The Train Cemetery – A Quick Post – Uyuni, Bolivia
Installment 2 of our mind-blowing Salt Flats Tour! (also check out Psychedelic Salt Flats and, soon, the Flamingos!)
Uyuni Train Cemetery
Our Salt Flats tour started as we piled us and all our stuff into the trucks. Bismar, our guide, told us that we would drive a whopping 5 minutes to the Train Graveyard – “a jungle gym for the crazy tourists”. That would be us!
Apparently a rail system was built by the president of Bolivia in the 19th century in hopes of transporting Bolivia’s mining resources from centrail Bolivia to the Pacific coast. Can you guess who was a big stakeholder in a local mine? Turns out the local indigenous people were not so fond of the mining or the trains and regularly sabatoged the train system. Sometime around WWII the mining industry failed as the mines played out and the trains were just left abandoned.
So here we are 75 years later with all these very old, very rusty trains just baking in the sun. At first I thought it was kind of cheesy, but then when I started climbing about I realized I was having a great time. And Aaron?? Well, Aaron was a kid in a candy store (and you KNOW how he likes candy!). He was off and climbing before Bismar said, “10 minutes” – which easily turned into an hour. Great fun!
A lot of trains.
Climb Aboard!
Aaron out for a walk.
Don’t do it!
Trains’ll make you jump, jump!
Anner is not so willing to jump.
Big, rusty, metal…everywhere!
A furnace? Maybe a boiler…
Lovely rust.
Can’t have random metal in the desert without graffiti, now can you?
They really do make a great graffiti canvas.
This is the kind of place that wouldn’t stand a chance in the US – way too many chances for injuries and lawsuits – so it was wonderful to come across it somewhere we could be adults, take responsibility for ourselves and simply enjoy it!
A fun start to what would be a mind-blowing tour of the salt flats.
U two r a kick! I enjoy seeing your wardrobes
Well, we do dress for success. Rockin’ our two shirts each, ohhh yeahhhhh. 🙂
Don’t ever grow up! You are having too much fun. Love it.
I don’t know why folks thinks us grown ups can’t have ridiculous amounts of fun! As Anner always says: “Fun follows us!”
So cool! I wish you had a private message tab on your website but since you don’t I will ask on here…Allan is heading to Ecuador to check places out and one on the list is Cuenca. Knowing that you just passed through the area I would love to hear more about what you thought. It’s a place to live that we are looking for not just visit:) Hope all is well with you both, looks like your having an amazing time!
Hi Jennifer! I see you found us on FB – feel free to private message us there. We’re in a small town in Patagonia right now with minimal internet, so it might take a few days, but we’ll definitely reply.
We LOVED Cuenca! Pretty big city, but not so big you couldn’t find your way around easily. There’s a large ex-pat community if that’s your thing. We liked chatting with a few of them but preferred staying out of the “Gringolandia” area. That was just us, though. A couple of sites you might check out are http://www.gringopost.com and http://www.gringotree.com for English info about what’s going on. Also good for asking questions of the locals – we found sites to watch American football during the playoffs and Super Bowl that way. Hope that helps!
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