Salar de Uyuni

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February 13th 2005

Published: February 13th 2005

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El Gringo de la Bachata

Mirror Image

Its a pretty creepy sight.

Sorry folks, its been a while since i´ve written, but i am a lazy man on vacation.

Lets begin with about 2 weeks ago when I embarked on a 4 day, 870 km tour of the southwest portion of Bolivia. i was alone for this leg of the trip - tom was nursing his death road wounds in la paz and chrissy was out galavanting with bolivia pcvs. this is known to us travellers here on the gringo circuit in south america as, ¨the salar trip,¨ because the highlight is supposed to be the ¨salar de uyuni,¨ a salt flat that is unbelievably white in the dry season and full of water in teh wet. right now is the wet season, so the pics you will see whenever i get around to adding them will be full of water.

day 1 i arrived late after a 17 hour bus ride from la paz (it was scheduled to be only 12 hours) that was full of broken down busses and waiting beside rivers for them to go down so we could cross. arriving late, i ran up and jumped on a tour with Reli tours and their 1997-era toyota landcruiser.

more salar

it was pretty nice. the entire day was full of driving through the wet salar. the cool thing is that the water is so still that the horizon makes a near perfect mirror image - and supposedly makes you feel like youre flying. i didn´t feel like i was flying. but it was pretty, and a short visit to the isla del pescador in the middle of the salar was full of cacti and more pretty reflections. we then continued the struggle across the salar until we hit dry land, arriving at our dilapidated refugio around 10pm in the pitch black. our land cruiser was caked in salt by this point after driving the entire day through pure salt water - quite possibly the worst thing that a vehicle could be exposed to.

day 2. more driving. we saw some interesting rock formations and a lake that has turned red because of the mineral content spilled into it from the neighboring volcanoes. this area is very desolate and the tranquilidad is quite nice. a peaceful lunch by a beautiful lake and a snowcapped mountain was a good treat. lots of flamingos.

day 3. even more driving. starting at

LandCruiser on the Salar

The salt water completely destroys these vehicles. its amazing they can do 4 day tours for only 70 dollars.

5am in the absolutely freezing hostel at 4300m was hell. we saw some geysers and sulfur bubbling things that spit out tons of steam and warmed us up. breakfast at a hot spring with bare feet brightened our spirits. more driving to the best part of the 4 day tour, laguna verde. the lake is green and offers a mirror reflection of a huge volcano right behind it. really breathtaking, but we only had a few minutes to enjoy it as we had more driving ahead. passed by laguna blanca, more great reflections and the omnipresent flamingos, and yet more driving. saw the ¨arbol de piedra,¨ a strange rock formation that looks like a tree because of some nasty wind erosion. this night we had some beers with the pals i met on the 4 day tour, marta and luca (española and italiano couple), daniel (a swiss guy who continued onto potosí and sucre with me, and 2 korean guys who i never caught the name of who spoke no english. we played this british card game called ¨shithead¨ and chatted.

day 4. yes, more driving. saw the ¨train graveyard,¨ an odd collection of rusted out old trains with

Isla de los Pescadores

This ¨island¨ in the middle of the salar isn´t even surrounded by water for half of the year as the salar stays dry during the south american winter.

humorous grafitti scrawled all over it.

twas a good trip, though a lot more driving than i expected. things are really unique and beautiful in their own way in that region of bolivia. and for only 70 bones you get the tour and food and lodging for 4 days included. not a bad deal.

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