Salar De Uyuni - A real adventure

A jeep tour to the world’s biggest salt desert is a must-do adventure for all the travelers in Bolivia and that was something that we wanted to experience as well. We had heard many stories of bad tours and accidents with jeeps and got the advice of not chosing the cheapest tour as is not always the best option. And did we listen to this advice at all... No! We did choose the cheapest we could find from a small company for 3-day trip together with 3 boys from Israel and yes it wasn't necessary the best option for this tour... 

The first day we left early in the morning and we were all pretty excited about the coming adventure. Our driver Hernan was also our guide of the tour and we also had a cook called Norma with us the whole time. Overall the views of the mountains and the nature were totally amazing! We saw many lamas, flamingos, donkeys and emus on the way and later we even tasted the meet of the lama. 

All the time we were getting higher and higher and the altitude was getting pretty intense. The first night we slept in a place located over 5000 meters above the see level and during the night it was freezing cold!  The electricity in the house worked with water power and when the temperature dropped below zero also the electricity stopped working. Also all of us could feel the effects of the altitude sickness with a light headache and dizziness and even a small exercise caused our heart beating like crazy and it was hard to breathe. Also one of the guys got fever that evening and was pretty much sick the rest of the whole journey.

The next morning we woke up already 4.30 and after five we were already on our way to our first stop - the hot springs. Swimming in the hot water was something that we definitely needed to get warm after the cold night. So after the breakfast and the relaxing swim on the pools we continued happy our trip to the next stop. However, this was when the problems started… 

First of all our jeep started to overheat and we had to stop every 5 km to cool the motor down. After about 8 stops and without finding a solution to the problem we were getting pretty annoyed by the situation. The fact that our driver Hernan could speak only Spanish made the communication pretty hard and after couple of hour’s frustrating moments we were already giving up from the hope that we would get anywhere that day…  

In some miracle way we did manage to get to our next stop to have some lunch but we were many hours behind from our schedule. Hernan was also getting pretty nervous to get us to our destination that evening and he was driving like crazy! When the sun went down we still had couple of hours driving ahead to our last stop of that day and Hernan decided to take a shortcut to win some time but that wasn’t such a good idea… 

As we turned to another sandy road Hernan noticed that it was a wrong way and he made a U-turn to get back to the main road and of course we got stuck on the muddy side road! Our jeep was supposed to be a 4-wheel drive but of course only the back tires were working and getting out of the mud was not that simple as it should have been with a proper jeep. So there we were whole group digging mud from the tires and trying to find some sand to help the tires to move better in the middle of nowhere in a pitch-dark cold weather only with couple of flashlights to guide our way... Even our cook started to cry because the situation seemed too desperate..

The situation was something unbelievable but the fact that we were all working really hard together and getting our hands dirty really made the group to get closer. We don’t know how many hours we were pushing the car out of the mud but eventually we did manage to get it back on the road again and we couldn’t be happier to continue our journey! It was already close to midnight when we arrived to our last stop (we were supposed to arrive there at 5pm if on schedule) and finished our dinner with well-deserved wine and we could finally laugh about the situation. 

The last morning we woke up again before the sunrise and head to the main point of the whole tour which was the actual salt desert. The sunrise over the desert was something incredible and definitely worth of the whole adventure! The whole desert was massive and we got some cool pictures with the group before ending the trip in the noon in a town called Uyuni. This trip was something that we would never forget and it’s definitely worth of a story!