Uyuni/Salar de Uyuni Bolivia


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South America » Bolivia » Potosí Department » Uyuni
April 26th 2014
Published: April 28th 2014
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Days 65-67 Today was a 5 hour 200+ km trip to Uyuni for a first night base & a 3 day stay within the region before crossing into Chile.

Uyuni is the main stepping off point for excursions into the beautiful & remote landscape of far South-West Bolivia especially the Salar de Uyuni (salt flats).

Arriving in Uyuni feels a bit like reaching the end of the road, which in many ways is true. This remote small town sits at high altitude on the edge of the high altiplano (plateau), a wilderness that extends for hundreds of kilometres towards the border with Argentina and Chile. As such the town has a bit of a wild west feel about it but also has more Land Cruisers than Toorak.

Uyuni is the starting point of a 3-day 4WD excursion into Salar de Uyuni through to Chile. Day 1 has been a fantastic day mostly spent on the salt lake itself after a brief visit to the train cemetery just out of Uyuni. The site is where all the old train engines & carriages were left to rust when the rail system ceased. Uyuni was a very important rail terminal for the export of minerals through Chilean ports & was the main maintenance depot for the whole country. What they didn't know at the time was that the coal & steam engines could not cope with the high altitudes within Bolivia & would often explode & when unable to be repaired were abandoned forming the start of the graveyard.

We then set out following the route of the 2014 Dakar rally over the massive salt plains of Bolivia where endless blue skies meet endless white salt & an unbroken chain of blue mountains lining the far horizon. The salt is up to 200 mtrs deep & suspended over a table of water which itself contains a multitude of valuable minerals including potentially 80% o the worlds known supply of lithium, it's just that they don't know how to extract it economically.

The perfectly white flat salt surface provided plenty of fun opportunities for bizarre, perspective-defying photos and we took several hours trying to perfect the perfect but with limited success.

After lunch we took a short walk on the cactus covered Incahuasi Island a pre-historic rocky outcrop with breathtaking views of the Salar. The cactus only grow 1 cm per year with the oldest known plant 1200 years old. The rock is predominantly stramalite which is one of the earliest building blocks of the planet & was forced up from the sea bed along with the other Andean plate movements.

Our accommodation is a salt brick 6 share dormitory hostel with cold water showers & byo gas bottle & food but it's the best available given its location.

Woke day 2 to a rooster crow at 5.30 am & a brilliant sunrise but to freezing pipes so no water for the loos. The day was a long driving day (9.5 hrs) with a beautiful clear blue sky but a bitterly cold & strong wind. The drive picked up the Dakar rally route again & passed a vast range of ever changing & amazing landscapes. First stop was Leguna Canapa a beautiful blue lake partially covered by salt & home to hundreds of pink flamingos. The flamingos are able to exist as the lake is fed by a hot spring and they feed on plankton type organisms.

The landscape included jagged red rocks, layered flat rocks, more salt flats, sand and all within a corridor of mountains with a combination of colour swirls. The colours include rust, dark brown, mustard, light & dark green limestone white & sometimes sprinkled with the remnants of snow which glistened in the sun against the deep blue background sky. The look is so unreal you would think they were water colour paintings. All the while we were rising to 5000 mtrs passing several other salt lakes, weird shaped rock outcrops. Near the top we were travelling up what must have been a river bed but now dry with steep chasm walls of loose layers of red rock.

Our final stop was at Laguna Colorado, a rich red lake vividly coloured by algae and minerals & again home to the pink flamingo. Overall one of the strangest but most memorable sights over the last few days is the abundant wildlife in such arid and inhospitable land, including llamas, flamingos, vizcachas which are plentiful but we were also lucky enough to also see a fox and indigenous rabbits.

The accommodation once again is a 6 share dormitory hostel with no hot or cold water showers, communal loos and very little power.

Next day we has a ridiculously early 4.30 am alarm for a freezing 5 am start to the day without breakfast so we can visit a volcanic geyser and then the Polkes hot springs before breakfast. As it was so cold sub zero & dark no one was interested in the geysers while about half the group had a dip in thermal pool even though the outside conditions were still freezing.

After breakfast we crossed the Salvador Dali desert allegedly due to the close similarity with some of his paintings even though he never travelled to Bolivia. Our final stop was at the Verde (Green) lagoon on the Bolivian border side before concluding our fantastic desert adventure & crossing into Chile & proceeding to our overnight stop in San Pedro de Atacama.

Overall the trip was tough, but better than expected, going with basic accommodation, long travel days in 4WDs on dusty washboard tracks, freezing temperatures, basic toilet facilities and multishare accommodation. However, without a doubt, this amazing journey was one of the main highlights of our trip to South America. What is surprising is that while the trip is well known only 50,000 people complete the whole trip each year & we are now happy to be counted as one of those.


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