To wrap up the tour we had a solid five hours of travel to get back to Uyuni, but it was broken up into sensible chunks.
The first was to a village for lunch, where we caught back up to the other car. A couple of llamas were grazing the grass near a mountain fed stream.
Then another rock stop. These formations were about 4-5 stories tall.
The final stop was the town of San Cristobal, a community that supports a nearby silver mine.
The church in the background, along with other elements of the town, was moved about 20Km due to the mine expanding. It was rebuilt in its current location brick by brick to replicate the original.
We got back into Uyuni about 1715 and were dropped at the tour company office. Most others had stored their larger luggage at the office. Some were on night buses to La Paz that evening. I headed back to the Casa de Sal hotel where I’d left my luggage and enjoyed a little more luxurious shower and bed.
No altitude sickness concerns at all during the tour; certainly helped by having already spent a few days in both Cusco and then La Paz. Further aided by having had Diamox tablets available from before proceeding to altitude from Lima.
Final thoughts: I guess the extra USD50 for the full tour was justified, as the 2-day tour offered as a replacement wouldn’t have taken in the full Andes experience. I have seen some pretty significant lines (stretching maybe a kilometre or two) for petrol so I guess there was enough in it for the tour company to suggest what they did.
The other thing to note is that until the middle of this year we were getting ~5 BOB to the AUD. As they’ve removed some currency controls we’re now getting 8-8.5 to the AUD so Bolivia is quite cheap to visit at the moment.
Next was to head down to the tropical Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
