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Published: February 19th 2007
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Uyuni
Train cemetary Bussed and trained down to the SW of Bolivia, a town called Uyuni. Uyuni's a dusty old town whose main reason for visiting is that it's a jump off point for a number of very unique landscapes. We launched on a 3 day 4WD tour with 4 other gringos plus the driver and cook. Among the 6 gringos, there were 2 aussies, 1 pom abd 1 german plus us. The combined age was about 180, 96 of those were us. You'd think the other four may have come to us for some worldly wisdom, but they must have had us pegged fairly quickly as having no idea about anything. In reality we were very fortunate, they were a great bunch to be crammed into a 4WD with for a few days.
The 1st day was spent on a Salt Lake. Boring I hear you say. OK, what if I tell you the Lake is 12000 sq klm with 20 billion tonnes of salt. (who counts this stuff) enough salt to give the entire world's population high blood pressure hundreds of times over. Whizzing across the salt flats on the 20,000 lane salt highway to lunch at a cactus infested island in
Salt Flats
Anyone got a Street Directory! the middle of the flats was a buzz.
The next couple of days involved driving around some really incredible land formations. Green lakes, red lakes, flamingo infested lakes, volcanoes, geysers, mud pools, weird rock formations etc. The sulphur smells could really work to my advantage as it tended to disguise any sly windies that just happened to slip out. Although that wore thin 50 klms away from any sulphur source and I had to start accepting the blame.
The last day unfortunately turned into a bit of a torture test. The cuisine finally caught up with me, and the fact that my heart and other major organs were trying to exit my body via the mouth made it difficult to enjoy the surroundings. The driver reckons it was the altitude (3 days between 4000 and 5000 mtrs) but I am pretty certain that the pinky chicken from the day before was the culprit. Long day - 14 hrs and to add insult to injury we had to call in for a side of the road pit stop for our female cook, 2 minutes from home base and then a guided tour of the towns tip on the outskirts.
Gary
Salar
Hotel made of Salt The train to Uyuni was fun, sitting backwards and under the TV for 6 odd hours, so off to the dining car for dinner. Of course the train had been cruising at 40 kph until we ordered drinks when it picked up speed to 80 kph. Hence the drinks mainly landed on the table.
The trip to the Salt Flats was great, wearing sunglasses became compulsory otherwsie the Salt Flats and horizon just blended on all sides making directions impossible. I immediately felt at ease when Mario our driver (not wearing sunglasses) stuck a strip of white paper on the steering wheel to keep us on track. (The Bolivian GPS!)
Our lunch stop at the Cactus Island in the middle of the salt flats felt like a set from a Hollywood movie- hence many photos to follow. Considering we're in the middle of nowhere, Felicidad our cook managed to whip up a reasonable lunch, followed by dinner at our Refugio that night, after our 4WD broke down with the gringos pushing it the last 100 meters.
Day 2 included more fantastic lakes, rock formations etc and tonnes of photos at 5000 metres. Our 4WD companions made worthy models without even
asking for the obligatory Bolivian tip.
Day 3 as Gary described was not great for him, however, he missed the bubbling geysers at 4am!! the hot spings and the green lake. Well he did leave a few colourful souvenirs of his own.
More images at:
www.colvinyeates.zenfolio.com
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Jeanette
non-member comment
Wow
Stunning pics on the salt flats guys!! Great commentary. Ha, ha. Keep it coming. Have a few more entries to read to catch up. Where have I been, what have I been doing...... Luv J