Salar de Uyuni - a whole lot of salt and a bit of a nature lesson...

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So we arrived in Uyuni at four in the morning after the bus journey from hell. It took two hours longer than it was meant to and the driver hopped off the bus every half our to perform the very technical act of banging the front wheels with a piece of metal! However we got there and were on a Salar de Uyuni tour by 10:30 am that same morning. In fact we had our choice of tours and had tour operators following us around the central plaza (competition is fierce). We decided on a group called Reli tours as they were upfront about costs, gave us a really good explanation of the tour and showed us the Land Cruiser (which was in good shape - kind of an important piece of kit). We set off with four others, an Irish girl called Emma who knew Laura from our group on the Inca trail (small world on the gringo trail), a Swiss girl called Prisca and two Dutch guys Victor and Enzo - a great double act (Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum). Our guide Roberto was in fact our guide, driver, cook AND mechanic for the next three days and he did a great job at all four roles over the next three days. He didn't even make us listen to Cumbia in the land cruiser, the awful jingly jangly music that they play everywhere in Bolivia. Our first stop was the train cemetary, lots of old trains abandoned in the middle of the desert when the mining ended in Uyuni and they were no longer needed to transport minerals.

The Salars

We then approached the Salars (a huge dried-out sea) and saw the first few Vicuñas along the way, little deer-like guys smaller than Llamas. The Salars when we reached them were blindingly bright. Nobody could resist the temptation to check if they were salty and they were. They seemed to stretch on for miles (in fact 2,000 km2) and the mountains in the distance appeared to float some way off of the ground due to reflections and the heat haze. We stopped at a small community called Colchani where they retrieve, dry and bag the salt to sell. We visited a salt hotel, made out of yes you've guessed it, blocks of salt as was all the furniture inside the hotel.

Isla del Pescados (Island of

Solitary Vicuña

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Awww, cute

Fish)
This little island is in the middle of the salars and is covered in giant cacti. Each cactus grows only 1cm per year which made some of the cacti on the island over 200 years old! The Salars seemed to wash into the island in waves and it was easy to see that this had been an island surrounded by sea at one time. After lunch we went on to visit two caves, Cueva del Diablo (Cave of the Devil) and Cueva de Galaxias. Cueva de Galaxias was a cave found by two guys who just happened to look through a small hole with a flashlight and saw amazing limestone formations. These enterprising guys widened the tunnel and opened it to the public. Cueva del Diablo was actually a cemetary full of Chulpas, pre-Incan graves but all of the mummies were moved when the Spanish invaded (to a secret location). They did leave behind a llama skeleton in one Chulpa though, made us jump!

Siloli Desert and a different kind of lake!

On the second day, we moved into a very different type of landscape, desert - dry, brown but equally amazing. As we drove we could see the Ollague volcano, an active volcano complete with puffs of smoke. We would visit five lagunas today, Ediunda, Chiar Kkota, Honda and Colorado (the spectacular red lake). The lagunas had beautiful flamingoes, elegant, picking their steps and strutting their stuff like supermodels on a catwalk. The third looked like it had snow on it's edges (it was in fact the white mineral, borax). There were huge numbers of flamingoes here and three types, Chilean, Andean and James' flamingoes. After this we drove on through the desert to see one of the most popular postcard images of this area, the 'Arbol de Piedra' or rock tree. It is a bit like a Dali sculpture in that people often see different things, feet, a bunch of flowers etc. It is actually volcanic rock eroded by the wind thus it's shape is transient and it will eventually disintegrate and fall. It was then time for (for me) the highlight of the day, Lago Colorado or the red lake. It is a bit of a surreal site - a red lake with hints of purple and pink flamingoes! The red colour is due to (this is the nature lesson bit) the presence of a cyanophyte algae called 'Dunaliella Salina'. The colour of the water varies during the day, due to factors such as temperature and solar radiation; when both increase it cause the cyanophyte algae to 'bloom'. These blooms are rich in phycoerythrine pigments which intensify the red colouring in the water and it can take on a brick red or even purple tints.

A bit of a geyser

Next morning we had a 4am start to see the geysers at 4,870 m (so alot of climbing in the land cruiser). The first one that we saw was 'Pozo Somero Ende´, which was actually an experimental artificial geyser. It was impressive but a bit too perfect-looking, the others were very real, very smelly (lots of suplher = smell of rotten eggs) but very impressive. They spewed steam and water and bubbled with a grey mud. At times the mud spurts out at some unsuspecting passer-by. At that time and that high, it was pretty cold so a few people were a bit reluctant to take a dip in the nearby hot springs - understandibly I suppose. Not us, and it was worth it, my nicest bath in months. After breakfast we drove through a landscape straight out of a Dali painting (it is hard to believe that he never even visited it). Before crossing over to Chile, we visited the beautiful Lago Verde (Green Lake), a beautiful blue green colour due to copper oxide. Our last glimpse of Bolivia was an impressive one, a blue-green lake with the surrounding mountains reflected in it.

Goodbye Bolivia, you´ve been good to us!!!

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