Uyuni - This town ain't big enough....

12^th September

     So today we woke up, packed and headed to the bus station to get a bus to Uyuni.  The Tourist information lady told us the bus times so we decided to get an early one. Having caught a cab we arrived in the rough area of the bus station as it seems here in Potosi they don't know how to read maps. When we arrived we tried to buy a ticket, realising that the next bus out was over 2 hours away. So having bought a bus ticket...by the way the name of us on our tickets is tourist...nice how we fit in here, we got a cab back and had a nice breakfast in a small cafe called Cherrys which also does amazing pastries and cakes homemade. Like deja vu we again caught a cab and headed to the bus station to catch our bus. Just to let you know the bus station is actually a road with different people trying to get you to buy a ticket from them to Uyuni.

The 'bus station' in Potosi

A football pitch carved out of nothing, in the middle of nowhere..

     We got on the bus, afater making sure that our luggage was on. When we got on we realised that the seats were cramped and Neil could hardly fit, so we changed seats and headed off.  Unfortunately we changed seat to the back of the bus, where it was far bumpier.  Now this journey was different from the rest from 3 main reasons. One...it was really cheap about 3 pounds for a 6 hour trip, Two...the landscape was amazing which a mixture mountains, deserts and canyons and lastly it was very bumpy to the point where our heads hurt and other parts of my body too.

A heater!!!! Luxury!

   (The video is 20s long - watch it 900 times over and that is what our bus journey was like)

In a record time of 5 hours we arrived in Uyuni, you can tell we were near a town as the rubbish sticks to the plants as you approach. The town looked like a scene from a western with a sparse and spacey feel. It was like we were heading more and more into the sticks as our travelling went on. We got off, got our stuff, got approached by people trying to sell us the Salt Flat tours and escaped and headed to the hotel. We decided to splash out here and opt for a room with hot water and an electric heater as at night it hits -25 degrees. We arrvied, cleaned up and headed into the town, we walked thorugh and saw very little going on, just a market closing in town. We headed straight to a place called the Minuteman Pizza which is in our Lonely Planet Guide as the best Pizza place. It was opened by a Yank called Chris from Boston who built a purpose built pizza oven. So we ordered a pizza, it was amazing, the best Neil had had in years and equally ones I had in Napoli.

     After a long travelling day we ate, had some beers, got american homemade cookies and headed back to the hotel for some warmth and sleep.

13^th September

Uyuni town...

     Today Neil woke up not feeling so well, think cold as the air is so cold here your nose hurts due to breathing through your nose and your throat gets dry after breathing through your mouth. Not to mention you lips get very chapped...by the way thanks Vik for the lip balms they are a god send here!

     Our plan for today was to book a tour and train ticket out of here in a few days as there reallyt is very little to see or do. So we read in the guide that there are over 70 agencies in town we can book with so we had our choice. However what actually happended was nowhere was open for uys to check ou the tours and prices. We ended up at the only place opened called Andes Salt Expeditions.

     We had a quick word with the alcoholic behind the desk who gave us our itinerary in a strangely disinterested fashion. It sounded fairly standard but was a lot cheaper than we expected. We told him we were going to look around a few other places first. We went out, discovered that all the other places were still closed for lunch, got some money out and went straight back to book it.

Having an extreme amount of fun...

     After we were sorted with this we decided that we had to go to the 'Extreme Fun Pub' to see what it was like. We got in there and were immediately accosted by a strange child. I made the mistake of interacting with her in a slightly humorous fashion so she continued to play hide and seek behind me for a while. We looked through the drinks menu and it was mainly hard core drinking challenges and the like. The walls were covered in people's times for the main drinking challenge. The strange child pointed out all the picures of llamas in the room, saying, 'Llama, llama, llama' etc.

     We opted for a happy hour Chuflay (local cocktail of Singani (grape spirit), ginger ale (or Sprite) and lemon) and then some chicken and fish nuggets with chips. Not great food I'll admit. There was only one other couple in the pub with us – they left after one beer and half a coke. There was a feedback form to fill in on the table. It asked if we had laughed while in the 'Extreme Fun Pub'. We had laughed, but mainly at how rubbish it was.