Part 37 - Uyuni Salt Flats and the bus to Chile

I wouldn't even mind the lack of a Scottish flag were it not for the completely made up flags they did have

The overnight bus to Uyuni ended up being quite comfortable. Despite setting off two hours late, we made up a lot of the time, and I actually managed to get a decent night's sleep, If only they hadn't decided to prod me awake more than an hour from Uyuni to ask if I wanted breakfast. Thinking it would be a fresh croissant and a hot coffee that was best eaten pronto, I was instead handed this. 

Truly a breakfast of champions

I left it disdainfully on the seat beside me and managed to drift off again, only to be prodded awake AGAIN to ask if I had any rubbish. Aye mate, that "breakfast" you handed me 20 minutes ago. I was fizzing, but somewhat mollified when we pulled into Uyuni and I managed to get a real breakfast and a couple of hours' sleep in a proper bed before my tour of the salt flats. 

Before the salt flats, we were taken to a train graveyard near the town. More than hundred of years ago, dozens of locomotives were imported from England to assist with the many mines that had sprung up. And since the mines had collapsed (not literally), all the locomotives were left to rust. 

That's me on the right

Apart from the train graveyard, there is NOTHING in the town of Uyuni itself, so you'll just have to imagine what it looks like (flat, grid-like and full of stray dogs).

Next it was off to the salt flats, via a trip to a salt factory, where the tour guide informed us that they don't sell the salt outside of Bolivia, because it's just ordinary salt. Which didn't exactly encourage me to spend anything in the gift shop they inevitably herded us into.

The salt flats are 10,000km² of, well, salt. It's completely flat, not that warm (it was pissing with rain and blowing a hoolie when we arrived), and utterly barren apart from the odd cactus. 

Apart from visiting a hotel (made of salt would you believe) and hearing about how the place was formed (it used to be a lake and then all the water evaporated), there isn't a great deal to do here except take lots of photos from wacky perspectives (surely you could do this anywhere flat?).

Actually, the best bit of the trip was a visit to an island in the middle of the salt flats that was filled with cacti, and was apparently home to an elderly couple who must absolutely love hundreds of tourists trampling over their wee island every day. 

The next morning, the 5am bus from Uyuni across the border was a riot. I was wondering how a journey of a couple of hundred miles could be scheduled to last 11 hours. Turns out their scheduling was wrong - it took more than 12 hours. It took nearly 6 hours to cross the border (technically two borders since you had to leave Bolivia and then enter Chile), despite the fact there was hardly anyone else using the border (the locals obviously knew how inefficient the whole system was and avoided it like the plague). I would have liked to take a photo of the three border officials sharing the same stamp, but Bolivian jails have quite a poor rating on Tripadvisor.

I finally got to Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert. My night there was so exciting I didn't have time to take a single photo. I did enquire about the complete lack of ATMs in what was quite a large of town, only to be told that they're only available inside banks during banking hours because people kept getting robbed at them. One elderly lady chastised me for looking at my phone in public because someone would be away with it. And en route to the airport, my chatty taxi driver (unfortunately, chatty in Spanish only) was speaking so fast I couldn't make out a word he said, but the one thing I definitely did understand was him telling me that Santiago was filled with robbers and banditos. What on earth had I let myself in for?

Oh, and congratulations to Calama airport for eschewing modern conveniences such as wi-fi. You couldn't even pay for it - which made me glad I had heeded the airline's advice and arrived at the airport more than three hours early for a domestic flight. And while I'm on the subject of petty grievances, why does Chile use a completely different plug from the rest of the continent?!