03/09/2019 – Travel day La Paz to Uyuni, Bolivia

We didn’t sleep well as heard groups of people getting up at various times in the night, I guess leaving to catch buses away from La Paz. We got up at around 0700 and packed the rest of our things up before checking out and hopping into a taxi that our hostel host hailed for us. We drove through busy morning traffic to the bus station where we found our bus company and checked in. We got onto the coach, a little old but with reclining seats and decent leg room. We spotted a couple of other non-locals sat amongst us, who we ended up doing the whole days journey alongside. We set off for the city of Oruro, both Josh and I sleeping through podcasts for most of the 4 hour journey. The only podcast we both really agree on is desert island discs, otherwise Josh loves a scientific and evidence based podcast, whereas I love interviews and have more of a social interest, so we tend to put our own headphones in and disappear into our own worlds for a little bit. We got dropped at Oruro and then found a taxi across town to the train station, where we sorted our tickets, used the toilets, and bought some snacks for the onward journey. About an hour later we boarded the two carriage train to Uyuni. It was a full train and most, but not all, appeared to be tourists. It was comfortable, and Josh and I set ourselves up with the ipad and sessioned The Crown on Netflix for most of the journey, with a little interlude of the Derren Brown Desert island discs podcast. Quite early on in the journey we passed a huge lake filled with flamingos. More flamingos than I have ever known in one place, it was magical, and I used the binoculars to get a better view! We bought a veggie sandwich and shared some Pringles, both absolutely starving having not really eaten all day. Finally we pulled into Uyuni at about 21:30 and walked through what looked like the main street. Some locals helped point us in the right direction for our hostel and before long we were being shown into our double room for the night. As it was quite late already we dumped our bags and headed back into the town for a quick dinner. It was absolutely freezing outside. When we got back to the hostel we thankfully had a little electric heater that we plugged in straight away, and the shower was lovely and hot. We tucked ourselves into bed and fell asleep by about midnight.