Crazy Day

The first stop this morning (21st August) was a small village called Chantani where there is a small museum run by an old man called Santos.

Santos returned to Chantani 17 years ago when his mother became ill and wanted to die where she was born. 

Unfortunately Santos' wife did not want to return to the village as she preferred city life. Therefore Santos returned to Chantani alone with his mother.

During the time he attended to his mother he started to collect natural rocks which resembled animals. He scoured the surrounding area and carried anything back on a sledge on his own. He said the other villagers all thought he was crazy: the rocks he brought back were frequently bigger than him!

Over 4 years he collected a garden full of interesting rocks and started to carve some himself. He also started to build his own house and discovered all sorts of centuries old pottery and tools in the surrounding land.

Santos now runs a museum with these artefacts and gives tours of his garden. Fortunately his wife saw what he had achieved and a few years after his mother died she returned to Chantani to live with him.

After our tour we had a look round the deserted and ruined village which Santos lives in. We were warned not to go too far as one other person lives in the village; a grumpy old lady that doesn't like tourists!

There was a tiny clock tower which we both climbed up giving fantastic views of the salt flats and surrounding mountains.

Once we had seen everything there was to see at Chantani we entered the salt flats. After around 45 mins of driving we stopped. As far as we could see in all directions was salt with the occasional mountain. Perfect for crazy photos!

After around 30 mins of jumping and running back and forth to get the perspective right we decided we'd had enough.

Exhausted (because of the low oxygen levels) we continued on to the only salt hotel on the salt flats. It's now illegal to stay here overnight due to the impact on the environment but you can still visit to see the salt carvings.

When we arrived the hotel was half knocked down as they were in the process of rebuilding it. In a small room at the back all the salt carvings were proudly(!) on display.

Our penultimate stop on the flats was the salt extraction site. At the edge of the Salar they divide it into squares then scrape the salt into large piles where they leave it to dry for a week before it's taken to a processing facility. The salt from Uyuni is not exported and 50kg would cost a Bolivian just a couple of pounds!

The processing is still quite a manual process with the only automation a petrol driven grinding machine. It seems it's not common to sell the salt in chunks and we had to specially ask for some. The salt processing worker was more than happy to oblige, picking up some chunky salt for us while we waited.

The final stop of the day was a train cemetery. This is where all of Bolivia's broken trains get left with the oldest having sat there for over 35 years.

They were all rusted substantially as the "cemetery" is right next to the salt flats. They also have all have graffiti all over them and two have been turned into swings!

The cemetery was quite an odd but beautiful sight in a strange sort of way.

Eli and Johnny dropped us off in Unuyi where we had a 6 hour wait before our bus departed. We said our goodbyes and they set off for their 5 hour drive back to Tupiza.

In less than an hour we had seen all there was to see in Uyuni and settled down in a cafe for the rest of the afternoon.

At 7pm we arrived at the bus station and were loaded onto the bus almost an hour early. They promptly started serving dinner and we even set off on time!

Of the 550km journey almost 200km are on dirt tracks and most of the remainder on basic (non-tarmac) roads.

If you can imagine driving on a rumble strip at 50mph (for vehicle vibration testing) for 4 hours that's what it felt like followed by a slightly less aggressive vibration test for a further 7 hours. This explained why they served dinner before we set off!

Surprisingly though for all the nights we've spent on buses this was my best nights sleep and Stu's worst!