By Chris Allen
Uyuni is not going to take your breath away. It is dusty. I am sure I remember tumbleweeds scuttling down brown, broken down roads, or maybe I just remember that they would not have been out of place if they had been there.
The bus brakes moaned as it came to a halt and I fought my way towards the exit. After the long trip from the silver and nickel mining town of Potosi, I could have done with an oasis of palm trees, dates and glimmering water.
Maybe a cold cocktail and a bevy of dancing maidens. Instead a group of grubby faces surrounded me and half-heartedly tried to convince me of great accommodation deals and dinner specials.
Despite the gritty surroundings it was exciting to be at the starting point of what was rumoured to be a huge highlight in Bolivia.
A 4x4 tour of the altiplano, the plateau that reaches 5 500 metres above sea level. As the sun sank into a dusty brown haze on the other side of town, I dodged even more touts and took heed of the locations of the number of agencies offering the tours I had heard so much about.
After an icy shower, the next three hours consisted of finding a group of travellers with the same destination in mind, some skillful bargaining, to-ing and fro-ing between tour agencies to compare prices, some quality time spent flicking through a Spanish dictionary and eventually a grudgingly given deal on a four-day tour from Uyuni down to Tupiza.
For $100 (R681) five of us, a driver and a cook would climb into a fairly comfy Toyota Land Cruiser, head off towards a train graveyard (the first stop on the tour) at 9am the next morning and end the tour four days later in a town further south called Tupiza.
So with a boot full of supplies, a driver and a chubby and cheerful cook, neither of whom spoke a word of English, we weaved through the marketplace the next morning, past buildings made first of cement bricks and then further out, mud. We followed the train tracks to the outskirts of town and introduced ourselves in broken Spanish to our guides.
Ten minutes later along those same stark tracks we found the rusting iron train wrecks. Twisted skeletons covered, in places, with whitewash graffiti. The silence that surrounded those eerie giants was only broken by our voices, the scuffing of shoes in the sand and a frantic yelp as I slid down the edge of the furnace section of a more intact dead train, after losing my footing while playing at being an undead train driver.
But the biggest salt desert in the world beckoned. Scrubland flattened out and became desert. This soon turned a dirty grey and distant black shapes silhouetted against the grey became ragged men with pickaxes, carving blocks out of the salt pan and making perfect salt piles for later collection.
Many of those bricks would be used to build the walls of houses, while the piles of rough salt were used for, well... everything that salt can be used for.
We drove on further and the grey gave way to a blinding white as far as the dark mountains on the horizon. It was like stepping into a painting that was only just being started. Just canvas and sky, and the dark stains of the tyre tracks that lead us here and showed the path by which we would leave.
In the middle of the pan we were brought to a cactus oasis. Isla del Pescado. (So named as it apparently looks like a fish from far, although whoever decided this had seen some pretty oddly shaped fish in his time.) An island of rock, scrub and huge cacti reaching up towards a very bright blue sky.
Surreal was a word that was being bandied about liberally as one unreal phenomenon was followed by the next. Case in point was the brass band, in uniform, that had struck up with When the Saints go marching in to entertain each new load of tourists arriving in their 4x4's. We watched in disbelief from the top of the "island".
While we had wandered about the island with our chins on our chests, our cook had created a feast of steak on a braai and some salad, which we subsequently wolfed down. Soon memories of dusty Uyuni were gone and were replaced by a whole new world which we happily admired with full stomachs, through the open windows of our Toyota chariot.
Everything from Roxette to U2 and Michael Jackson played from the tape deck, and our 'hosts' yapped away in Spanish as we drove.
A small town called San Juan nestled between two hills at the edge of the Salar Uyuni served as the stopover point for the night. And there we shared sundowners from outside the chapel overlooking the town, ate a carbohydrate-packed dinner and fell asleep in a small pension. We were woken the next morning before sunrise by Denasio, the driver, in an effort to stay ahead of all the other tourists.
Our chariot made mincemeat of the kilometres and the rough dirt roads as we started out across the Salar de Chiguana in the race to be the first with the best view of Volcan (volcano) Ollague. It was a race that we would have won had we not had a scary blowout, expertly managed by Denasio. Even this apparent setback proved a blessing as we got a chance to experience the rugged but beautiful landscape on foot for a bit.
