Out of the Desert

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30 Mayo - Salar de Uyuni
We are working our way out of the desert. This is our last night and tomorrow will be a short day. We breakfast late, leave late, and arrive in Uyuni early. These past three days have ridden us hard. They have been long days, with lots of driving, lots of intense sun, and lots of dust, and cold nights. This is definitely a land of extremes. We go from freezing at night to burning up during the day. Here, the sun and the wind rule everything.
You have to dress in layers. If you are in the shade, you’re freezing. In the sun, sweating and looking for a sunburn, but if there’s wind, back to freezing and still looking for a sunburn.
This place is so bizarre. It is like a dreamscape. It is basically a high tundra shaped by volcanoes and ancient lakes. It is fairly young and there is little plant material. The plants that are here are trying to colonize the area. There is a little grass, some lichens growing on plain rock, and a few other scattered plants.
The soil is barren. It is all rock, weathered volcanic rock, of all different colors.
The landscape itself is rolling, and barren. There are beautiful swaths of greens, or yellows, or reds and oranges, or purples and grays. I am continually reminded of the surrealists’ paintings of Klee, Dali, and others. There are lakes of green (Laguna Verde), red (Laguna Colorado), blue and white. There are volcanic geysers, huge boulders surrounded by nothing but sand, jagged mountains, weathered and smooth mountains of multiple colors, complete valleys made of rock, active volcanoes, foxes, rabbits with squirrel tails, vicuñas, llamas, flamingos, ducks, and so much more.
I want to stop everywhere and photograph all of the beauty, serenity, and surreality that I see. Instead, we speed around to all of these select places like we’re “Road Warriors”. Our four day trip would be much more comfortable as an 8- or 10- day trip, and even then, I don’t think I would get enough of it. I think I could easily spend a month out here just photographing the landscape. It is so foreign and bizarre and extremely beautiful.
We’ve been to places with small patches of snow, remnants form a snow long gone, and I try to imagine this place with a thin layer of fresh snow, even more serenely beautiful than now, and even more harsh.
It is so amazing for me to see this young land. I can see the beginnings of life, the struggle, the miracle, the importance of water, the effect of wind, and the sheer persistence of life.

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