Uyuni Salt Flats and the Altiplano Tour, Part 1

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We arrived last night to Uyuni, a cute little one horse town, basically there to offer gringos pringles, bottled water, cuban rum and the like. We are taking the most common tour down here, a 4 day jeep trek into the altiplano, hitting the regions highlights. Its a lot of driving, but if you are one for roadtrips, and aren´t that worried about really roughing it, than this is for you. It is not for everyone.

The Uyuni Salt Pans are located just a few miles outside of town, and its actually pretty hard to describe the look of it. Blinding, blinding, vast whiteness. Words and pictures can´t do it justice, which is why its worth visiting with your own peepers, despite the lack of any comforts of home.

The salt flats are located about 12k feet above sea level in the south western corner of Bolivia. It is an area which was once connected to the ocean ages ago, and then after the creation of the Andes mountains, became a lake. Huge amounts of years later, the water evaporated and all that was left was a vast plane of salt. 4,085 sq miles of salt, to be exact.

We are visiting in the tail end of the wet season. Though people will tell you to come in winter (May-Sept), I completely disagree. The tiny bit of water that lies on the vast flatness of salt creates the worlds largest mirror. It is a little bit of unreality in a very unreal situation. The photos, as many of you might have seen, are incredible.

Unfortunately, our accomodations that night, in a small pueblo called Allotta, were, in my experience the worst I had ever experienced. They stank. They were dark, moldy, concrete floors which remained damp, and a bathroom/outhouse that is basically unspeakable. However, we did survive. The four of us quickly exited our caves and spent the entire evening playing made up games, pictionary, celebrity and anything else we could play with only a pen and paper. We also drank an entire bottle of rum. Yep, the four of us. So much for listening to the travel docs suggestion to keep drinking to a minimum at high altitudes. He apparently had never been in this town.

All in all, a lot of fun in dank cave hostel. Thank you travel companion gods.

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Photos

Salar Salt Piles
Salt Mining in Bolivia

Salar Reflections
Surreal environment at Uyuni