To get to Uyuni from Tarija requires taking an overnight bus journey to Tupiza and then a further seven or so hours on a bus from there. I no longer find it hard to psyche myself up for these journeys. You soon know what mindset you need to be in to avoid the frustrations of stops in the middle of the night, winding roads, crying children and drivers who want to emulate Ayrton Senna. What works for me is having plenty of battery on the mp3 player, your own supply of loo roll, a sleeping bag and a bottle of water. Then, sit back and see what happens. Who knows, you might fall asleep!
Well, none of that was going to make a difference this time. After settling in on a battered, grubby bus with broken seats that stayed reclined, we pulled out of Tarija. The lights went out at all of half past eight and the bus turned off the main road and onto a dirt track. The road to Tupiza is all stoney track and no tarmac.
To say that the track was bumpy is an understatement. Right from the off we were thrown all about the place and frequently my body left the seat several inches and then crashed back down again. Hardly the best environment to catch some sleep. This was to be the state of things until we arrived in Tupiza in the morning. The road is said to be a fairly dodgy one too and perhaps it was better that the dark prevented the sight of any sheer drops.
At half past ten we made a stop in a town I'll call World's End, or Termina El Mundo if you like. It was cold, dark, the wind was blowing a gale (containing lots of dust) and there were just a couple of buildings around, one a restaurant. Some got off for a meal. We only wanted to use the facilities as in Bolivia they don't provide toilets on buses. The trouble is, they're also not concerned with stopping somewhere with a toilet. The restaurant owner claimed not to have any toilets and told us to go outside. Nice.
After a further six hours of being thrown around inside a bus, we arrived in Tupiza. Second to a lack of hygiene, Bolivia does not synchronize its buses. It was five in the morning and the onward bus to Uyuni was scheduled to leave at ten o'clock. What else to do in the cold and dark than to unroll the sleeping bag and curl up on a bench. See, I told you it was part of the essential kit list!
After sunrise we discovered that Tupiza didn't offer anything by way of places to grab a bit of breakfast, so we gate-crashed a hostel and got them to feed us some bread and a cup of tea.
The next leg of the journey was very long and very cramped and involved a stop at Atocha, a mining town surrounded by desert and mountains. This surely is about as rural as it gets in Bolivia. Again there was a harsh wind blowing dust around and anything that wasn't nailed down. It was an interesting place to see but unfortunately none of the restaurants or market stalls had any food to sell. I think it's the first time I've encountered a place that has turned away a bus-load of travellers. Surely a bus stops here every day about the same time. Perhaps the thing to do would be to get some food on the go?
As a rule, an overnight bus will get in early and a day bus will get in late. We reached Uyuni by around six o'clock tired and in need of a shower. Uyuni is a basic town that is full of tour agencies but it has many restaurants plus a few stylish pubs. The trick is staying warm. I'm not sure if a lack of sleep will generally make you feel the cold more, but I wore as many layers as I could and went about getting myself a bowl of soup to huddle over!
The roads to Uyuni are never going to compete with the Death Road near La Paz, but perhaps it is a stretch that could be dubbed "Make-you-feel-like-death road"!
