Train Cemetery, Uyuni

I made a truck load of pictures out there and either they all came out really good or the high altitude is affecting my judgement. There was no way they would have all fited in this little journal entry. So I created a special slide show with a lot more of them. Make sure to check it out.

After more than a month in Sucre and intensive spanish classes and reading five Harry Potter books in spanish it was finally time to hit the road again. As much as I loved Sucre I was really anxious to get going again. My first destination was to be Uyuni. I decided to skip Potosi for now as I left right before the weekend and not to many workers are there on weekends. So I decided to go to Uyuni first and get acclimatised while waiting for two belgians I met in Sucre to meet up and do the Salar de Uyuni tour with.

I got really lucky and got the last seat on the bus from Potosi to Uyuni. And while waiting for the bus there, at good two dozen people came by the office asking desperately if there are seats left. It's good to be lucky I guess.. ;-). On the bus from Sucre to Uyuni we had a tire explode on us, which was a welcome chance to get out of the bus and watch the scenery a bit, have a smoke and stretch my legs a bit. Bolivians are not quite so tall and it really shows in the buses. The seats are so close to each other that I barely fit. And the person in front of me can't recline their seat at all. The bus from Potosi was less eventful and unfortunately over night, so that I didn't get to see a lot of the scenery at all. Finally arrived in Uyuni at 2:30 in the morning and was very happy when the hostel I wanted to go had a room available. The altitude didn't seem to affect me to much as neither in Potosi, which is at 4000m, nor on the bus ride or on arrival in Uyuni I had any of the symptoms like headache, nausea, vomiting. And I fell asleep like a baby so didn't seem to be affected by Insomnia either.

I had two and a half days of time to myself while waiting for the belgians. Something I was very happy about and amply used to rehash my spanish grammar and vocabulary as well as finally work on my travel webpage again. Uyuni is a very strange place. It's in the middle of nowhere on 3600 meters (~12000 feet). It has a very frontier town kinda feel to it. The houses are very bare bone, alot with tin roofs, held down with big rocks. Very bare. It is located at the border of a huge flat deserty plane that is as arid as the town itself. Big mountains break the horizon at different points in the distance. Really a scenery like I have never seen before.

The town itself, even though it seemed much porer than both Sucre and Samaipata actually seemed to have no beggars at all. On the other hand it had a mind boggling number of gringitos. And it was super low tourist season in december. Can't imagine how it would be during high season. On the other hand I had just spent a couple of months off the main gringo trail, so I guess I just wasn't used to such a gringo to locals ratio. There didnn't seem to be much going on in Uyuni besides tourism. Uyuni is the main base to do tours of the world famous Salar de Uyuni, at 100 by 120km the largest salt flat of the world, and the out of this world colored lagoons and rock formations further down south towards chile and argentina.

These tours are considered by most travelers one of the highlights of their South America trip and figure in the top three lists of many of them together with Foz de Iguacu, Machu Pichu, Ciudad Perdida, Pantanal and Angel Falls. A newspaper article I read while in Sucre mentioned that Uyuni is one of the three main destinations for international tourists, together with La Paz and Lake Titicaca. On the other hand it is not very popular with Bolivians themselves. Not really surprising seeing that a the 3,4 day tours go between 60 and 120 US dollars. Way to expensive for the meager income of Bolivians. Apparantly their favorite destination is by far Sucre.

One of the few things that Uyuni actually does have beside the tours is the train cemetery, barely one kilometer out of town and easily reachable by foot. Out there in the arid and dry plane lies the final resting place of a good dozen steam engines, most of which must be a good hundred years old as well as probably some fifty wagons of all kind of types. Most of the engines and wagons have been dismanteled by local people as much as possible for reuse. Something that still seemed to be going on as when I walked out there a elderly boliviano made his way back pushing his bike to which he had strapped a few sheets of metal he must have found out in the train cemetery somewhere.

Besides the old man I encountered quite a few other local bolivianos out there enjoying the spectacular and unique experience that the train cemetery is. A family with kids on their sunday stroll. Another older couple doing the same. As well as a few local teenagers climbing around on top of the engines and sharing a couple of beers. And judging from all the graffiti on the wagons and engines the place seems to be very popular indeed with both local and gringito teenagers.

I went out there in the late afternoon and started to take a few pictures and just walk around and take in the surreal atmosphere of that place right outside of town and bordering the vast and arid plane. Marveling at all these old steam engines just sitting out there trying to rust away. Something that seems to not work so well. Probably the deserty altiplano is just way to dry almost all year long to get a good rusting going. The state of some of these engines and wagons is really remarkable. Most damage seems to come from human dismantling efforts and not from the rusting process.

Another rather sad aspect of the cemetery and even more so the walk there and back was the garbage just lying around. Everywhere were little plastic bags making noise in the wind that had entangled themselves in the tiny little bushes. Which beside some little grasses and some weird flat and dry moss kinda thing seems to be the only thing able to grow out there. The local garbage dump seems to be just outside of town. Barely a couple of meters deep and of course the heavy altiplano winds pick up the plastic bags and blow them till they get entangled in the little bushes.

After my intial stroll around the place and taking a few pictures I climbed up the last steam engine, sat down and just took in the scenery for a couple of hours, took a few more pictures and was just waiting for the sun to set. I had thought that the more redish evening light and if I get lucky even a nice and spectacular sunset would work very, very well with the slightly rusty trains and the brownish earth. My hitch was right on and the closer it got to sunset the more alive came the colors and the place became more and more alive.