Jonesin for a Ride!

Tom and I meet up for breakfast at 8:00 because we only have a short window to visit the old Minting building where all the silver coins were minted from the mines. At 8:30 am the tour starts and we are greeted with an amazing building with the history that went along with it. We also visit a few churches before we head our of Potosi at 2:00 p.m.
We have a 118 mile dirt road ahead of us from Potosi to Uyuni. We find our way out of town and just outside of he town there is a toll booth for a road that is under construction. Some toll booths you need to park and walk up to the guard house, which is what I did. While I go in to pay the toll and show what little Spanish I know, Tom talks with a local hanging at the booth who is looking for a ride to Uyuni. We decide to have a local ride with us to Uyuni.
The road is newly paved here in the beginning. Our guest tells us that the first hour is paved, then the last two are not. We continue to climb up the newly paved road and make great progress. After about an hour, we hit some dirt, but it is just to go around a bridge that is under contraction. In a short time, we are back on newly paved asphalt.
This continues for most of the way, except some of the dirt becomes longer and longer stretches, but for the most part, it seems paved. We get towards the last 30 miles when we hit dirt again and climb up a long pass, when cresting the pass, we are told to spot by a patrol group. We tell them where we are heading and the let us pass. The local with us tells us they are looking for drugs.
We round the corner of the pass and from this view we can Uyuni, and it is about 5:45 p.m. with the sun low in the sky. We see a great vast flatness off in the distance – we will be heading towards the salt flats.
Tom has been making great time on this road and we are excited to see the town so very close in the distance. We are now on a long grade downward towards the town when a large rock jumps out in front of Tom and the car hits it dead center. We were travel about 45 mpg when this large rock appeared dead center and Tom thought we had enough clearance – boom boom, then car lurches and bumps up hard twice as we fly over it.
“That didn’t sound good!” The car is still running the same – no difference in sound. We don’t see any smoke coming out the back. Then the oil light comes on. Uhmmmmm after a short discussion Tom turns off the engine. “I’m gliding now – I’m use to this..”Tom quips.
We continue to glide for a few more miles toward town when the road levels out. Tom fires up the engine and we continue for about 45 seconds more and Tom says the engine just stop. We glide into town and are now on some stone street when we glide to a stop and pull off to the side.
We get out and look underneath. Neither Tom or I are mechanics, but by seeing the oil dripping underneath and seeing the bent up mess there, it looked like we ripped the oil pan off.
It is Sunday evening and the hitchhiker says this isn’t a good place to park the car – it will be stripped by morning. So we flag a cab, run down to our hotel, check in and drop off our stuff. The hotel we are staying at is the Tonito Hotel, run by Susan and Chris. They tell us who the best mechanic in this town of 15,000 is. So we grab the cab driver and tow it to his place for him to look at it in the morning.
So now we are in about as far away place from anywhere and we are stuck. This town doesn’t even have a tow truck and we are on a deadline to have to be back in La Paz on Wednesday night by the latest (flights are on Thursday).
The next day we arrange a private tour of the salt flats that starts at 10_30, but first check in with Claudio, the mechanic. He was already working on it when we got to his shop. He said he would have to pull the engine up to access the oil pan and see what the extent of the damage was, but he thought that if everything went smooth, he could have the car done by Tuesday night.
So we left for our 1 day tour out to the Salt Hotel and an island on the salt flat for a lunch.\This is the highest dry salt lake in the world at 12,000 feet. The salt is 7 meters thick and this place is Hugh!

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