Salar de Uyuni

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January 8th 2009

Published: January 8th 2009

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Wherever I lay my hat

Salar de Uyuni

So the Salar de Uyuni trip. Well what can I say, it was quite a breathtakingly beautiful experience. I have added as many pics as I can to give you an idea, but really it doesnt compare to seeing the real thing. Apologies, I hope im not rubbing it in or anything! 😉.

The trip was spent travelling for 4 days in a jeep, stopping at passing lagoons of all different colours with various types of flamingoes, driving through incredible desert landscapes that looked like watercolour paintings, and lots of active and dormant volcanoes along the way, one of which we got to tread across. This was all leading up to a drive across the salt lake/desert depending on what season you went in (it was lake for us mostly) which is larger than the Great Salt Lake in America, so huge basically.

We had an excellent guide called Archie who was really good fun. He was not only our guide but our cook also and so he was up at the crack of dawn every day preparing breakfast and lunch in advance. This then meant that he would have a few hours kip at the back of the

first day of the trip

the first 30 minutes into the trip....

jeep to catch up on himself. The amusing thing about this was that he never once neglected us when it came to important landmarks. Be it sixth sense or plain old luck, but he managed to awake from his slumber at every crucial point to tell us all about a particular lagoons name, its history, its altitude etc. That I thought was pretty impressive work.

Each night we stayed in pretty basic shared accommodation and kept warm with a drink called Chuflay which we got quite addicted to (its made from a bolivian spirit called Singani, mixed with lemonade and lime, delicious and quite lethal!) and some card games. But on the last night we stayed in a Salt Hotel close to the lake, the eco friendly one (the other one is now closed due to the pollution it created, and is now a small museum). The Salt Hotel did a very very good job in living up to its name. Salt walls, floor, beds, tables, chairs, the lot! Oh and our first shower, be it a dribble!. Incredible to think they could make a hotel out of the stuff you put in your food (or for example fish

Skulls en route

and chips, although im trying not to think about chip shop chips with piles of salt and vinegar...mmmmmm)

Every morning we would get up at around 5am but on the final morning we wanted to get up at 4am to see the sunrise on the salt flats (sorry it has so many names!) It was bloody hard work getting up early every day but it was certainly worth it and this day was no exception. Because it was the rainy season it had become a lake so you got this surreal mirror effect that looked incredible at sunrise. After taking numerous photos including some clever trickster ones which you can see attached, we continued the drive across to finish our journey in Uyuni where we got another jeep to briefly visit Chile, San Pedro de Atacama - country number 3!!

An incredible 4 days which were as unforgettable as Machu Picchu, a definite must see thats for sure.

We made a quick stopover in Chile at a quiet little place called San Pedro de Atacama. A time to relax and do nothing, perfect! This part is brief and so are the pictures but at least I