We were up nice and early, ready for action! At 9am we started our trip to the Salar Uyuni, the largest salt plain in the world. Here I have to mention that it is not recommended to enter Salar with your own vehicle and without a guide. Actually it is recommended that all cars entering the Salar should be 4×4. Oh well, we are hard! No guide, no 4×4 and off we go!!!

We drove on a dirt track to the village where the entrance to the salt plains was marked. Of course, our favorite dirt track. After a 30 minute drive on our left we saw the vast wildness of the Salar! Entering was relatively easy and now we were completely self-confident, laughing at silly tourists taking expensive tours. Here we were in the absolutely magical place Salar de Uyuni! It is quite difficult to describe the feeling you get standing on the huge salt desert. I hope the pictures can at least show a fraction of the real thing.

Our first stop was salt hotel, which was completely built of salt bricks. There wasn’t a road as such but we could see the tracks left from other cars and followed those. After a 30 minute drive we reached the hotel. It was nice, but even to go to the bathroom or ask a question you had to buy something… But the funny thing was, we needed to find out the directions to the Isla del Pescadores and we did buy a chocolate bar. You know what the guy said afterwards… I don’t know! Hahaha Useful! The chocolate was good though.

We continued on following the tracks while using the handheld GPS device as a guide and we soon were able to see the island. It was quite a magical site, like a floating mountain covered with spikes (cacti). We safely parked and started our walk around the island. The cactus were impressive, some of them up to 9m tall. It takes approximately 900 years for the cactus to grow that tall. The slightest walk upwards was pretty difficult as we were still not quite used to the lack of oxygen in the air. Again the pictures speak for themselves.

We had lunch on the picnic bench by the island and continued exploring the vastness of the Salar. Ricardo offered Alex to drive and he happily accepted this opportunity, not every day you get to drive on a giant salt plain. We were heading for a volcano on the other side of the plain and we were driving fast! I have noticed that closer to the volcano terrain started to change from white to sort of grey white and then earthy colour. I remember telling Alex to slow down and be careful, soon after the car started slowing down by itself, we tried turning and managed to move for a few more meters and then the car just stopped…   Oh no! We were stuck in the salt plain and who is laughing now!

First of all we tried pushing the car out, didn’t work. After we tried looking for any sort of materials to help us, such as wood twigs and stones. There weren’t that many of those on the salt plain as you can imagine. After trying for an hour in vain we decided it’s time to get help.

Close to the side of the volcano, there was a small village and we decided to search for help there. I have to note at this point, that all the objects in the Salar look closer than they actually are. So I volunteered for walking, as I wasn’t much help pushing anyway. The walk took about 45 minutes. The first person I saw was a farmer walking on the field. I have explained him the situation, but if you think he was eager to help you are mistaken. Seemed like he was half asleep and just managed to point out that I should speak to someone with a truck, great help! I walked into the village and it looked pretty deserted. Soon I spotted a truck which looked like it should be in the museum. There was a building site next to it with one guy lazily laying some bricks. I had explained to him the problem and he wasn’t that eager to help either. I kept on it and after about 10 minutes of pleading he said that I should wait half an hour and then he will try to help. I had waited… 30 minutes later a lady came along and he chatted with her for another 30 minutes… I waited… what choice did I have. When they finally discussed all the village matters, the dude said he is off to get the battery for the museum peace. Another 20 minutes passed, I wish I brought something to read! When he returned I was relived, thinking now we are going to get the guys out. Well… too bloody optimistic! The guy managed to explain that the truck is full now and needs to be unloaded first. How did he not know that before!!! He said he can only come and help us at 5 pm. There wasn’t anything else for me to do there so I went back to the car. By then the guys tried everything possible and it seemed to me that the car was even deeper in the mud.

The only thing we had left was waiting; we had about two hours for that. At 5:30 pm when we started losing hope, the truck finally appeared. The above mentioned dude brought another guy with him and they lazily started work. The first problem was that the car was really deep into the mushy ground and the truck couldn’t drive close enough to tow us out. The only way to go was lifting and pushing. For about an hour they tried in vain, nothing worked! In the meantime we asked them how much their work will cost us and they said 500 BOB, which is quite a lot. I didn’t like the guys at all as they didn’t really want to help and just wanted to rip of the stupid gringos  In an hour they gave up, as it started to get dark and they still had to get to Uyuni. We asked them if they could help us tomorrow and they again lazily said that they might pop round at 10 in the morning. Great! We were stuck!

