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Climbing up the Altiplano
The mountain plato on which the Salar is located Salar de Uyuni is no doubt one of the more amazing places I had a chance to visit since the start of my journey in South America. This place reminded me why I'm traveling, and what I'm for in South America.
The whole 4 day jeep tour was great, and the only thing I'm sorry about is that I didn't have more time for photos, but I hope I'll be able to return there one day and complete the stock.
But first thing first.
Salar de Uyuni is a desert in the bottom left corner of Bolivia, with some incredible sites, the most interesting one being a desert of salt. To see'em you must take a jeep tour of a few days, as there are no good roads in the area.
We organized as a group of 6 Israelis from a nice town in Bolivia called Tupiza (about which I'll add a separate entry), and found a guide (which also was the driver) and a cook to come with us.
The first day was a bit ominous as we had some mechanical malfunctions, or more accurately 3 of them - first a problem with the gear that wouldn't shift,
than the back wheel that stepped out of it's location and at last something electronic with the engine - it just died in the middle of the drive, but all of them were fixed pretty fast, as our driver was used to all possible problems.
It reminded us that after all, we are in Bolivia, and it can be no other.
Nevertheless we did see some interesting ingenious villages on the way.
The night was freezingly cold, around -15C outside, but don't worry - we weren't stupid enough to sleep outside - inside our cabin was the incredible heat of -3C, almost a sauna (No, there is no heating in the Salar).
Second day started almost as good - as we were crossing one of the frozen rivers, the ice broke down under our rear wheel, and we had fun trying to free the jeep, but it wasn't quite simple as only one of the wheels had a grip on a firm soil, and the others where on ice.
Luckily for us we weren't alone and soon other jeeps that did a similar route to ours came to our help, and together we pushed and pushed and finally did
it!
Our blessed jeep was free to go.
This was actually the first time I had a chance to push an automobile! And I did enjoy every moment.
But then the actual fun started - the road climbed really high, and I set my personal altitude record thus far - 4910m!
On the way our marvelous jeep had some problems climbing up, so we did part of it in reverse - just driving up in the rear gear.
Than we visited some beautiful lagunas, and the really scenic road took us to hot springs, in which it was great just to relax from the ride (it did get warm during the day - after all it is a desert).
To culminate the day we arrived to a field of gassers - an amazing phenomena of water fumes and sulfur bursting out of the soil with tremendous force.
The following night was even colder as we slept even higher, at around 4000m, and to add to the experience, our beds were of actual stone, but turned out to be OK.
The third day started with the magnificent Laguna Colorada which is called this way because of the colorful microorganisms
The Guys
Rotem, Me, Bat El, Rivi, Shalhevet & Shlomi that thrive in the hot water caused by the volcanic activity, and because of the flamingos which feed on them.
Than we had a long drive to get close to the Salar, and on the way we passed some interesting stone formations including arbol de piedra, a stone similar to a flower.
This time as we were close to the Salar, our beds were, yeah you guessed it right, from salt!
On the last day we woke up at 5 am to see the sun rise in the salt desert, and it was incredible!
When the sun rose the colors were awesome, and as we got out of the jeep, relentlessly (it was still pretty cold), we understood in what an unbelievable place we were! There was absolutely no perspective!
All you could see around was salt, then some more salt and finally allot more salt going as far as the mountains in the horizon, all in the formation of a geometrical hexagon.
It all looked the same allowing some interesting deceptions.
A hill that was actually the Isla del Pescado, looked as if it's in 10 minutes drive, but it took us more than an hour to get
to.
Isla del pescado is composed of cactuses, some of them incredibly old - as old as 1203 years, and from Inca ruins.
Incas once settled the place, escaping from the Spanish invasion.
Than we drove to another place in the Salar, where there was absolutely nothing - just salt and salt till the horizon, not even the mountains of earlier, and had some great (although not as many as I wished) shots.
Finally we arrived to the Hotel de Sal, which is a hotel totally and absolutely built of just salt, and it is actually possible to hire a room there.
Our tour ended after we saw the salt excavation process, in the outskirts of the Salar.
But don't worry - the salt is not going to end that soon - there are 10,000,000,000 tons of salt in the Salar - in the area of 10,000 square km and in the depth of 40 meters.
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