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There is only one reason to come to Uyuni and that is to leave as quickly as possible. Set at 3,600 metres on a desolate, windswept plain its few dusty streets hold little attraction. People come here because it is the jumping off point for trips to the nearby salt flats which, as the largest in the world, have become one of Bolivia's main tourist attractions.
It wasn't always like this. Uyuni grew up in the nineteenth century as a major railway centre. Here the, then extensive, Bolivian network joined with lines from Argentina and Chile making it the Crewe of South America. Built to serve the Bolivian tin mines the railways declined as they did and whilst there is still a station here it sees little traffic - a half-dozen or so passenger trains a week and a few freight trains.
The pedestrianised street in front of the station shows what has taken the place of the railways. It is lined with bars, cafes and restaurants catering to the tourists, many of them young backpackers, who now come here. The locals have got the measure of this new market. The restaurants serve mostly hamburgers, pizzas and pasta, although a few give a half-hearted nod to the local cuisine and add llama steak to the menu, and the bars - including the no doubt aptly named 'Extreme Fun Pub', offer happy hours that run from 6 until 10. There is not much else to do here whilst waiting for your trip but eat and drink.
There are still reminders of the town's former past. There is a statue of a spanner wielding railway worker on the main street and the 'Bolivian Railway Workers' Social Club, est 1924' is still open showing that there must still be some people employed on the railways. But the major relic is a few kilometres out of town, in the 'Train Cemetery'.
Here twenty or so old steam locomotives have been lined up and abandoned. It is the first stop on most of the salt flat tours but when I visited in the latte afternoon I had the place to myself, apart from a courting couple sheltering from the ever present wind in the smoke box of one of the engines. It was sad to see these former behemoths of steam stripped of many of their parts and left to rust away but it was easy to imagine them when they were working hauling heavy freight trains of tin and iron ore down to the ports in Chile for export to the west. The air here is so dry that it will be many years before they are gone and so they remain as a potent reminder of the town's former glory.
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