I have to mention that as we were giving the car last push a guy came out of the village to take some pictures of the sunset and we asked him to help. He was an Italian guy called Lolo. The truck left, but Lolo was still there. We had to make plans for the night, as there was no way to get out. Ricardo decided to sleep in the Salar, despite the cold night. Luckily he had all the camping gear with him. Alex and I had nothing so we had to come up with a plan. We asked Lolo and he told us that there is a place to stay in the village, a little hostel normally only used by locals. We said good night to Ricardo and went into the village with Lolo. As we crossed the courtyard we saw three 4x4s parked there and I though these could be our saviors  We checked in and the opposite the room we were given I saw a room with three Bolivian guys. I gathered the courage and went to speak to them. I explained the situation and their reaction was amazing, they said let’s go! Let’s get your friend out! We were so relived, the two guys were drivers and the third was a tour guide. We jumped in the cars and went back into the white danger zone. Finding the car was a bit difficult as the lights were switched of and it was pitch black. We were carefully traversing the edge of the salt plain and then something unexpected happened… guess what… the 4×4 got stuck! We really didn’t expect that to happen! Here we were with the help and the hep gets stuck as well. I admit I was getting worried, as I really didn’t want to be the cause of these nice guys’ troubles! Fortunately the other 4×4 was still on solid ground and just close enough to use the tug. We were out! Great, but we still had to find Ricardo. I resolved to just walking and shouting and eventually found him. Unfortunately we still had the same problem, the cars couldn’t come close enough to help. So we tried lifting and pushing again and soon gave up as we were lacking the tools. The guide was quite funny, he was definitely more mouth than action, he also managed to step in a puddle and get his foot completely wet in the freezing cold, and we had to give him Alex’s spare socks. Again nothing worked and it was decided that the same party would return next day at 5 am with more tools.

We left Ricardo again and went back to the hostel to have some food and get some sleep. We sat together with the guys and got them beers as a sign of appreciation. They asked us straight away if we have eaten and when we said no they insisted on sharing their food with us. Legends! We sat together for an hour or so listening to the stories about the devil which lives in the Salar. At midnight we went to sleep to get up at the crack of down. Sleep didn’t come that easily as I think we both were rather stressed.

I woke up before the alarm at 4:30 am and was ready for action. At 5am we woke the guys up and we were off to collect any possible tools to help getting the car out. It was still dark and we had to use torches. At 5:30 am we were all set to go. We got to the car and were happy to find Ricardo breathing and not completely frozen. It was cold! My feet were freezing in warm socks and hiking boots and that says something. We started to work using all the tools we had, lifting the wheels, putting wood and metal underneath, pushing, pulling and doing everything to get the poor thing out! Every failing attempt was getting me down… We were working for about an hour when our friend Lolo appeared to take pictures of the sunrise. We again asked him to help and oh miracle the car started to move! And it was out!!! What a feeling! I honestly think that if it wasn’t for my pushing skills the car would still be there ;)

We were so happy, it was indescribable! The interesting thing was the guys who helped us didn’t ask for money. It`s amazing the difference between people, in one day we met really nice genuine guys and greedy bastards.  We gave the guys 300 BOB as sign of appreciation. They left and Lolo was about to return back into the village. We mentioned that were driving back to Uyuni and he asked if we could take him and naturally we did.

The sunrise was amazing, the sea of incredible, eye hurting glistering wildness! To be honest I had enough of it by then and just wanted to get out, have a shower in the room we paid for and get out of Uyuni. After an hour and a half of driving we were out on solid ground and soon we were back in the hostel, exhausted but happy.

We had lunch and decided to leave soon after for Potosi, but first we had to wash the car as it was covered with salt, mud and dust.

We left the hostel in Quiaca at around 9am. I must say that the town did look a bit friendlier in the day light. We got a few things from the pharmacy, some petrol and moved on to the border crossing. The crossing looked a bit nuts as people kept crossing by foot, donkeys, cars, busses and I have no idea how they manage to control this flow of people.

