of Chile in a few days. It's hit or miss if
you can really get your exit stamp at the border of Bolivia and Chile
or not, so we clear through the process in advance of arriving. We're
all set now for our big adventure.
