May 15

Due to flight schedules we were not booked to leave La Paz until May 17. 

Totally serendipitously Thea’s cousin Zia had asked (prior to the trip) “Are you going to the salt flats at Uyuni while you are in Bolivia?” 

So of course I had to look and thus found  that, yes, we could get there and back and still keep our La Paz departure. 

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so much when we were up at 4 am (again!) to get to the airport. 

At least we were able to get coffee at the airport. 

Uyuni was a stark contrast to the colour and bustle of La Paz. Dusty, almost desolate streets. Square ramshackle buildings. One could easily imagine this was where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made their last stand. But this hid a colourful interior. 

We had the taxi drop us at the meeting point for our tour but, as it was not open yet, we went in search of, well , coffee of course. 

And found a lovely colourful cafe. 

Back at the tour office all seemed a little chaotic and unreassuring. Everyone else who entered was on a three day tour. Water to fill our bottles that we actually didn’t have to empty for our flight? A hand wave outside and vaguely around the corner. Departure time and itinerary? Unclear. How many on our tour? 🤷‍♂️ 

Eventually, reassuringly our vehicle arrived with already four other passengers on board (picked up from where?) and away we went.  

First stop was the railway graveyard. Apparently Uyuni was a  transportation hub for trains in South America beginning at the end of the 19th century. Plans to expand and build an even bigger network of trains out of Uyuni in the 19th century were halted by the collapse of the mining industry in the 1940s. Many imported trains from Britain were abandoned outside Uyuni creating the mass train cemetery

Anthea opined “this was the real reason we came on this trip isn’t it?”  

But no….