Uyuni Salar - Night epic riding! - 08-08-2010

We were driving South East direction using our compass. This was the direction we saw in the map to get to Uyuni village and that we've confirmed with the only people we saw when entering the salt lake. Luckily, 90Km after, we would achieve Uyuni. We were unable to find any jeep tracks so we had to guide ourselves with the compass (leaving our own marks, "snowboard powder kind of feeling"!). The sand road that we've faced before entering the salar had slow us a lot and we should only have less than 3 hours of light left. No mistakes were allowed if we wanted to reach Uyuni at daylight. Temperatures at night reach -40º and we sure wouldn't want to camp there...




Sun was getting down too much quickly...


and...

Sunk Ugatuga Mototaxi!!!

Driving around 50Km/h the mototaxi suddenly stopped and we were sunk. :( One of the pieces that we had installed in order to hold the chain in case it droped was tottally damaged and the moto wasn't moving anymore. After a very quick manual fixing (hitting strongly that piece on a "portuguese way of fixing") the moto was able to move again! It was now getting dark and we didn't saw any sight of civilization. Pablo wanted to walk in the direction of the mountains and camp there. This was the less risky option but would imply freezing night temperatures. We've decided to give it a try and drive away from the sunk area and straight to the West (meaning to the center of the desert) in order to be able to cross the supposed jeep tracks that we had never saw before. If we find them we could eventually get to Uyuni, avoiding camping with the freezing temperatures of the lake. If not... we would be in a stressfull situation. It was now completly dark and we only saw what the moto lamps were able to lighten. After 10Kms and anxious night driving we've finally found the jeep tracks and, with the help of the compass, decided to follow them in direction of some small lights we saw in the distance (who know's if 10 or 50 Kms away!). We even tried to follow some moving lights that we saw faraway (maybe some other jeeps?!) but our full speed was simply useless. Then, lucky we've crossed a moto that was stopped with fuel problems and confirmed we were in the right direction: 1h driving to get to Uyuni!! Tough news (the freezing temperatures would mean one other discomfort driving!) but reliefing ones!...