A SALTed Dessert...

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When I think about the dessert, what pops in my head are brown sands, dunes and extreme heat. It’s probably due to varied movie cinematography’s coupled with ignorance. While we contemplated on things to do prior in heading to Bolivia, we constantly ran through the “Salt Flats of Uyuni” on varied internet searches as a renowned location to visit. My better half coined it appropriately; “that seems interesting, what’s a Salt Flat honey?”… Ahhhh, a flat plane/area with Salt, I guess (it was worth a shot). With a little help from Wikipedia we found the appropriate answer.

The “Uyuni Salt Flats” or “Salar de Uyuni” is a dried lake situated in the Altiplano region. Unfortunately, I didn’t had a chance to find out when it actually dried up (I guess Google can shed some light on that). The town of Uyuni is roughly 10 hours commute from La Paz. What’s common with La Paz and Uyuni is their both situated on higher elevations and one can easily be at the mercy of oxygen deprivation (I’ll reserve my struggles with altitude sickness on a different blog). Since the area is remotely located from neighboring cities and mostly dry. Water is a precious commodity and remains to be a constant challenge. It’s interesting that in most hostels, you could only get 1 free hot shower a day and have to pay extra if you opted to clean up before calling it a night. If you’re used to recycling clothes for several days with wet wipes as your backup to remain refreshed, you should be fine.

Another interesting point is the process of how locals harvest salt and make it available for mass consumption. In case you travel to the area and saw piles of sands in the open, that’s step #1 right there. Also, be prepared on numerous Llama encounters as you make your way through the dessert. I was tempted to go near one but an acquaintance mentioned that they usually spit if rattled. I took their word for it and didn’t bother to test that theory.

In the surrounding areas, you have an opportunity to climb Tunupa Volcano and witness the spectacular views of the dessert. We pretty much convinced ourselves to give it a shot the next day. Initially, we were aiming to reach the summit but the combination of oxygen deprivation (3,656 meters above sea level), fatigue and heat was just too much to bear. We settled for the midway vista point (halfway from the top) and bunked from there. While trekking, we passed along llamas, 1 foot guide dogs (that posses better cardio than we do) and mummy burial grounds. It’s interesting to know that different regions of the world exercise this craft (not just in Egypt).

On our way back to town, we stopped on the famous “Cactus Island”, were majority of cacti are roughly 11 feet tall and passed along the only “Salt House” built at the middle of the flats. As I was staring at the large number of cacti, my mind was telling me “don’t do anything crazy, being stung by those bad boys isn’t nice”.

The coolest thing about the flats is the varied amounts of photo-ops. With a little imagination and creativity, one can easily come up with interesting masterpieces. I myself loved the fact that I get to enjoy and show whose boss in our lovely wedlock (even though it was only short lived).

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