La Paz and The Salt Flats

We left Lake Titicaca headed for La Paz – the capital city of Bolivia – on a local bus.  It was different from our previous bus rides in that at one point we had to ferry across a narrow strip of the lake to connect to the highway on the opposite shore.  We had to get out of the bus and take a boat across while the bus drove onto its own ferry and was brought across separately.  After another 2 hours we were descending on the city of La Paz.  La Paz is a pretty cool town because, again, it’s really high.  It is one of the highest cities in the world (altitude 12,000ft) and surrounded by beautiful snow-capped mountains.

Our first afternoon in La Paz was spent doing the thing we hate most about traveling long term…planning.  What we’ve found most annoying is that as soon as we show up to an exciting place we have to be planning our escape.  The reason for this is that in poorer countries the bus stations are the best place to do your homework.  You’ve got all the companies in front of you and you can compare bus times, prices, and hours traveling.  It’s nearly impossible to find any accurate information on the internet and it’s definitely not possible to reserve bus seats online.  So naturally when we arrive at the main bus terminal of a city we should think ahead about leaving the town to save ourselves an unnecessary trip back to the station just to research.  You can buy tickets outside of the bus station from travel agents and hostels we stay at, but they always charge you ridiculous commissions when they sell you tickets so we prefer to cut out the middleman to save money.  In most countries everything is negotiable and we’re always asking people how much they paid for things just to see the variety of what they’ll charge people as well as whether we got hosed or not.

That being said, the following day we were set to enjoy an experience that’s truly unique to La Paz, mountain biking “The World’s Most Dangerous Road!”  This road gets its title because there were more deaths from driving this road each year than any other road in the world.  Until 2006 that is, when they built a newer, safer road.  The death road is rarely used by vehicles anymore opening the doors for an adventure mountain biking market for La Paz.  We chose a company (there are tons) and the next day we were in for literally an all-day affair.

Barricuda Biking picked up a group of us from our hostel at 8am and drove us to the top of a nearby mountain to start the day off.  We started biking at an altitude of 15,000ft (higher than Taylor and I had ever been in our lives!) and we descended 11,000 vertical feet throughout the day.  It was amazing!  We biked 42 miles total with 95% of it downhill.  The first half was on nice, smooth pavement to get us warmed up and used to the bikes before the more dangerous second half.  After a snack break we got to where the new road and “death road” split…we took the latter, of course.

The death road is actually a beautiful, winding one lane road through amazingly green vegetation where one side completely drops off the map.  Honestly, the road is plenty wide for bikes.  It’s the consequences of a mistake being so deadly that keeps you focused the entire way down.  In fact, there have been 19 biker deaths on the road since they opened it commercially with the most recent one just 2 months ago!  The road is lined with white crosses everywhere for loved ones lost.  All of this adds to the excitement and seriousness, of course.  Taylor was definitely a bit nervous for the day because she’s a great road biker but had never spent much time on a mountain bike before.  She did great though and neither of us had any falls throughout the trip.

There were tons of scenic stops and snack breaks along the ride.  At the end we arrived in a town where we had a late lunch, showers, and time to unwind from the stressful ride.  We didn’t realize the scariest part of the entire day was about to begin…driving back up the death road in our van.  It’s crazy to think that constant two-way traffic used to be normal on this road less than 10 years ago?  If I went off the cliff on my bike that’s one thing because I was in charge, I made a mistake, and that’s on me.  It’s a totally different thing when you’re in a van on a very narrow road at the complete mercy of the driver.  This became far too real as we came around a blind curve on our way up only to be face to face with a massive bus!  Thankfully we were on the inside against the cliff wall so that had we collided we wouldn’t have gone off the edge, but we literally almost T-boned a bus off the death road.  Everyone in our bus was screaming…except the locals…they were laughing?  We returned to our hostel at 9pm after a long, comical, eventful ride back.

The following day we walked around the city of La Paz exploring until our 7pm bus to Uyuni, Bolivia, home of the largest salt flats in the entire world (4,086 sq mi)!  We’d heard horror stories about the night bus to Uyuni having no heat and how deathly cold it can be in the dead of winter at those altitudes.  Many people sit on the bus in their sleeping bags even.  We have none.  So we layered up as best we could and prepared for the misery.  Thankfully it wasn’t as bad as we’d heard.  The bus actually came equipped with thick blankets on every seat.  It was pretty scary though as all of the windows of the bus were completely iced over and you couldn’t see anything happening outside.  We had no idea if we were dangerously close to falling off cliffs or not, but it was maybe better that way?

We got dropped off in Uyuni on a freezing cold morning at 7am needing to use the bathroom (buses won’t let you use their bathroom once they’ve reached the destination?) and find a company to take a Salt Flat Tour with.  Being 7am there was nothing open, including bathrooms.  It’s funny how we never think about where we’re going to go to the bathroom next back home…in third-world countries it’s a constant thought because there aren’t many public bathrooms and they’re never free.

We booked our salt flat tour with a company that had been recommended to us and we were relieved to see that the list of others in our group included all English-speaking travelers within our age range.  One name looked vaguely familiar to us…but could it be the same Laura from Germany we had met nearly four weeks earlier in Quito?  Of course it could!  And that is the world of backpacking we have come to love!

Our tour was scheduled to leave at 10:30am but, as South American time goes, our van departed an hour late.  We were so thankful for the sunshine to arrive as it was still a crisp 40 degrees outside.  And thus we began our tour of the salt flats.  Our tour started with a visit to one of Uyuni’s favorite tourist attractions, the train graveyard.  We were all a little confused as to what this had to do with the salt flats but we enjoyed taking artsy pictures with the trains nonetheless.

We then drove for about an hour before reaching the famous scenery we had heard so much about, and it was just as picturesque as we’d hoped.  We spent a few hours exploring around a cactus island, eating lunch in the sunshine, and then trying our luck at the famous “perspective pictures” we had been scheming for days.  Our sister-in-law, Caroline, would have had a hay-day here as a photographer, whereas we came away frustrated novices.  It’s harder than it looks, folks, but we still managed to capture a few good ones!

After driving around looking at more scenery for the remainder of the day we arrived at our accommodation for the night, a salt hotel.  That’s right, a hotel made almost entirely of salt!  We couldn’t believe it either and it was a unique experience, to say the least.  The salt had a way of keeping in the warmth (which we were thankful for) and the floor was a soft salt base (very sand-like).  We ate dinner with our group and finished off the night with some nice red wine and a few games of Mafia.

We had originally hoped for a three-day salt flat tour but due to the recent snow we were only allowed two days.  The second day ended up dragging on a bit and included a lot of driving (and a flat tire) but we had a great time hanging out with our group and getting to know our new friends from all over the world.  The scenery around Uyuni is magnificent so our photo album is full, as usual!

That night we booked a night train with 6 of our new friends to get us to the Argentinian border the following morning.  Next stop, wine country….