Today is a 3.5 hour bus ride to Oruro to catch the train to Uyuni, another 7 hours away. Except it is a 5 hour bus ride, with a grumpy guide who doesn’t want to be working on Christmas Eve, he wants to be home cooking dinner for 25 of his family. Oh, and it’s a 5 hour ride without a baño break. In the oldest bus they could find. Whilst I don’t have a Bolivian farmer and his wife perched on my knees with assorted livestock, it’s not far away from it. My seat has stains on it reminiscent of the person who didn’t make it to the a much needed baño break. The highpoint of the trip is watching a local family smuggle their dog on to the bus wrapped up in a blanket like a baby. It is a relief to wave the guide off at 2pm when the bus finally arrives at the train station in Oruro. I suspect he is meant to make sure that I get on the train okay at 3:30pm, but I just can’t be bothered humouring him any longer.
Street graffitti in Oruro.
The train is a step from the bus, it has two baños in the carriage (muy importante), and a chicken roll and Sprite is handed out after about 4 hours. The seats are comfortable, and I happily have no one sitting next to me, so some additional leg room helps.
In the Galapagos, we lamented the absence of flamingos in their ‘usual’ lagoons. Well, I’ve found them, they’ve migrated to a rapidly shrinking lagoon outside Oruro – there were hundreds of flamingos in the lagoon, if not thousands.
It is 10:30pm on Christmas Eve when the train finally pulls into Uyuni, with the usual South American scrum process in place for collection of luggage (ie everyone crowds into a tiny room to claim luggage and hit a bottleneck at the door with the guy collecting tickets. I am met by my guide for the next 5 days, Luisa, who I immediately like, and two other people that I assume are part of Luisa’s family. Off to the Hotel Girasoles, which is pleasantly rustic hotel to spent the night in before departing for the salt flats in the morning.
