Planet Boliva (part 2)

(for the first post on Planet Bolivia click here)
Luck is an essential ingredient in everyday life, and even more important when traveling abroad. Its absence can be extremely difficult, though, in a third world country. We had great deals of luck for about 4.5 months in a row, no big problems arose, Pachamama was especially good to us. But when we got to Bolivia we run out of it...
After Isla del Sol, next on our plans was Salar de Uyuni - the great salt flatlands in the south of Bolivia and the largest in the world. While looking for an agency to book our tour with, we heard that there is no electricity in Uyuni, the town where all the tours starts at. We also checked the buses in the bus station and heard that the road was blocked because of demonstrations. Since knowledge is power, we felt strong when we entered the agency of Adolfo Andino and asked him if the lack of electricity and the road block are real problems for tourists going to the Salar. "Not at all!", said Adolfo, "The electricity is no problem and the bus only need to do a 10 minute detour to pass the road block. Only today I had a group going to the Salar for three days!".
Confident that we checked everything, we booked our three days tour with him. But in Planet Bolivia, honesty is not always the best policy. When we got to the bus that night, we discovered that the block is real and the bus has to take a different, much longer, route. Soon after starting driving (with a fashionable hour delay), the bus stopped and an official (a policeman? we don't know) got on the bus and asked if anyone has a bus driving license, because our driver didn't have one. Half an hour later things were miraculously solved and the bus started moving. Whether the license appeared from the thin air, or another driver came to the rescue, or maybe the policeman got a nice tip for his services, we just don't know. What we do know is that it might have been better if the bus had to return. The rest of the drive was a mystery: All through the ride we couldn't decide whether it is more cold or more bumpy. We do know that all night long we had ice on the window, from the inside!
The "maximum 10 minutes detour" turned to be a 5 hours delay and we got to Uyuni 2 hours after the tour should have started. We weren't late, though, because how can you be late to a tour that isn't starting at all?
Uyuni didn't have electricity for 4 days before we got there, and no one knew when and if it is coming back. Since fuel pumps doesn't work without electricity, there was no fuel and therefore no tours. When we asked when was the last tour the answer was "4 days ago". When we wanted to talk to Adolfo, the guy from La Paz that told us that there are tours, we were sent to call from the call center across the street.
After Adolfo promised to talk with Sandra, we didn't hear from him for the rest of day. By that time, Lilya was so pissed off that she wanted to shout at Adolfo as loud as she could, but he didn't answer our calls for the rest of the day.
We had to spend a full day in Uyuni. If there is a god forsaken place, it must be Uyuni. There is nothing to do there, but freeze in the empty streets. At night we saw that some of the lights are on and went back to Sandra, that promised us that the tour will start on the next day.
We spent the night at the coldest room you can imagine. We had to sleep inside our sleeping bags with all our worm clothes. We couldn't even read because it was just too cold to keep the hands outside the sleeping bags.
No tour started the next morning, of course, because the electricity was gone by the morning. We looked for another travel agency and found one that had fuel and hundreds recomandations in hebrew on the walls. After Lilya finally got to shout at Adolfo, he promised to give us back our money in La Paz, so went to book with that company (Ripley).
But there was another problem. ATMs need electricity in order to work, and since we paid all our money to Adolfo in advance (in La Paz), we didn't have enough money to pay for the tour. Oren had to run all over the town in order to find the bank which was open. The town center is not that big, but you try running at 3800 meters above sea level! After standing in line, running again to bring the passport, standing in line again, moving to another line and going back in line because the teller didn't have enough money in the drawer, Oren was able to get some money to pay for the tour.
The 3 days option was booked so we took the two days option and were sent to sit in a jeep full with people that did only one day in the Salar. Only later we understood that there is almost no difference between the two days and the one day tour (except for the minor fact that two days cost double the price of a one day). We visited the old train cemetery next to Uyuni, where we took pictures with trains having Einstein's equation (for Oren) and Newton's equation (For Lilya) on them. After few useless stops we crossed the Salar with the jeep until we got to the place where we ate lunch.
When we were about to leave the lunch place, we were told that the two of us are not leaving. Instead we were left at the cheep hostel without any explanations. Another couple that took our place in the jeep explained to us that tomorrow we can climb to the volcano next to the hostel. No guide or jeep stayed with us.
Other groups came after that but their guides stayed with them, even though they paid the same. During dinner we felt like abandoned children sitting alone, apart from the other groups.
On the next day we saw that the other groups had also jeeps that took them half way up. The climb itself was completely pointless since the view from 100 meters above the hostel was the same as the view we saw after 3 hours of climbing.
The only point of interest on the climb was a cave with 6 real mummies, 1500 years old. The family that died there preserved well because of the dry weather and the whole scene was very creepy. The cave was locked, of course, and we had to wait for a group with a guide to open it for us.
We got picked up after the lunch by the jeep that brought two new, German girls that were as surprised as us when they understood what was happening. We took their place and joined the other people in the jeep, all Israelis, to the Island of fish (Isla del Pescada) - a small hill in the middle of the salt plane covered with giant cactuses, some taller than 10 meters. The sun was good to us (Pachamama is a friend of us since Chile) and the place really looked amazing. The problems started again when we left. Our driver didn't really knew the way and the jeep got stacked inside the mud. We tried to help pushing it out but only got stinky mud all over our clothes. The bus back to La Paz was about to leave at 8 but it looked like we are not going to make it. Some of our new friends for trouble were religious, so they appealed to God in the sky and asked for a little consideration. After all, they are eating only Kosher food, in the one continent you just don't want any limitations on your food.
It probably helped, because we were rescued by another of the company's jeep just at 10 minutes to 8. On the way back to Uyuni the company's manager, which was with us in the jeep, talked to all our bus companies, making them wait for us to arrive.
One of our bus company`s buses did stay and wait but, of course, not the right one. We looked for our places on the bus, but found only other that were available and sat there. It suddenly became very important for the company that we'll move to the other bus. We still don't understand why, since they had no problem picking up random passengers that waited on the way and just sat in any place they had on the bus (on the stairs, floor and one on the other). Since it was that important, The bus stopped in the middle of nowhere and one of the company's guys came on board and yelled at us to move to the other bus "in one minute". They didn't even wanted to transfer our bags to the other bus and we had to yell back in order to get our bags. Our sits where taken in the new bus as well, so we had to sit separately. Lilya was the unlucky one, because she had to sit next to a huge French guy that was really unhappy by the fact he had to share the two sits with another person. All night long he pushed Lilya, if he was not too busy with complaining. When he wanted to get up, he found a good use for Lilya, as a shelf, and put his blanket on her.
In addition, the window kept opening up every two minutes, letting the freezing air go inside. That could have really destroyed the possibility to sleep, had there been one. But sleeping was not an option since the road was so bumpy that you had the same chances to fall asleep on a firing machine-gun.
We were so happy when we arrived to La-Paz. Even the fact that we had to fight for our bags didn't ruin that. We paid double that night and took a room in a hotel. Luckily enough, double the price of a hostel is not that expansive in La-Paz.

Tip 1: Never plan tight schedule in Bolivia. Keep enough spare days for any problem that might come out. You should also always expect those problems, because at some time it will happen.
Tip 2: Always take your sleeping bag with you to the drive to the Salar. It can be a very cold night.
Tip 3: We were very disappointed by the lack of professionalism of the following 3 tourist agencies: Adolfo Andino in Sagarnaga st. in La Paz, Sandra in Uyuni and Ripley in Uyuni as well.