Tupiza is a dusty town in southern Bolivia built on mining and farming. We took a hair-raising minibus here from Villazon – the first town you get to after you cross the border from Argentina – and stayed a couple of nights. There are no big tourist draws unless a niche interest in the Wild West has lured you here and you fancy taking a tour to nearby San Vincente where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid supposedly met their ends many moons ago. We used Tupiza mainly as a base where we could adjust to a higher altitude before heading yet higher. At 2850m it was a slight step down from La Quiaca – our final stop in Argentina – but lower than the places we would be staying over the coming month or so.
We did a bit of horse trekking amidst some stunning scenery just outside town and by the end we could both just about get on and off our steeds in something resembling a dignified manner.
We also explored the local rabbit-warren of a market and took in numerous Copa America quarter finals – all of which seemed to end in penalty shootouts! The rhythm of the town seemed to match the arrivals and departures of the two train services – the Wara Wara del Sur and the Expreso del Sur – which is always interesting to observe if you’re not rushing to get one of the trains yourself.
Tupiza market
Services are relatively infrequent and take over two times longer than the local buses to reach Uyuni – gateway town for the famous Salar de Uyuni salt flats. Despite exhortations to avoid them by some online siderodromophobes, taking the train was one of the best decisions of our trip so far.
At the station, once we’d given our backpacks to the guard in the luggage car in exchange for luggage tickets, we made our way to our allocated seats. Trying to remain true to our no wastage budget traveller ethic, we had booked into ‘Salon’ rather than ‘Executive’ class but the seats were still really comfy and with the heating on gently it was neither too hot nor too cold. The pan pipe interpretations of the Titanic theme and Bryan Adams classics emanating from the TV in the corner of the carriage were a bit shrill but the ambience was on the whole quite soothing and the perfect accompaniment to our dinner which was a giant omelette and chips shovelled into our mouths by hand (the vendor didn’t have a plastic fork).
About 30 minutes in, we noticed that lots of people had left their seats and not come back despite the train not stopping anywhere. Deciding that it was more likely that there was entertainment to be found elsewhere than that our fellow passengers had fallen through a hole in the floor of the train, we went to have a look and found A RESTAURANT CAR!!
OK, not the best photo but the excitement of table service on a train was a bit much at this point.
A mini sound system, hot dinners being produced one after the other by an incredibly calm-under-pressure steward and cheap beer made for a lovely early evening atmosphere. We spent several hours in this welcoming pod, reading and trip planning before returning to our seats. Adam Sandler was oafing around whilst Drew Barrymore looked bored on a mercifully silent TV screen, the pan pipes having been given the axe. Most people dozed.
It was only at this point that we realised how slowly the train was going – maybe at 40mph – but also how remote and dark our surroundings were. The train’s headlamp and some light from our windows illuminated an endless expanse of rock, scrub and signs of people trying to eke out a living doing something or other on the land. But the astonishing view of the stars was something else. No clouds, no trees, no light pollution….the stars certainly didn’t look like this in SE22! The train company should big up this element of the journey more on its website (alongside the photos of gringos supping beer!!)
Of course, doing this trip in the middle of the day would be a totally different experience – you’d see more of the nothingness but you’d probably feel the effects of the sun beating down on the carriages with no respite out in the desert for hours. But it really was so magical to be able to see the stars while chugging along, the front of the train coming into view only when rounding a corner, that we’ll forget that we arrived an hour late into Uyuni and that our booked room had been given away to someone else 🙂
South American stories 