Night Bus from La Paz to Uyuni

If there's one thing worth doing in Bolivia, it's going to the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. It's an incredible place, surrounded by a wide array of desert landscapes and wildlife.

All bus rides from La Paz to Uyuni are overnight. If you ever go, do yourself a favor: fly to Uyuni. Otherwise, it's a 16-hour bus ride on an unpaved road. We did this. It was a major mistake. Flying down a rocky desert lane, the entire cabin lurching right and left, registering every bump and every pot-hole, for 16 hours. You will not sleep, and it will be pitch-black, so you won't see any scenery. If you're the kind of person who thinks that sounds romantic, you deserve what happens to you.

Other aspects of Andean bus travel: both Bolivians and Peruvians have a completely different understanding of the purpose of the car-horn. To them, the car-horn exists to alert all other drivers and pedestrians of one's presence, at all times. Like, if you think that there's anyone neaby who doesn't see you--even if there's no chance of danger--you beep your horn. To let them know you exist. So cities like Lima and La Paz drone with horns, to the point where governments have launched psa campaigns ("No Tocas La Vocina!") to try to curb this behavior. No one is heeding their call.

Also, whenever possible, drivers in this part of the world will straddle both lanes of any road or highway.

What does all this amount to? You're on a bus, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night. If you're foolish enough to look out the front windshield, you see the headlights of an oncoming bus or semi on the horizon. Both drivers continue to straddle both lanes until the very last possible second, when they will swerve into their respective lanes and lay on their horns. It's like one driver is saying "Marco!", the other is saying "Polo!", and your unconscious is screaming "ARE WE DEAD?"

I tried to have a good attitude early on in the night. I managed to get some reading done, until they turned the lights off at 8pm. There were inexplicable stops along the way when people would have to start complaining for the driver to get moving again. I listened to some Mark Maron podcasts and did an inventory of all the recordings I'd made. A few times in the night I dozed off, until our bus inevitably hit a bump and went airborne, and my bobbing head would come down hard on some hard plastic surface.

On a bus ride like that, there is no sleep and no rest for a person like me. I arrived to Uyuni in a foul humor. I wasted much of the day being pissed off and arguing Ginny and Brendan. In addition to being exhausted, I was freaking out because I realized we had doomed ourselves to at least 2 more bus rides just like that.

But we ended up having an amazing odyssey in the Salt Flats. I can't believe we almost did a one-day tour. The three-day tour is a must. There are so many strange, otherworldy things to be seen in that desert. It's like being on another planet. Visiting from Chile and coming through the Atacama desert may be the ideal way to see the Salar.

We did have several more miserable overnight bus rides in Bolivia. Some were even worse than the one I've described above. They pushed me, showed me how delicate and particular I am. And they made me a little better at staying positive despite discomfort and inconvenience. You're in situations where humanity is right in your face, with its dirty diapers, its snoring, its drunkenness, its obnoxious shouting into a cell phone at 3am... You're probably in danger, but there's nothing you can do about it at this point. You just have to sit back and think about how life is suffering, and how every human is just suffering all around you, and how your boredom and sleeplessness and anxiety are just the forms that your human suffering if going to take on for the next few hours...

So in a way it's good for you. But I wouldn't recommend it.