Our side of the crossing was relatively calm and we hardly had to wait. Unfortunately an unpleasant surprise was waiting for me. Turned out that Russians need a visa for Bolivia… I got so relaxed with no visa needed for any countries we visited before…. Oh well, you live and you learn. But the issue was that I did check all visa requirements for South America and I couldn’t remember having to pay for the Bolivian visa. So, obviously I put a bit of a fight when the guy asked me to pay 50 USD.  After a few minutes of discussion he managed to tell me that the visa is free of charge in the embassy and if I want I can go back into Quiaca and get it, I could. The embassy was really close to the crossing and Ricardo kindly offered to drive me, but unfortunately the visa officer failed to share some important bit of information; it was a public holiday today in Argentina and the whole venture was a waste of time. How funny how the visa guy failed to give me this information. Oh well… We got back to the border, I paid my dumb fee and off we were into Bolivia. I have to mention again how lucky we were to meet Ricardo, as we didn’t have any bolivianos and would have had major issues paying for the visa if it wasn’t for him lending us some money…

As soon as we crossed the border I had a feeling that we entered a huge market. They sold everything there from electronics to fresh fruits and veg. We were advised not to stop in the border town and so we continued on to Tupiza. On the road we were stopped a couple of times by what looked like a DIY toll and had to pay various sums to the people in control. It was never much though, 5-10 bolivianos (0.5-1.00 EUR). The road to Tupiza was surprisingly good, paved all the way and easy to navigate. We got to Tupiza in about an hour. There we had to run a few errands: food, money and directions to Uyuni. The town of Tupiza looked really friendly and surprisingly European, very clean and bright. We got money without any problems, despite the worries we had. –finding food was easy as well. We settled for a rather touristy place, not willing to risk it with local places on the first day. The restaurant served Italian food and delicious fruit cocktails. Even the tourist place was really cheap we thought, comparing to Argentinian prices.

During our lunch we spoke with Ricardo regarding the plans for the journey, it looked like his plans were very similar to ours with the only difference being time. At this point we really didn’t mind traveling with him all the way, as it was fun for both parties. We shared our thoughts with Ricardo and he said that we are welcome to travel with him all the way to La Paz!

From now on our approximate rout was: Tupiza-Uyuni-Potosi-Sucre-Cochabamba-Samaipata-Parque Nacional ToroToro-La Paz. After La Paz we wanted to take a trip to the jungle and Ricardo was planning to explore the shores of Lake Titicaca.

With this in mind we started our journey to Uyuni and its famous salar (salt plains). On the next toll point Ricardo picked up some water and also some drink which looked dangerously green, since then we called it Plutonium. ;) Just some 5 km into the rout the road turned for the bad, unpaved and really not good, extremely windy but just as well amazingly beautiful. The scenery was changing every minute, from strange rock formation to idyllic villages. After one of the turns, we saw three people doing the same rout by push bikes. How crazy was that, the road was exhausting even by car while going up to about 4200 m! Fair play to them!

We were driving for about three hours when we reached the town of Atocha which marked a halfway milestone of our journey to Uyuni. The town wasn’t in any way spectacular, so we quickly got a few sweets for the road and continued. What was quite interesting is the train station, it was huge, with possibly ten tracks or more, quite unusual for a place of that size and that high up. It must have been used heavily in the earlier days.

We drove on. The road seemed endless, turning after turning and constant shaking. All part of the fun, we were in Bolivia after all. A few hours passed and it started to get dark. As we were approaching Uyuni the road improved, at least it was straight now and we happily increased the speed. I was trying to look for a hostel in our guide book when suddenly we went flying, not for long, but still. As the guys told me afterwards the road suddenly finished and dropped into the river, how great is that!!!Luckily I didn’t see the end of the road and therefore didn’t get scared ;) All was good, wheels in place and we could continue. We arrived in Uyuni at around 10pm. I can’t say that the place was nice, because it wasn’t ;) very dull structures which seemed unfinished. Later we realized that this is the Bolivian new style. We stop on the road to check the map and immediately some shady guy tried to open the car door. Really strange! We safely found the hostel, which wasn’t amazing or cosy, but had all we needed, hot water shower and bed. After settling in we ventured to look for some food and relatively easy found the main street with many eateries. We had a good meal and not a watery beer called Potosina, never again. When we left the restaurant the Argentinian time showed 11:30pm and so we decided for an early start next day. A minute later we saw a street clock which showed 1:30am to our big surprise, funnily enough it didn’t occur to any of us that the time should be one hour less if anything ;) Haha, the clock was wrong of course and next day we were up by 7 am and ready for adventures.