Advertisement
Published: September 16th 2008
Another cold shower for Seamus
luckily he had this lovely blonde to keep him warm! Salar de Uyuni (or Salar de Tunupa) is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles).It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, 3,650 meters high. The major minerals found in the salar are halite and gypsum.
Some 40,000 years ago, the area was part of Lake Minchin, a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind two modern lakes, Poopó Lake and Uru Uru Lake, and two major salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and the larger Uyuni. (history lesson added by Seamus)
After a shocking 7 hour bus ride on possibly the smallest bus in the world over the worst road in the world we finally arrived in Uyuni. Uyuni is the gateway to the salt flats and is an isolated town high up in the mountains. We were travelling with Ilhame from Moroccoa, Matthew from France and Monse from Spain and the five of us had arranged to embark on a 3 day tour of the salt flats together in a 4 x 4.
Uyuni itself is a really strange town. It is enclosed within a brick wall and the
only thing you can see as you drive in is rubbish (Mum you would have had a fit!). However we found a nice hotel with a excellent selection of towels (Seamus was particularly proud of his!) and after a nice meal headed for bed to prepare for the trip.
We met our driver Juan and the sixth member of our group Chantelle the following morning and proceeded to our first stop and possibly Seamus highlight the train cemetary! Basically a scrapheap for knackered old trains that have fiished their lives, but entertaining nevertheless as we got to climb on them and take photos. From here we headed to the start of the salt flats. The landscape is possibly the most incredible we have ever seen. The flats themselves are vast and barren. The salt is so white that even without sunglasses for 3 seconds your eyes begin to hurt. There is a small village at the beginning of the flats where a few locals remian making their living off the land and we visited a small scale salt factory. The woman gave us an explanation of how they prepare and package the salt before being shipped off around Bolivia
for various uses. Not suprisingly you are invited to see (and expected to buy) some of the models they also make from the salt.
Following this we then headed into the centre of the slat flats. It ws amazing and we spent hours taking photos like everyother tourist does! It is amazing how much fun you can have with no perspective, a shoe, bottle and hat!
In the salt flats there is a salt hotel. Everything in it including the building itself is made from salt...really weired! From here we headed to an Island in the middle of the flats called Isla Pescado to have lunch. The island itself is really beautiful and was apparently an Inca rest site many years ago. The only thing that grows here are cacti, some of which were over 900 years old.
Again the photos pretty much speak for themselves!
After sundown we headed to a small village where we spent the evening playing basketball with local kids and eating dinner and sleeping at a small hostal....all in all probably the best day so far!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.17s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 62; dbt: 0.0859s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
SeamusandTash
S Clandillon
It really was lit! Pretty scary stuff! Re. hot blonde...I started to get a bit worried myself, wondered why he was taking so long in the shower!