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Published: October 15th 2009
Salar de Uyuni
extracting salt from the salt flatsSo the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flat) was amazing ... definitely a highlight of our trip!
We made our way to Uyuni from Sucre on a 10 hour bus ride (unpaved and bumpy ride again). We arrived in Uyuni in the late afternoon and planned to book a tour to leave the next morning. Our first thought when we arrived in Uyuni was ´good thing we´re leaving tomorrow morning ... this town is completely dead´. So it was just our luck that there were roadblocks around Uyuni which meant that no tour could leave from town. All the operators just said ... come back tomorrow morning and we´ll see. We go back the next day and the story is the same ... roadblocks = no tours are running. We wanted to pull our hair out. But then luck changed - we bumped into someone (another tourist) who we had seen on other tours around Bolivia and he and three other girls were looking for two people to join them on an escape from Uyuni. They had found a tour operator who was going to try to sneak them out of Uyuni at 5am the next morning before the roadblocks
started. (we´re not positive about the reason for the roadblocks ... we were told it was in protest over something like mineral contract prices). We weren´t keen on trying to cross roadblocks put up by angry workers in Bolivia, but we know we did not want to stay in Uyuni another few days. So we joined the tour.
We were picked at up 5am in the morning - the thought of escaping roadblocks was sort of exciting so we weren't too tired. The driver took some back roads to a deserted part of town where he stopped and stared into the distance. I´m not sure what he saw, but it made him decide to try one of the roads leading out of town. Fail - we drove a short distance and then saw people walking into town which meant road blocks were already up. So we turned around and started driving along the railway tracks and then straight into the barren dessert. It would be an actual escape afterall!
Since we left so early in the morning, we practically had the whole day to spend at the Salar and on Incahuasi Island. I don´t think I can express
how beautiful I think the Salar is and I don´t think the photos do it justice. The landscape is actually barren and empty, but I still think it´s amazing. The salt flat is realy thick (there´s only water during the wet season) so the cars and people drive and walk all over it. It´s blindingly white and flat, and some of the salt is crusted upwards making a hexagonal pattern. It seems like you´re alone on another planet. Incahuasi Island is on the salt lake and is filled with Cacti. We had breakfast at Incahuasi island walked to the top of the island where we could see how big the lake is. We then spent hours taking photos on the Salar ... mostly jumping photos and silly photos where objects seem bigger than us . We also played Uno to take a break from photo taking - it was a relaxing day in a nice setting. (Spending all that time in the sun left me with a sunburn on my face though ... Myra has been laughing at my face for days). After we had our fill of taking photos, we went to our accommodation for the night ... a
salt hotel! The building is made of salt (salt bricks, salt on the ground), and it turned out to be nicer and warmer than we expected which was a nice surpirse. There were also hot showers and real toilets which was is always a good thing. We felt so spoiled!
Our second and third days were interesting too but not as exciting as the first. It involved a lot of time in the car as we drove through the national park with stops along the way to see flamingos and lagoons. The water in some of the lagoons are red or green from bacteria which was pretty. It was really windy out so we mostly just got out of the car to take pictures and then continue to admire the landscape from behind the car window. We're wimps! We also stopped at an outdoor thermal bath on our last day which was relaxing. It sucked having to strip down to our bathing suits when it was so cold and windy outside, but the soak in the hot water was worth it.
Before we left for the tour, we had read that it was common for tour guides/drivers to
be drunk during the day (while operating our vehicle). I was relieved that our guide wasn't drunk, but what I didn't realize during the trip was that he kept falling asleep at the wheel! And then on the last night, he was clearly not sober but our group didn't mind as long as he was sober during the day. One of our group members also thought he was stealing our food (not giving us all the food that he was supposed to). But I'm not too upset about that - just glad we made it to the end of our trip without any car accidents. We don't ask for much anymore.
Our trip ended with us crossing the border from Bolivia into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. We noticed big differences right after we crossed the border ... road signs, paved roads, buses adhering to speed limits. Though we enjoyed Bolivia, it's nice to be in a more orderly country again.
- Lydia
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ken
non-member comment
whoa
awesome photos