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We had about a 2 hour drive to get to the outskirts of Uynui, where we would be stopping at the train cemetery. Once again, it’s exactly as it sounds. 2 railway tracks and many abandoned trains and carriages. These were trains that were used by the Spanish and English to export minerals out of Bolivia into Chile. Bolivia doesn’t have a coast, therefore all materials that were exported were sent through to Chile to be able to reach the coast and get shipped back to Europe. It was very eerie just how all these trains had been dumped here. It was a very dirty area and it was clear that it was used as a dumping ground now. A great shame as you would think someone would come and clear up the area and preserve the trains that are left or put them in a museum or something.
After we untied Tony from the railway track we made our way to Salar de Uyuni; The Salt Flats of Bolivia.
At 12,000sq km and a height of 3650m the salt flats in the dry season are blindingly white or water-logged providing a mirror image of the sky and clouds.
We were just at the end of the wet season, so we had the reflections. The salt is over 10 meters thick and there are plenty of trucks all over the flats exporting the salt. There are also many salt hotels, they were currently being rebuilt as they melt in the wet season, what a crazy thing to have to do each year.
We drove for about half an hour so all that we were surrounded by was salt, nothing else for miles. Unfortunately because of the water, we couldn’t do all the pictures we wanted, but we still managed to have a bit of fun with the camera. The one where Tony is getting crushed is the best!!
Looking around was incredible, what a perfect end to our 3 day trip. Each day just got more and more beautiful, neither of us had seen anything like it before. We still could not recommended Cordillera enough as a company. Choosing a salt flat tour company can be very risky business but thankfully our tour and group was excellent and it really made all the difference for us. Just make sure you ask for Miguel, not biased but he
was definitely the best guide!
We had our final lunch there, was nice but not much flavour, could’ve done with a bit of salt but they were all out!!
We arrived in Uyuni in the afternoon and had a well deserved beer. Already we had noticed how cheap Bolivia was, apart from the dinner we picked to have. Everyone in Uyuni talks about this place called Minuteman Pizza. A Boston man who opened the place and does the world’s best pizza. Not sure if it was nicer than Rome but the Lama Pesto pizza was certainly a good contender. We then needed to make our way to the bus station as we were heading straight up to La Paz. We had decided to skip places in between like Sucre & Potosi, as we didn’t have much time and we would prefer to head out to the Amazon from La Paz. That was the plan anyway, we just had to survive a 10 hour bus journey. Seemed simple enough.
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