Goodfellows Travels: Wednesday 4th to Thursday 5th October 2006: THE SLOW TRAIN TO UYUNI, BOLIVIA

Crossing the border from Chile to Bolivia can be achieved by bus or train. We decided to experience the archaic 400km train ride, known as the 'slow train to Uyuni' in order tick off the 'train ride' on our list of things to experience whilst in South America.

We boarded the train at 11pm along with forty other passengers, all of us crammed into one half of the carriage which was reminiscent of the train rides Celina had experienced in India where no one has space to exhale! Fortunately shortly after our departure half of the passengers (a french group) were able to use the other half of the carriage which enabled the rest of us to have at least some room to stretch out and try to get some sleep as we ascended over the mountains and the temperature dropped to minus fifteen degrees.

It was an extremely cold and restless night but at 6am we finally arrived near the Bolivia border, in the Chilean village of Ollague at an altitude of 3,660 meters above sea level. Here we changed engines and were due to depart at 8am when the Bolivian engine arrived from Uyuni leaving enough time for all passengers (mostly tourists) to pass through Chilean immigration. The 8am departure time soon changed to 9.30am and then to 11am! By midday everyone was getting understandably annoyed (lack of oxygen and altitude sickness did not help matters!) as the Bolivian engine still hadn't arrived and we were beginning to doubt its existence. The Bolivian engine finally arrived around 1.30pm but typically (and rather annoyingly!) the engine sat just 10 meters away from our carriage, for one hour, as it had to wait for the relevant documentation to be completed before it could pass the 'border' line and finally attach itself to our carriage. At 3pm (now suffering badly from altitude sickness as the coca tea had worn off long ago!) we finally continued our journey towards Uyuni, happy to be finally be on our way. However, our joy was shortlived as when we arrived at Bolivian immigration (Portakabin office in the middle of nowhere!) we learnt that there was an entrance charge to the country (no prior warning given) and they would only accept Bolivianos as payment (we only had US dollars) whilst at the same time provided no money exchange whatsoever! We and fellow backpackers protest who were all in the same situation as us, protested against Bolivia's border control not accepting our US dollars and one hour later Bolivian Immigration finally gave in to our protest (ten of us sat outside the Bolivian passport control!) and accepted our dollars as payment.

With pounding headaches that no painkiller was able to dull (altitude sickness is really horrible) we slowly crawled towards Uyuni. Twenty-three hours after our departure from Calama, Chile, (a new record!) we finally arrived in Uyuni, Bolivia, so pleased to be off the slowest train in the world!!!

Ollague Train Station

(Volcan Ollague in background)