Potosi was the splitting off point for me and Victoria. She headed south to Argentina, and I was going west to the salt flats of Uyuni and on into Chile. It was an unexpected detour, but after hearing all the incredible things about this area, it was one I was happy to take.
Six hours after driving through the barren altiplano I arrived in Uyuni. This town was described as having a “post apocalyptic feel” in my guidebook, and it was indeed pretty bleak. First of all, its very cold. This is the first thing to grab you after setting foot in town. The sky was bright blue, but the streets were wide and desolate, and with the cold wind in your face it made you feel like you were at the edge of civilization. You could imagine the Omega man being set here if it weren’t for the number of tourists in the streets. This made up for the overall depressing atmosphere by letting you know that you weren’t alone in having to bear this blank landscape. (It must be said that ever local I met in Uyuni was uniformly nice as well, and this helped me settle in as well). The town kind of reminded me of Detroit in the winter time. The wide streets, the abandoned buildings, the people walking around with shabby, old, falling apart winter jackets and ski masks. And the cold wind was kind of refreshing as it blasted your face walking through town.
My English friends Chris and Sadie had told me about a pizza place in town run by an American, that had supposedly the best pizza they had ever eaten. This claim really stuck in my head, as I could just not imagine a great pizzeria in cold, run down Uyuni, so I just had to check it out. The place was at the end of a road with no lighting, surrounded by nothing but an army barracks and the dilapidated train station–hardly inviting. But when you walked through a door, you entered a warm, bustling pizzeria with jazz playing on the stereo. I immediately felt at home and went up to order a deluxe pizza with sausage, pepperoni, onions, and olives. I placed my order, and the owner of the place was obviously happy to hear the accent of a fellow American, and we struck up a conversation. He was from Massachusetts and had met his wife, who was from Uyuni, at college there. He followed her down here nine years ago, and this was the life they made together. It was inspiring for me to hear: leaving your safe life in the states to follow a girl down to Bolivia, and being successful! The pizza was great, and they even had Budweiser to top off the evening. I was now ready to leave on my tour of the salt flat the next morning.
The area around Uyuni is harsh (over 4000 meters and very cold) so the only way to see it is by tour. Pretty much everyone goes on the standard three day tour consisting of one day on the salt flats, one day touring the lakes and volcanoes south of there, and one day returning back to Uyuni. This was my itinerary, except that the third day I continued on across the border to Chile instead of coming back.
As I had not really planned on coming here, and that nature isn’t as interesting to me as archaeology, I didn’t really put a lot of time in searching out agencies. The one I took put me in a group with a french couple, two more french girls, and two Israeli travelers. It was an interesting group of people, and we were to have a good time, but the number of passengers shouldn’t exceed six and we were seven. Tours from Uyuni are notorious for having crap food and cars that break down, and so this was not an auspicious start to the trip. But we left on schedule Tuesday morning, and first headed off to the old railway graveyard where the trains that used to pass through Uyuni before the mineral boom ended were left to rust away in the field.
The reason anyone goes to Uyuni, though, is to see the salar, the dried up salt lake that is the biggest in the world. It looks like a giant lake that is frozen over, which isn’t new to someone like me from Michigan, but this lake was huge and often went on off to the horizon. It was an impressive site to be driving along an absolutely flat plane of white that went off as far as the eye could see. There were paths the truck went on, but really no road was necessary as you could just drive off anywhere without anything changing or getting in your way. People live here and harvest up the salt to sell– its about the only way that such a harsh climate could sustain life. I cant imagine that this area ever had many people about. The highlight was arriving at the island of San Pedro, where from the top you look out all around you at a sea of white.
While we explored the island our cook, Maria, got lunch ready. She was an old sourpuss if there ever was one, and never cracked a smile the entire trip. The food was decent enough, but her attitude just plain sucked, and I wasn’t alone in my opinion. After leaving the island one of the Israelis, Eldar, opened up the window to let some air in, and she immediately began complaining about it, “Amigo!, el polvo!” (friend, theres too much dust). It was a good thing that Eldar was a stubborn one, as this was a fight I didn’t want to lose, and he didn’t. The next day when he asked her for some more hot water she never brought it out; and finally on the last morning of our trip, she even refused to prepare for us the eggs that the agency had given her for us! This was especially galling as the night before was the coldest of the trip, going down to around 20 degrees, and with the altitude making it hard to sleep (4300 meters) I, at least, was in desperate need of some nourishment.
Finally, after dealing with all that we got to the border, made it through Bolivian customs, paid our 2.50$ “exit fee” (bribe), and got on the bus to Chile. What a difference a few hundred meters make! We went from a bumpy dirt road, to a smooth, freshly painted one immediately upon crossing the border. Not only that, but the bus stopped at the stop signs (actually, I don’t think stop signs exist in Bolivia), and used its turn signal! Obviously we were in another world now– the one of the rich and developed.
San Pedro de Atacama, the city we arrived at in Chile, is a pretty little desert oasis town with white, red, and brown adobe buildings lining its dusty streets. I had originally planned on leaving on a night bus that night along with my travel mates, but the town was so charming I ended up staying the night. That would give me time the next day to check out the local museum, and to visit the “Valley of the Moon”, the big natural attraction here.
The Best of Both Worlds 
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