Muddy dirt road after storm | Warning

January 24th, 2023 by rambajanba

We went from Uyuni to the Chilean border today via the 701. Overall, it was okay. You really have everything, from perfect asphalt to huge holes, where we could only go 10 km/h. We had to cover one night from a sand-/thunderstorm in San Cristobal, sweet little town.

January 13th, 2023 by @alyvanblake

same as the last comment, cruising at 80km on most of the dirt sections and then beautiful new 2 lane tarmac. this road is about to be a legit highway one day. however, the section between villa alota and just before the turn off for the lagunas route is terrible! very deep silt holes, some 30cm or more that hide rocks in the road. one section was particularly bad the was like 5km long. if it rains enough to saturate the ground here this could be become impassable without 4x4. at least until they finish construction.

January 4th, 2023 by LiLa

The road towards Ollagüe/ Chile wasn’t that bad at all. First 60km from Uyuni are a mix of hard packed gravel and bad asphalt. Could still drive around 80km/h. Didn’t see any part that could have been a mud pit, even if it had been raining a lot.

Second section is the now completed brand new asphalt road of ruta 701 for another 60km until we had to get back to a hard packed gravel road in good condition. The further construction of the asphalt road seems to take long.

Further in the direction of the border we had very sandy road conditions in the boulder forest (saw motorcycles struggle here) and then again hard packed gravel in good condition.

Overall probably took us 4hrs from Uyuni to Ollagüe border.

July 26th, 2019 by lena.cavatica

We wanted to cross from Uyuni to Chile vie the Ollagüe border station. The Ruta Nacional 5 going south from Uyuni is an unpaved dirt road of decent quality. It leads into Ruta 701 which is also a dirt road of mixed quality. They seem to be currently building a better road (701) which causes a lot of detours into gravel fields (July 2019).
Unfortunately there was a storm briefly hitting the area the day before which was accompanied by some, but not too much rain. The road turned into a field of mud at these coordinates and all busses and trucks got stuck. Since the road was blocked the other cars took a side road which was equally muddy but not blocked. We dared to cross in our front wheel drive minivan and it was terrible. Only with the help of some poor stranded bus passengers we managed to work through the mud in five hours. The mud problem was very local and limited to a two or three kilometer stretch. Afterwards the road was not great but ok. 4x4s seemed to be doing fine if the skills of the driver were matching the cars capabilities. Most got through without any problem, some struggled too. I believe that this problem only arises after some rain (doesn't need to be pouring!) so I would recommend to ask locals in Uyuni about the condition if you suspect a problem. But if you make it to Chile you will be rewarded with an awesome paved highway and almost perfect infrastructure.

The first photo shows Ruta 5 right after Uyuni, the second shows the mud field. The third shows the highway in Chile a few miles behind the border.