Salt Flats and desert crossing

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Uyuni

Uyuni as a town isn't much to shout about, apart from the market and handful of bars. I think in older times it was a town built on a mineral route from the Atacama desert up to La Paz, but now it mainly serves as a tourist base for the Salar de Uyuni (Salt Lake) expeditions, which of course we were there to do!

Salt Flats

In the morning the 4x4's picked us up and we headed out onto the salt flats. First stop was a salt processing set-up, where they manually dry, grind and pack the raw salt. A 50kg pack of their salt costs only 8 bolivianos (around 50p). They process around 1500kg of raw salt every day, with 4 people working full time. A hard way to make a living!

Words can't really describe the salt flats, and I think the pictures only really go partway. Nearer to the shore there was a lot of surface water, as well as mounds of salt ready to be loaded up onto trucks for processing. The reflections and the whites on blue were amazing.

Once we were out of the standing water, we were driving on hardened crystallised salt ... looking across the surface you could see a tesselating hexagonal effect. The salt hotel was quite cool ... it is as it sounds. I spent most of the time lugging around barrels in order to add to the 'jumping shot series' .. and raising the St Georges flag!

The highlight of the day was stopping off at the cacti-covered Isla Pescado. We took a short walk to the top for 360 degree views of salt as far as the eye could see .. as well as other islands in the distance .. superimposed as shades of gray against the darker, more distant shoreline. Whilst driving to the island I actually had the bizarre sensation that we were on a boat rather than a 4x4!

Towards Chile!
The 2nd day didn't leave quite as much of an impression, but was stunning nonetheless. We crossed some very rough terrain in the jeeps, up and through passes and across deep sands. We passed a lot of lakes, including Laguna Honda and Luguna Colorada. Both had a lot of flamingoes! Most of the mountains we passed were extremely variegated in colour, due to the varied mineral deposits (sulphur, quartz, iron oxide, borax). We had a punishingly early morning on the 3rd day, in order that we could make it to the geysers for sunrise. The sulphur smell was overpowering and a little eggy pre-breakfast, but I got quite a lot of cool steamy photos! Saul, our driver was telling me of a research project looking into generating electricity from the geysers. We saw an artificial steam outlet built for this purpose and had a laugh letting out hats fly 20 feet in the air! We stopped at the hot springs, and had a good soak prior to breakfast! Really hot, but hard to get out of! Worth it though, after 3 dusty days in the desert.

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Photos

Cactus
View of a cactus on Isla Pescado

Salt Truck
Salt truck waiting to pick up the pre-gathered mounds of salt

Near the shore
View across the standing water closer to the shore

Near the shore 2
Me, apparantly looking for cheese

Salt Jump
Another in the series ... I won't mention the state of the barrel I used as a platform ;-)

Holding the car
Or not ... it was as close as I could be bothered to get ;-)

Posing
What else can I say?

The far shore
Not sure what the tyre was for .. but liked the angle

Sun set
Just the other side of the lake, on the way to San Juan del Rosario

Climbing
... or titting about on the rocks

David long jumping
David, our tour leader .. taking the long jump. I got dirt in my mouth.

Laguna Lunch
I've forgotten the name, but it's where we stopped for lunch

Laguna Honda
Honda means deep.

Laguna Honda 2
I wonder if Honda know that?