Well Uyuni is a crappy old town. There are heaps of tourists in Uyuni but only because it's a place to go to get somewhere else. One of the redeeming features of Uyuni is the Minute Man Pizza Man Restaurant that does reasonable pizzas and a great buffet breakfast. After 5 days of eating dry bread and crackers for breakfast, a buffet offering pancakes, yogurt, muesli, eggs and more, was simply too good to resist. Alas our decision on where to stay was based entirely on the location of the MMPM.

I think the Uyuni gods were punishing me for calling it a s*** hole as the morning we were due to leave strikes starting across the country and nearly all the roads connecting towns together were blocked by people. These strikes were about the same issues in Ticara…the locals fighting for their land not to be used for mining.

We were told by the bus companies that buses could not get through the blockade and that the strike could go on for one or maybe 14 days. We decided to take the train instead which left at 2am that night as the train station staff and some hostel staff were certain that the trains are never affected by the strikes. Well this was a lie.

At about 6am in the morning we were reached a blockade that prevented the train from continuing. We were given two options wait by the train indefinitely or try to walk to the next road blockade and see if there are taxis waiting to take us to Oloru. Nearly everyone walked and so we did also. We walked for 8km with 20kg bags on our back and then meant some locals who expressed that the next blockade was at least 60km away and then after that there were another two blockades. We asked if there would be at least taxis at the end on the third blockade but all the locals expressed that there were no forms of transport.

We sat on the side of the road for about an hour trying to catch a ride either way. Eventually we decided that the only option we had was to turn around and walk back. No body stopped for us…we were stranded.

After reaching the city again and talking to more locals we realised that there were no other options we had to stay where we were until the train was allowed to go again. Given that the locals told us the train was not going to leave until at least 9pm we decided to find a hostel and sleep for a while before walking back to the station.

Later that night Dan and I went for a walk to find some food. It was then we realised how rare it must be that tourist (western tourists) were staying in there town. Everybody started at us, not in an intimidating manner, just out of curiosity. We found a Chinese that served only one meal but if various sizes. What we got was plain over cooked pasta, fries, fried chicken and rice with mayonnaise. I can safely say I have never eaten Chinese like that before.

At 9pm we got on the train with still no clarification of when we would be leaving. I fell asleep only to be woken by people yelling and banging on the window. The other people in our cabin explained that the locals on the train we angry and were going to abduct the train driver and force him to leave. This scared me and I suddenly felt very aware of how isolated we were. We were the only western tourist that had walked back to the train as well.

Two really bad action movies dubbed in Spanish later and we were finally on the move…for about 20 meters. We had stopped again this time the train staff got off and negotiated with the protestors to let us through. Finally they did, we arrived in Oruro at 3:30am and then caught a 3 hour bus ride to La Paz.

In total from the 26tham-28tham we slept for 5 hours. We had not showered and all of our clothes were really dirty from the jeep tour…I can safely say that I really, really stunk. To make matters worse we both had funny tummies and I had my period.

We made it to La Paz though and found a clean hotel with hot showers (sometimes), what luxury!