The overnight bus wasn't the best. For some reason I could hear the sound of the driver's music which he didn't turn off all night. I managed to sleep a bit, not as much as sleepy Emma of course though.
We arrived at our destination at 5.30am - far too early for my liking. To make matters worse as we stepped off the bus we were hit with a torrent of two things; firstly, the extreme cold and secondly, the nagging/begging of locals for just about everything. We made our way to the nearest open cafe that claimed to have wifi so that we could message the host. On the wall it claimed that you could only have access to the wifi if you bought breakfast - fair enough and we attempted to do just that. We attempted to order breakfast with the waitress who had an IQ of no higher than 5. We pointed and said in basic Spanish what we wanted and she still didn't understand. We asked the sort of chef what the wifi password was as we had ordered breakfast to which he claimed that he or the waitress didn't know the password, the only person who knew the password was out on the streets trying to get more customers and would be back soon... sounded very suspicious. As I made my way over to the toilets I noticed they had their laptop playing music. Upon closer inspection the laptop was not connected to the internet... Very peculiar if I must say so myself. We continued to wait for another 15 minutes maybe and they still hadn't brought out our food. It was only one egg sandwich and one cheese sandwich with a couple of hot drinks, hardly difficult. When a man who ordered over 10 minutes after us was served his food we decided to up and leave in search of greener pastures. After following some other tourists we found a much friendlier and better cafe that suited our needs. It turned out to be only 50m away from our accommodation that turned out to be a hostel. At 7.30am we decided to try and check in.... We walked into the hostal to find a man asleep on the sofa next to the check in desk - weird. He told us that we couldn't check in until midday!!! What a nightmare. He then said 10am. This was more acceptable and thus we decided to stay in the area where they served breakfast. We were joined by a French guy who lived in London. He told us that he was involved with the cgi and picture quality of major motion pictures such as The Jungle Book and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Quite impressive really. This helped burn away some of our time. Eventually we were allowed into our rooms at 11am. What followed was a very well deserved nap. Several hours later we awoke to try and work out Uyuni in the daylight. We had to book ourselves onto a tour that would end up in Chile. But firstly, It was time for lunch. There must have been a recurring theme of terrible service in Uyuni as once again we were left displeased. We walked into a restaurant. After 30 seconds we made our way to the bar area to study the menu. Still no contact from anyone who worked there. Bear in mind that this restaurant had maybe 4 or 5 tables full, it wasn't deserted. We took the menus to the nearest table and chose what we wanted. 10 minutes passed and still nothing... As our impatience was beginning to grow the table behind had an issue. 3 out of 5 of them had finished their meals... with the remaining two waiting still. The waitress appeared from doing sod-all to give one of them their food. Still leaving one without food. As she went to ask us for our order we declined and walked out. We didn't want to be in a restaurant with those sorts of standards. Food standards can change and that's fine, service standards is not something to be put up with! Thankfully we found an excellent restaurant across the road. After the slight nightmare of lunch we only had the matter of finding a tour. The book had told us what price to expect. The first one we went into was quite highly recommended. However a few issues were sort with it. Firstly the price was 200 Bolivianos too high and secondly the woman who we spoke to had a very annoying toddler who wouldn't stop being a nuisance. We decided to take our custom elsewhere. The second place was just right though. 250 Bolivianos cheaper than the previous place and didn't offer anything noticeably different. The only remaining task was to find an ATM to get the necessary money in which to pay for the tour.
For some reason this turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Four ATMs later and we still had no cash. We knew that we didn't have the problem this time and that it was the ATM. Several other people around had similar issues. We trudged back to the tour agency and asked for assistance. They suggested an ATM that was 3 blocks away from where we had tried the four others. This place was becoming more deserted as we got there. Thankfully the ATM delivered our cash into our joyful hands. Job sorted! Onto the salt flats. I won't have wifi for the next few days until Chile. I will write the necessary blog posts and then upload when I get sufficient wifi as I did when in the jungle.
