Salar de Uyuni Trip: Day 1

We turned up at the office of Tupiza Tours to discover that, of the German couple, only Tina but not Stephan spoke Spanish, and that we had been joined by a fifth person, an American girl called Victoria, who also spoke quite good Spanish; at least a fifth person on the trip meant that we would owe less money when we got to Uyuni.

Our transport

As we set off in the jeep, it seemed like we were to be joined by an extra passenger: not only did we have David as our driver-guide, and Bernadine in the back as our cook, but she was joined by a rather small passenger by name of Abigail; their daughter, aged three. After a bit of Spanish I didn't really follow, Tina told us that they were dropping Abi off at her grandmother's house on the way out of town. We did stop briefly on the way out of town and some doors were knocked, but still Abi remained in the car. Tina said that she didn't think they really expected to drop her off and she would be accompanying us for the whole trip. She was cute and didn't take up much space, though, so we didn't mind.

Jaggy rock formations

More jaggy rocks

Cacti and jaggy rocks

Everyone else reflected in Victoria's sunglasses

Cacti

Llamas

A mine

Dry stripey mountains

Short climb before lunch

The first day of the tour took us through some very arid landscapes, where llamas were the only livestock suitable for the environment, and where the small towns we passed seem as if they should be uninhabitable, except that most of them were set up as mining towns using coerced labour. Despite being very hot during the day, the high altitude means that even entire herds of llamas freeze to death occasionally, as had happened here a few years previously. Luckily, enough llamas had survived to provide us with dried llama meat as the filling for the delicious tamales we ate for lunch. During lunch, we asked if we could each get the two litres of water the company had promised us per day. David told us that, yes he know the company said that, but in fact there was only one litre per person, per day. When the child was taken into account, we discovered, there was actually less than that. First black mark against the company!

San Pablo de Lipez...

... a little town in the middle of the desert

Colourful rocks

View

Our cool registration plate

Llama skulls

Lots of dead llamas

Finally we finished our first day at a small town called San Antonio de Lipez. Unfortunately for me, the town is at 4200m above sea level and we had started at about 3000m above sea level. The Lonely Planet trekking guide to Nepal, I remembered, says that you should ascend no more than 500m per day above 3000m; and in one day we had just ascended 1200m. If we had done it from the border town of Villazon it wouldn't have been so bad, as Villazon is about 3500m above sea level. I had been feeling fine as we ascended all day, but not long after we arrived in town I had to lie down and I couldn't even get up to eat dinner. Everyone else seemed fine, but the thought of moving or eating anything was enough to make me feel like vomiting; so I did neither.

Stripes

Che

During the night I got up for the toilet, feeling considerably better, though still not quite right, and I stayed outside for about half and hour, looking at the fantastic stars; at least as fantastic as the southern hemisphere can manage in the way of stars.

written by  The Happy Couple on October 19, 2009 from San Antonio de Lipez, Bolivia
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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