The whole point of our going to Oruro was to take the train to Uyuni, the starting point for organized tours of of the Salar (salt flats) of Uyuni and surrounding desert landscapes. Once again, the thought of avoiding another long bus ride by taking a relaxing train ride was too tempting to pass up.
The train was scheduled to leave at 3:30pm. We say "scheduled" as, yet again, we were caught in the midst of a transit strike, though train travel was not supposed to be affected by the strike, only buses. We'd arrived a bit early for the train (as there's not much to do in Oruro), and we found ourselves seated in the one full-to-overflowing car of the train. Kids under 5 travel free on the train, but without their own seats, and our car seemed to be both sold out and with an extra serving of kids-sans-seats. It was bustling in the aisles and oh so noisy!
The car next to ours was oddly empty, so we planned to move into seats there as soon as the train pulled out, but to our surprise, it didn't. I've never seen a train wait for late passengers, but that's exactly what ours did - over an hour. I guess that leaving with less than half the passengers (all stuck in buses trying to by-pass the strikers) wasn't appealing, and a bit after 4:30pm, we saw about 30 or 40 more backpack-toting gringos arrive and pile on board. Luckily, they all seemed headed for 1st class, and the car next to ours remained nice and nearly empty. We took new seats there as the train finally pulled out.
The ride itself was beautiful - at least the daylight portion, which had been shortened an hour due to the late departure. We passed salt marshes full of pink flamingos in flight, tiny villages with waving children, desert landscapes tinted bright red by the fading sun. Really quite stunning. A few hours later, though, it was just a dirty, dusty, dark train showing terrible movies. We read books for a while, then moved to the dining car where we drank beer and played cards until our arrival about midnight (an hour late...)
We then had the joy of shuffling through 3 hotels before finding one with running water. We slept well, and wandered the town the next day talking to tour agencies about the trip through the salar to chile. There are over 60 tour agencies (and not much of anything else) in Uyuni, but we found a local guy who ran a bar as well as tourist information center, who helped us narrow it down to 3 better agencies. The tour is a 3 day landcruiser ride through the salt flats and desert. They pack 6 of you in the vehicle along with a driver and a cook, so it's quite important to get a good vehicle, and hopefully, an even-keeled, friendly group of fellow tourists. In the end, after much back-and-forth haggling, we did just that. To celebrate, we went out to a "gourmet" pizza parlour in town, which for once, lived up to its hype - it was delicious.
Our photos from the trip to Uyuni:
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| Uyuni, Bolivia |
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