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Published: March 14th 2007
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Okay, time to Dave another turn... So after a nice night wandering along the streets of Uyuni, we were up at 4:40 AM to get back in the very slow moving jeep to hit the salt flats before sunrise. We were ready by the 5 AM deadline; but our guides were a little slower in getting ready (who could blame them since I doubt they even really slept). So at about 5:20 Am we rolled out of town, again basically just rolling since we only had the 2 gears.
We were about 20KMs from the edge of the salt flats and the daylight was creeping up. Our poor guides were obviously aware of the impending sunrise and the fact that they could not make the jeep go any faster. I felt bad each time Alejandro looked back towards the east at the mountains that were just barely hiding the sun.
Anyways, we did not make it, but we had a nice drive onto the flats as the sun rose. I think it was actually nicer because the sun at our backs really illuminated the salt mounds and also allowed for great ´reflection´ type shots. Being there in the
Getting towed on the salar
This was very comical at the time, but of course, since this was our means of transport and also VERY SLOW, we should have been more concerned. Oh well... early quiet morning is indescribable. The salt went forever and the real size of the place was quite overwhelming to everyone.
We stopped as the depth got lower. Right when you enter the flats - the water is about 6 inches deep. Often jeeps can not enter because the water is too deep from rain. The salt itself is 3-20 meters thick and does not allow for water to soak into the ground. The water mainly evaporates. We were lucky that we could drive onto the flats, sometimes groups are thwarted by deep water.
Anyways, we decided to leave the edge of the water and head to the famous Salt Hotel (yes - the whole thing except the roof is made from salt). So we all piled in the jeep and.... well nothing, second gear could not move us. So we then all piled out. Still the jeep could not move and Moises and I decided to give it a push and off it went. Now we wondered how we would get back in, surely we did not want it too stop again? So as it headed out we all followed it with visions of having to jump
in one by one as it went by. He kept on going about a half kilomelter and finally found some firmer ground and stopped. We all piled in and away we went at about 10 KM to the Salt Hotel.
We caught up to the other 3 jeeps at the hotel as they were finishing breakfast. We stayed about an hour at the locked hotel and were able to peak in some windows to get a closer look at the beds and chairs and just about everything that was made from salt. Pretty weird and hopefully the pictures turned out.
From there we went with another group and our guide Alejandro to take some experimental photos. We basically played with the blank background and perspective and tried our hands at trick photography. You can see by the photos that we are no experts but we had quite fun thinking up new photos and enjoyed being in the great expanse of the salt flats.
After fun with photos we arrived back at our jeep and started our slow way back towards town. With it being only 9:30 AM we felt a bit shorted with the time and the
Morning on the Salar de Uyuni
This was a first for our assistant guide/cook...that´s him taking a photo of our sad, illin´ vehicle. fact that we did not get to see the islands within the salt. We figured our guides just wanted to get the stupid jeep back to town and be done. I can not say that I blame them all that much having been in similar situations as a seakayak guide. We also realized from seeing other groups that our guides were top notch and tried immensely to give us the perfect trip and Alejandro took the time to explain everything imaginable to us in a patient manner. We often saw other groups cruise by without getting the background or other interesting information along the way.
Some interesting things we were told about the salt flats:
- DRIVE SLOW, a family was killed as they were driving about 70 KM and hit a low spot in the salt and rolled. No one survived.
- Only go when you have good visibility - we were also told of people getting stuck and lost when it rains for long periods. The mountains are gone from sight and you have no visual reference points from which to navigate from.
Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat on the planet. At
4,085 square miles, it is 25 times larger than the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt and less than 25,000 tons are extracted annually. It is also the breeding ground for three kinds of flamingos, the Chilean, the Andean and the James. We saw several flamingos flying overhead while we were there.
After the salty fun, we got back into our sad lil' jeep and were towed across the flats and all the way back to the town of Uyuni. We sad farewell to our group there and got a lift back to Tupiza with one of the other drivers.
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