We had already decided to take an overnight in this town at the end of our overland adventure but we arrived so tired that we extended it to another night. The guide books are not euphoric about Uyuni so we were not hoping for much more than a comfortable bed. Our hotel certainly lived up to its promise with attractive communal spaces, a reasonably well-appointed room (with a good bed) and constant hot water. The town actually surprised us with its wide roads (although they soon peter out into sandy and rutted tracks), a few interesting buildings and a pleasantly downbeat atmosphere. It is clearly used to getting an influx of travellers each afternoon, who mostly wait around for a night bus out of town. There are certainly a number of cafes on and around the main square that are keen to get their business. However, there are also lots of ordinary local people going about their normal business and paying little or no attention to all these gringos.

What was clear is that we really now seemed to be in archetypal Sudamerika. On our journey across, when we had seen local people, they were increasingly clearly of Andean origin and more (particularly women) were wearing traditional clothing. Outside our hotel was a local market in the street with rows of Bolivian women wearing their full skirts, aprons, woolly tights and several jumpers (they certainly wrap up well against the cold, even when it is warm) always with a hat, often the distinctive bowler hat perched on the top of their heads. They were mostly selling grains and seeds, dried beans and some fruit and vegetables. These were just laid out on the brightly coloured cloths that they use for so many purposes. They use these as shawls or tablecloths, for wrapping up goods and tying the ends to make a carrying handle or tying packages (or the odd baby) into a knapsack on their backs.

 At first we were surprised by the number of kids we saw with water pistols and then we saw some women selling bags of small balloons filled with water. The penny then dropped and we realised that carnaval will be at the weekend and the kids are beginning the customary water fights that we had read about. Largely these allow teenagers to flirt with each other, the boys showing their machismo and the girls squealing and getting very wet! We had seen a public service advert earlier on TV about saving water which used the image of a balloon of water going back into the tap, so we guess this must be the pattern all over Bolivia (if not beyond).

The local museum describes itself as el primero museo de la cuidad, which can be translated as either the first or the best museum in town. Since it was actually the only museum we guess it might well be true either way. It has a grab-bag of exhibits about the local area including a number of 'mummies' recovered from high in the Andes (see our blog from Salta, Argentina for info about why these children were left there). Some other small museums that we have gone to have had signs to say that they no longer display these human remains, out of respect, but Uyuni has no such qualms. It also had a number of old skulls showing how the indigenous peoples used to deliberately bind the skulls of high born children as they grew up so they would develop a pointed head. It’s only just occurred to us that the Andean love of pointed hats might well come from this! One interesting exhibit was a photo of the first geological exploration of the salt plains in the 1930s. It shows a truck looking remarkably similar to the old dumped truck that we saw yesterday in Colchani (see our last blog for a picture of it and make your own comparison!)

The only other ‘attraction’ in Uyuni is the train cemetary a little way out of town. We took a cab to visit this with Heather and Matt as even a short walk at these altitudes (and in the heat of the day) leaves you pretty exhausted. The site certainly lived up to Lonely Planet’s description of 'a huge rubbish strewn area'. The format was much more informal than we had imagined, instead of a bit of a museum we found a few lines of track full of half-dismantled locos, trucks and carriages.

Still, we had quite a good time clambering all over them and trying to identify some of the bits that lay all over the place. Had we been closer to home there were quite a few bits that would certainly have made an appearance as objets in our Ingle Row garden! It’s a shame though that the town has not made more of the resource. It stands at the end of the railway line and has a number of old locos and railway paraphanalia in the street outside the station. You can’t help thinking that a bit of effort could turn all this stuff into enough interest to persuade some tourists who currently pass straight through the town to stay the extra day.

Some may find normal life here a little difficult though. The first morning in Uyuni we woke up to discover that there had been a power cut during the night and we were still without power. It was not too much of a problem to us, as it gets light early and during the course of the day the power was restored. However, at 6pm that evening there was another power cut, affecting the whole town. A few places had generators and plenty more had candles or just operated in the dark. Rather than sit in our darkened room we went out for a candlelit meal, walked back under a really clear starlit night and then had an early night in our candlelit room. How romantic and we managed to not set fire to anything! The novelty started to wear off when we got up the next day and were still power-less. It’s obviously a regular occurance because the locals didn’t seemed surprised or phased by it. Nineteen hours after the power went off we left Uyuni and the town still had no power, but life was carrying on as normal.