If you’re coming to Uyuni to hook up with a tour to the salt flats, there’s a good chance you’ll need to stay a night or two in the town of Uyuni. I stayed the night before the tour and the night after the tour, and I ended up staying at Hotel Avenida, although originally it wasn’t my first choice.

I planned on staying at Hotel Julia, but it seemed its prominence in the way it’s featured in several guide books, most notably the Lonely Planet, has led to a flood of customers so they hiked the prices right up. So instead, a few doors down, I tried Hotel Avenida.

On my two stays I had two different rooms. I prefer a room with a bathroom, but this was unavailable when I first arrived and had a shared bathroom for the night before the tour.

This room was actually the nicer of the two – it had been recently refurbished and was clean and looked pretty modern. I had to go outside into the ‘atrium’ (best word I could think of) and down a couple of doors for the toilet, but the roof over the area keep a little bit of heat in. The room was quite bare I guess, had a little table though and a single bed.

The other room had not had a refit and probably needed one. Even the blankets seemed older, and it was in the corner of the building, with a strange capital ‘L’ shaped bathroom with a very poor electric shower.

The rates were really quite cheap – 50 Bolivianos (around $8 US) and for the single with bathroom it was 70 Bolivianos.

They had a heater there, a decent common area, noise was a bit of an issue across the courtyard/atrium, the wifi was poor but better than nothing and about as good as anywhere in town. My ratings are as per the room with shared bathroom, the clearly better room of the two.

Andrew’s Ratings:

Value for Money: 4.5/5

Cleanliness: 3/5

Noise: 2/5

Location: 3.5/5

Service/Friendliness: 3/5

TOTAL: 16/25 (64/100)

Thanks for stopping by! May the Journey Never End!