Uyuni, Bolivia / 3 day Jeep Tour (Salt Flats and Desert)

Before I start this next section, I would like to inform you that buses in Bolivia are horrible and that whenever you have the opportunity, you should take the train. Our bus for Uyuni was supposed to leave at 7pm, yet at 7pm it was not there. When we asked at 8pm where the bus was they told us it was coming. When we asked at 9pm where the bus was they told us it had broke down and they had sent another one. The bus finally came at 9:30pm (so really, I could have done the road of death and not have missed the bus) and we finally left at 10pm. At 12:30am the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. (The ride from La Paz and Uyuni is 12 hours). After about 30 minutes of attempting to fix the bus, the 2 mechanics on the bus decided to give up and go to the back of the bus to sleep. First off, I don’t know why they need 2 mechanics, but apparently neither of them knew anything because when we walked outside to see what was going on, all the parts of the engine were completely separated and laying on the ground as the 2 mechanics slept on the bus. Luckily, on the bus there was a Dutch woman who had done nursing work in third world countries the last 30 years and knew how to deal with situations like that. She yelled at the bus drivers and told him to contact his boss (he actually didn’t have a cell phone or any way of contacting him so she asked other Bolivians on the bus to call him on their phone) and got the mechanics in line by ordering them what do. Eventually we got a hold of the man in charge of the bus company who told us that they only had one more operating bus which is in Uyuni and is coming to pick us up and will take us back to there. After 6 hours of waiting, after about 8 Bolivians on the bus decided to hitchhike back to La Paz and right before we had given up hope of another bus coming and were about to take a Taxi back to La Paz (we had only experienced Bolivians lying to us over and over again throughout our entire trip so we weren't sure if a bus was actually going to come or not) …another bus came at 7am.

Originally, we were supposed to arrive in Uyuni at 8am right before the tours leave to the salt flats, so again we had another day wasted on the trip. But the next day we started off on our 3 day Jeep Tour through the salt flats and deserts of Bolivia through a great company called Andrea Tours. Overall there is way more driving than actual sightseeing on the tour, but the sites definitely make the drive worth it. The first day we saw the salts flats where we were able to take some really cool perspective pictures because the land was so flat and the background was all white. The second day we saw all sorts of different colored and multi-colored lakes, a couple volcanoes, a bunch of flamingos, cute vicunas, some cool rock formations, Arbol Piedra (a rock that looks like a tree) and Salvador Dali desert. The third day we saw some geysers and hot springs before driving 12 hours back to Uyuni and leaving at 10:30pm on the train to Salta, Argentina. Sadly for me, on the third day of the jeep tour I started feeling really sick around lunch time and as soon as I got off the jeep in Uyuni, I ran to our hostel and barely missed the toilet as I puked all over the bathroom floor...food poisoning. For the next 24 hours I was throwing up and had really bad diarrhea all throughout our 10 hour train to the border and 7 hour bus ride to Salta.