Things to Do in Uyuni When You Are Bored

The morning finds us looking around for a decent three day tour of the southwest corner of Bolivia – the salt flats (Salar de Uyuni), the colored lakes, and the volcanoes. The book has us weary of the mixed reports and poor safety record of the tour companies, so I keep insisting on talking to slightly more expensive companies with good reviews in the book. Unfortunately, all those are closed so we get in a random other office.

A middle-aged woman begins giving us a tired old routine of the tour itinerary in Spanish. Midway, a forty-year-old Bolivian man enters the office and explains everything again in what he calls  “100% English from Miami”. It’s all pretty clear until we try to find out the price for a group of 4 as opposed to the usual group of 6 stuffed in a Toyota Land-Cruiser for 3 days of 8 hours driving each.

The next half an hour is spent looking at the man and woman tossing a calculator between them and murmuring in Spanish something about the number of people in the car, including or not including a cook and an English speaking guide, prices in dollars, prices in bolivianos. Even Alex with his very good Spanish is completely baffled. I’m thinking that if these people can’t figure out the answer to such a simple question, what’s the likelihood they know how to keep us safe and fed in the desert for 3 days. We let them figure it out by themselves and get out with no intention of returning.

After a bad lunch and some football on TV, we try our luck again. This time a few of the recommended tours are open. After an hour of listening to the same itinerary 5 times over while trying to judge the reliability of different people solely by their words and expressions, we finally settle on one of the more expensive companies. The woman promises us that we’ll be 5 in the car, not the usual 6, and we’ll have a cook in addition to the guide. We pay up and start looking for an Internet cafe.

It appears there are a few things quite hard to come by in Uyuni, at the edge of the high desert – water, cash machines, electricity, and Internet connection chief among them. I spend half an hour sending one 5-word email and give up.

One thing, there’s an abundance of, is bad pizza, so when we find a restaurant with a decent Margarita we enjoy it as if it’s worth a Michelin star. For all we know this will be our last decent meal for the next 3 days. Tomorrow at 10am we’re off into the unknown. 

O, Camino, Camino

A rainy Sunday morning sounds to me like a great time for a drive, so I pack the gear in the car and get going. At the end of the paved road north of La Paz, nestled beneath the 6,400m giant peak Illampu, is a magical green valley around the town of Sorata. That's what my book wants me to believe, so I drive.

This is the place to say a few words about driving in Bolivia. Adults don't hitchhike. 4-year olds hitchhike. Dogs sleep in the lane going south, but not in the lane going north. Large rocks and gravel on the road are omnipresent. There is no speed limit, but no one goes above 70mph since people can and will overtake into the oncoming traffic lane regardless of whether a vehicle is actually oncoming or not. The job of the police is to stamp a little ticket, issued on the way out of La Paz, and collect a few quarters each time a car crosses into a different province. Without the little stamps there can be big trouble...

I fly in 5th gear toward the monstrous mountain until I climb into a high snaking pass covered in fog. It's so dense that I roll down the windows so I can smell the car in front before I hit it. Despite that, I make a few measured overtakings lest I get carbon monoxide poisoning from the fuming public transport vans at their 15mph speed limit. The ground on the sides of the road turns from lunar gray to lush green in a matter of seconds. I must have entered the valley.

In the next 5 minutes the road goes from nice pavement to stone gravel and back three times, but I couldn't care less. Before me lie the most dramatic green slopes I've ever seen. This is not a valley... This is a 6,000 meter mountain that's decided it wants to go to the beach, fast! The drops at the side of the road are hundreds of meters, but the beauty of the view prevents me from dwelling on the danger. Yet, at every second bend is a fresh looking cross with flowers on it.

Soon the road is only dirt and gravel, and every five minutes it is half blocked by landslides, leaving space enough for just one car. I push on and finally enter Sorata. Perched on a sloping ridge, it's a typical mountain village. Cobbled streets wide enough for half a car, not a single street or building that is flat. The ranch I've decided to stay at is at the bottom of the valley, so somehow I need to get to the bottom of the village. As easy as that sounds, in the maze of the blocked and narrow streets, it takes me several minutes to get to the lowest avenida which should take me around the ridge to my destination. Impressed with myself, I plow through mud and piles of dirt and stones until I get to a spot where right next to a public restroom a patch of road has simply gone into an abyss a hundred meters down to the river.  I jump out and ask two old women sitting on a bench how to get to the bottom of the valley. "Camino es mal," they explain and suggest that I climb to the top of the village instead.

Their instruction makes sense to me -- a clear indication that my mind is finally starting to bend around the spoon. So I climb to a mud field in front of a church, turn right and follow the mud plunging to the bottom of the valley through two wild streams of white water. This is where the Toyota 4WD makes its dinner. A couple of dead-ends and their corresponding 5-point U-turns later, I find the ranch.

Sloping to the river, on the opposite side of the valley from the village, the ranch is a lush park set on ten acres of lawns, trees, flowers, animals and cabins on different levels. A Bolivian woman, Roxanna, shows up and welcomes me. She and her husband, Johny, moved out here 25 years ago and built the place with their own hands. I have a mojito for dinner and retreat to my cabin to watch the jungle plunge into darkness and reflect on a life without TV, phones or internet in a place where the road always changes and every day leads in a different direction.