May 16 – On the road again.

We found out last night that we would not be taking a night bus to Uyuni, but instead would take a combination of bus and train to make our way down during the day. This meant those who had just arrived in La Paz had one less day to see the city, and this caused an issue….especially for those who just put their laundry in and didn’t think they could get it back before we headed out. Needless to say, their reaction was not that pleasant, and it created an unusual first impression, one that I’m sure they didn’t want to give (Hokee mentioned it a few times that he doesn’t usually react in this way). But in the end we had a good night of bonding at dinner, where it took them about 45 minutes to get the food out….the last time I recommend a restaurant to the group that’s for sure.

The next day we had a rather late start for a full day of traveling. We left the hotel around 10, and had around 11 hours of traveling down south. The first bus was to the town of Oruro where Jen regaled me with her life story; she told me it would only take until we got out of La Paz, but it did managed to keep us entertained and occupied for much longer than the ride out of La Paz. We actually arrived in Oruro an hour ahead of schedule, but the bus driver decided he would spend this time trying to decide if we were headed to the bus station or the train station. We must have spent a good half hour sitting on the bus in plane view of the train station waiting to be let off.

Because the bus took so long to figure out where to drop us off we had less than an hour to catch our train down to Uyuni, which meant we had the world’s fastest lunch, and with the amount of food they gave us, we were forced to eat like our life depended on it. Somehow we managed to move after lunch and climb on the train. As most of the west coast of South America is mountainous, trains are a rarity, so this was quite the luxury. After leaving the station we made our way around Lago Uru Uru which was filled with flamingos. As the lake is very shallow, they raised the tracks a bit and ran them through the middle of the lake, so our view of the flamingos was that much closer. Soon after leaving the lake we saw a beautiful sunset out one side of the train as we made our way down the expansive plains that run through the middle of Bolivia’s highlands. As we still had another 5 hours on the train, and all the movies were in Spanish without any subtitles, we spent the rest of our train ride playing cards and games, after we figured out how to turn the chairs around to make it a little easier to converse with each other.

We arrived in Uyuni at around 11 at night and were greeted by the cold Bolivian mountain air and were all pitying the people who were boarding the train for the return trip at night, there was no way that would have been a warm trip. But the first thing we had to do was figure out how to get food since none of us have eaten in about 10 hours. Luckily, JuanLuis made a call to our hotel to ask them to keep the restaurant open for a few extra hours so that we could eat. After our long ride, it was a welcome site and provided me with a unique opportunity to talk with the owner, an expat from Boston who moved down to Uyuni (a dead end one horse town with nothing in it before he opened this restaurant) when his wife finished school in Boston.