Uyuni & the Train Graveyard

  Uyuni, Bolivia Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Uyuni is a tiny town with a train graveyard....! With big, wide, dusty streets. It's another desert town and there really isn't much here. Probably the same now as it's always been. So why come here at all? Well it's a staging post ready for where we are heading next. The Salt Flats. That's really all everyone else is doing here too. Either they are waiting to go or have just returned. It's not a town to linger in. We are really excited about visiting the Salt Flats but time to slow it down for a couple of days first and after our arrival in almost dark, we managed to find a hotel that had a bath in the room. The water wasn't very hot but nether-the-less we were determined to sit in a bath. It had been months since we'd had a bath and we just wished the water had been warmer - instead we sat there shivering. This was to be just a one night stop in this hotel as we had a plan. The afternoon of our second day we were going by taxi to another hotel a bit further away for a luxury 2 night spa break. Oh yes we could smell the chlorine in the jacuzzi already! We popped along to see the lovely people at Red Planet tours, paid for our Salt Flat tour and they booked us a taxi to get to the hotel. Our chins nearly hit the floor when they told us the price of the taxi - £30 for a 1/2 hour ride! We had gone that length of time in an aeroplane for only £25. This is extortion! They know we can't walk there and the local taxi drivers are taking advantage. Once we realised we were stuck with the price and there was no getting away from it, we hastily remade our plans as originally we had planned to get a taxi back to Uyuni before heading out on the Salt Flats on Friday. At that price we couldn't afford the return journey and the Red Planet lady came up with a plan. So at 1:30pm Mr Extortionate Taxi Driver arrived to pick us up. All our luggage safely in his car we headed northwest out of the town to the train graveyard. The Salt Flat tour normally makes this the first stop of the day but by doing this stop today in the taxi, The Red Planet tour could pick us up from our hotel and save us the journey back into town. Perfect! We had seen many many pictures of this from other travellers but now it was our turn. Here are some bits of info about it from Wiki The Train Graveyard is just 3 km outside Uyuni. In the past, the town served as a distribution hub for trains carrying minerals to the Pacific Ocean ports. The train lines were built by British engineers who arrived near the end of the 19th century and formed a large community in Uyuni. The engineers had been invited here by British-sponsored Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway Companies. Rail construction started in 1888 and was encouraged by the then Bolivian President Aniceto Arce, who believed Bolivia would flourish with a good transport system, but it was also constantly sabotaged by the local indigenous people who saw it as an intrusion into their lives. construction ended in 1892. The trains were mostly used by the mining companies which in the 1940s, collapsed, partly due to the mineral depletion. Many trains were abandoned in Uyuni creating the train cemetery.  There are talks to build a museum out of the cemetery but if the rest of Bolivia is anything to go by - they will spend a lot longer talking about it before they will get around to doing anything about it! Well it was a strange place. All the trains seemed to be old steam trains which made it seem all the more sad. All these once beautiful steam trains stripped of anything remotely valuable and left to rust along ancient, bent rails. Jody was instantly transported to Mid-World where Roland and his kha-tet were walking the path of the beam to find and save the rose. If you have no idea what we are talking about then you have never read Stephen King's Dark Tower series but I believe they are starting to make a film of it soon with Idris Elba as the character of Roland. We just hope they come here for part of the filming as it is a perfect match for Mid-World. Anyway we digress. We spent about 45 minutes here (got to get our moneys worth out of this taxi). We were both looking forward to arriving at our next stop so no time to loose. Onward Mr Extortionate Taxi Driver - and don't spare the horses!