The volcano was spectacular, but nothing could have properly prepared our little touring party for the sight that greeted us soon afterwards.
Laguna Canape was the first of many 'lagunas' that we would visit during the next few days. Snow capped mountains reflected in the mirror-like lake, the only disturbances created by the huge flocks of bright pink flamingos, stalking off unhurriedly in the opposite direction to the approaching tourists.
Each laguna had a different dominant colour after which most were named, and once again it felt as if we had stepped onto a surreal painter's pallete.
Different colours graduated into each other from Canape's clear silver centre out to the spongy moss green edges. Llamas grazed, on those green edges, shaggy coats dreadlocked and dirty but necessary to protect against the cold we were to experience that night.
The surreal feeling of the place was once again strengthened when we were deposited next to what has been named the "Dali Tree", on the edge of Desierto De Salvador Dali.
Eroded sandstone had left a desert filled with top heavy or just oddly shaped statues that belonged in dreamscapes. By now we were exhausted and soon we were on the road listening to the same tape for about the tenth time.
That night the icy wind tore at the buildings we sheltered in. Tea, warm food and even a bottle of cheap and cheerful red wine was hauled out of the stores box by our much appreciated cook, for us to keep ourselves warm, as the sun disappeared on the purple and crimson horizon.
The temperature dropped and we soon clambered onto squeaky beds under a pile of blankets.
Once again we were packing the car by torchlight an hour before dawn. Icy fingers and swear words were common, but the sight that greeted us an hour later made it worth the suffering.
Huge clouds of steam billowed up out of bubbling muddy hot springs, sulphurous and angry, but beautifully lit in the dawn light. Excursions from the vehicle were short however as the sun had not yet had time to adjust the temperature at all.
The next stop on the itinerary was as unexpected as it was perfect. Despite the freezing temperature we stripped to bathing suits and slipped into a steaming pool, for a morning wallow in a hot spring pool at 5 000 metres above sea level.
In the distance a volcano watched over us and next to us dumplings sizzled in oil as our cook created a feast that would be dipped in Dulce de Lece, a type of caramel spread popular throughout South America. Ten metres away thick ice covered the rock and pools, and clouds drifted off into the atmosphere above. Life was at that moment, perfect.
Appetites taken care of, body temperature and moods raised a few levels, we walked the couple of hundred metres to a view of the laguna to top them all. Laguna Verde graduated from a dark emerald green to turquoise and was encircled by a ring of bright white foam and salt.
Towering above it was the magnificent Volcan Licancabur, massive grey and brown tipped with snow. "Oohs" and "Aahs" gave way to camera shutters and poses as we enjoyed the view for a good hour. Then a smiling Denasio pulled up, informed us that Chile was only a five minute drive away if we were interested in altering our travel plans, and we were off towards Tupiza.
The highlights grew less frequent that day, and instead an astounding landscape surrounded us at all times. We stopped in a medieval feeling ghost village to make a picnic lunch and avoided the llama skins and bones that lay drying in the sun.
Massive clay ovens stood blackened and crumbling next to small mud and stone houses. That night we considered buying a donkey for R50 at a bustling live stock auction in the middle of another small settlement, and then climbed to the top edge of the valley to once again watch the sun go down over the town in which we would spend the night, while drinking beer and chatting to the cheerful brown children that had followed us up.
When Tupiza eventually rolled into view behind lofty natural rock spires the next afternoon we were glad to climb out of the trusty Toyota. A small hotel offered a pool and other luxuries, which by this stage were sorely needed, so no time was wasted checking in.
It was sad to say goodbye to our guides, but after a few attempts at some heartfelt Spanish words that only resulted in a confused look, we handed over a generous tip and waved goodbye as the vehicle disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Although I'm sure I saw some tumbleweed roll across the road as I watched them go, this time it seemed fitting, as this town was said to have hosted two of the most famous outlaws of all time, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
I left the road considering finding a saloon and some six shooters, but instead settled for a cold coke and a tour offering a guided horse ride the next day.
- This article was originally published on page 2 of The Star on August 19, 2006