Salar de Uyuni Tour

The bordertown of Bolivia is ingrained in my memory. Its stark contrast to the European-ess of Buenos Aires and even Salta left me a little unsure of myself. Colourful, it was the first time I had been somewhere and felt obviously like a european. The skin of the people is darker, their indigenous faces warm and weathered. Women wore many layers of skirts, their hair in long plaits down their backs and bowler hats. On their backs, the bright pinks, blues and yellows of the material they use for everything - carrying their wares and their children. The noise of street sellers, old cars and honking horns filled the air. And of course, the smell of urine was everywhere. I had to pay to use the public toilet and I was more than a little nervous to be left alone with the bags as Derek went off to use it too. Our bus was about 60 years old and we were the only white people on it. Some people making the two hour trip to Tupiza had to stand almost the entire way. Hold on tight because there aren't any toilet stops either - unless you get held up by roadworks and then you have to risk whether or not you get off the bus because if you aren't back on, it will leave without you.
A guy we had met in Buenos Aires was at the bus station and was heading our way. Being friendly we told him which hotel we were to stay at and that we were going to do the tour with that company too. After our extraordinarily long bus ride to Tupiza and some rather dodgy map reading skills, we found our hostel and organised the trip for the next day. Accompanying us would be the BA tourist and two Czechs - Katerina y Daniel). The BA tourist clearly wasn't acclimatised having only come from Salta, and since he was already having a bad time in Bolivia (having travelers toilet issues and having had his bag stolen at the Villazon bus station - at least he got it back!) he wasn't really in the mood for a Salt Flats Tour. By the time we reached our first destination - at 4200m above sea level - he was suffering partly from altitude sickness and partly from a bad reaction to being in Bolivia. Long story short, we woke at 4.30am for our early morning start and he was still refusing to take any coca or even try to continue with the tour. Our driver drove him all the way back to Tupiza, leaving us with only BA Tourist's promises to pay for extra food or petrol. When the driver returned to us that night, it turns out Mr Bastard Tourist had done a runner as soon as he had reached Tupiza. Our driver also doubted the extent of his altitude sickness too. Well, good riddance to bad luck.










We had had a wonderful day getting to know the local children. These two in particular were fascinated initially with Derek - a China man!wow! - and secondly with the travel guitar. They thought it was hilarious that I couldn't understand anything and just kept saying, "no entiendo". They charged Derek for taking photos, driving a tough bargain of 1 peso each for two photos. And still she refused to take her hat off.










The Salt Flats Tour from Tupiza is usually four days and follows the Chile/Bolivia border up to the Salar de Uyuni. On Day Two, our driver drove us extra fast so that we could get to the Aguas Callientes in time to allow us an hour soaking in the 4400m above sea level natural hot springs. We drove through Dali's Desert (as in Salvador), which is strewn with large pieces of rock, left over from some volcanic explosion. The volcano ranges have swirls of pinks, reds, whites and browns, making the mountains look like they are made out of Neapolitan ice cream. Where there was the most swirls, that was where the Devil was meant to reside.










Laguna Verde is not, I think, done total justice in this picture. After all the warm tones we had been traveling through, the green certainly made an impact. It is caused by the high traces of different minerals, including arsenic, in the water.





Back through Dali's desert and we were making our way to Laguna Colorada - the red lake. We reached this early on in the evening and because the boys wanted to photograph it with the sun going down, we opted to walk back across the rocky plain to the hostel. It didn't look far. Turned out to be somewhere between 6 - 8 km away. A long cold, bordering on dark walk back but completely worth it for this shot of the moon rise over the mountain.
At Laguna Colorada, there were plenty of flamingos to keep Derek happy. One animal I didn't expect to come across 4000m asl was flamingos, in their hundreds, happily feeding in this shallow lake.
The next morning we encountered a hungry little fox that had a sore paw. We fed him some pancakes before he moved onto the next jeep behind us. Earlier in the trip we had also come across mountain rabbits - giant sized rabbits with really long tails. Hilarious!
Day Three took us to a lake with thousands of flamingos. These creatures don't act scared of you, and just when you think you're getting close enough for a good photo, they calmly walk away leaving you wishing you had a stronger zoom lens. Stupid tourists like some we encountered, think its great to yell at the flamingos and clap their hands so that the flamingos fly away. They aren't circus sideshows, and should be respected. Stupid tourists.
We stopped at the Sol de Manana, which is a geyser basin with boiling mud and sufurous fumaroles. Having been to Rotorua, the fact that this was almost 5000m above sea level put it in a completely different ball park.


Derek encouraged our driver to take us to the San Juan cemetery, which is between 1000 - 2000 years old, depending on who you talk to. The people buried their dead in tombs and some of the skeletons are still there today for you to see. They were buried in the foetus position, mostly facing towards the sun. There was even a childrens tomb. There is something so fascinating about learning about a culture from a cemetery, but somehow a little unethical to be poking your head into people's resting places. The best part was when the local lady opened up the artifacts little hut and we got to go in and touch the ancient artifacts - which included ancient hoes, pottery, material, hair, silver and of course the child's leather shoe. Derek wondered whether or not we should hold the plaits of hair up to the skull and put a drinking flask next to it. We decided this viking pose might be pushing the tasteful boundary just a little ...








At the Salar, we took the tour of a cave near to our salt hotel. This cave was formed when the Salar had either been a sea or been part of the sea (our spanish still needs working on). The Salar is part of a prehistoric salt lake called Lago Minchin, which covered most of southwest Bolivia. The sea carved out this cave and these strange stalactites and walls were formed by the sea foam and sea salt. It looked like webbing, but was hard to the touch.




The Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat, sitting at 3653m above sea level and blanketing 12,000sq km. It's depth varies between 1m to 8m, depending on the amount of layers and who you talk to. There are holes in the salt which are filled with water - called the Eyes of the Salar. Its the perfect place for perception photographs - as any tourist will tell you.
Up at dawn to watch the sun rise was completely worth the lack of sleep. The sun chased the darkness away, turning the salt from black, to grey, to blinding white. There are several islands on the Salar and we stopped at Isla de los Pecadores, with giant cactus (apparently also 1000 years old) and a view of the never ending whiteness and tyre tracks.




























We ended our tour in Uyuni, having lunch at the Train Cemetery - which is pretty much a huge bunch of rusting trains. We said goodbye to our newly made Czech friends and after much deliberation, caught the bus to La Paz (there's political unstableness so you have to watch for roadblocks).
It was the worst busride of my life. Leaving at 8pm,we had the seats right at the back. Because it was dark and the roads in Bolivia need more than tender loving care, the first 5 hours felt and sounded like we were riding an aeroplane through the centre of the earth. Nothing could describe it more perfectly. There was little sleep going on despite the 'semicama' promise of the seats, and at 1am we hit paved road. Finally! I thought, I can attempt to get some sleep!
But alas, the driver needed to be kept awake and so he put music on. Terrible Bolivian pop music at a level that meant we all could hear it. I guess he was awake -thats one good thing.
At 3.30pm we were forced to change buses in Oruro, paying 1.50bs for 'use of the terminal' (that simply means we walked the 5m from one side to another). But at least on this bus, finally, I got some sleep.