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Published: January 26th 2007
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This is what was #1 on my list of things to do in Bolivia and now I am finally here! So what could so interesting about a salt flat anyway? I am sure that my pictures well help describe why it is so interesting, but I'll try explain where I am. El Salar de Uyuni (the Uyuni Salt Flats) is the world's largest salt flat at 12,106 sq km and is at an elevation of 3653m above sea level (basically the same elevation that I am living at in La Paz) Historically, this part of Bolivia was covered by water, but obviously this dried up thousands of years ago, leaving some smaller lakes and salt flats. If you would like to see a satellite image, please take a look at this link from Google Maps:
http://maps.google.ca/?ie=UTF8&z=6&ll=-16.88866,-64.907227&spn=18.243343,27.421875&t=k&om=1 So after visiting the train cemetery and the artisinal market in Colchani, we were off to El Salar de Uyuni. All of a sudden our surroundings were all white, not something that I am not used to from growing up in Canada, but this time is was not cold old out at all. We stopped near the beginning of the salt flat to check
it out and see piles of salt that had been extracted from the flat. Quite neat! The one thing I can say is that after living near salt water for the good part of my life, I couldn't smell the salt here and it was everywhere. After a quick stop to check out the flat, we jumped back in the jeep and headed to the Salt Hotel. The hotel is totally fabricated of salt, including the furniture inside. Quite impressive that they built a hotel entirely out of salt! Some tours actually stay in this hotel and a few others that are made out of salt, but I am kind of glad that we didn't because even though it was impressive, the salt kind of reminds of concrete and the hotel was in the middle of nowhere. Where we ended up staying ended up being more interesting in my opinion.
It was already early afternoon and no lunch. My stomach was growling so I had to buy an overpriced chocolate bar at the salt hotel before departed for la Isla de los Pescadores (Island of the Fisherman). Our driver/guide decided that he could both tell us about the salt
flats while turned towards us and drive the jeep at the same time. I would usually consider something like this to be dangerous, but everything was totally flat around us so I wasn't worried that the driver was driving while not looking where he was going. Finally, about an hour later which reach our lunch destination, which was la Isla de los Pescadores. Don't ask me why it is called this considering there is no water in sight and the only thing that seems to inhabit the island is an army of cacti. We had about 40 minutes to explore the island and take pictures before lunch was served. Lunch today was llama steaks, quinoa, and fresh tomatoes, avocados and cucumbers. As our group of six was sitting around the same table eating, we started to get to know each other better. On my tour was a fellow Canadian from Toronto named Dan, an Australian named Andrew traveling around South America for many months, and a group of three chefs, two from France and one from Italy (Alice, Victor and Marc). We also talked to our driver, the cook and the cook's four-year old son, Diego.
This island in
the middle of the salt flat was the last major thing to see on the first day of the three day tour. We jumped back into the jeep after lunch and headed to the village of San Juan, where we would be staying the night. On entrance to the town, the sign mentioned the town had a 1000 people.... I'm not sure where there are though because there doesn't seem to be that many houses. In the fields surrounding the towns there were hundreds of llamas and sheep grazing and lucky for me, some of them are photogenic. We dropped our stuff off in our basic hostel (ie. rooms with two beds each, nothing else) and then Dan, Andrew and I went to explore the village. We found a basketball/soccer court where there were two girls playing basketball. One was pretty good...maybe a future star for the Bolivian national basketball team 😊 Wandering around more, we found a museum about the town and decided to visit it as it looked like this may be the only income for this town. It also included admission to a cemetery on the edge of the town. The rock formations at the cemetery were
pretty interesting. There were bones in a few of the rock tombs, however, I am not sure how real they were.
For dinner on this night, we had a soup, chicken, rice and some vegetables. We bought two bottles of wine to split between us as well. So far, the food has already beat my expectations considering the guide books mention that there is never even food. I think the tour agencies have taken this into consideration. After dinner, I showered as their was hot-water on this night (at a cost of 5 Bs) and then went to lie down and down some journal writing. At 9:30PM as planned, the power went out in the hostel and there would be none until morning so all there was to was sleep.
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