Advertisement
Published: July 11th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Day Three Day three flew by in a whizz of being freezing when getting up to seeing lots more wonderful lakes, volcanoes and scenery. One of the coolest things was the stone tree which similar to the deserto de Dali the day before is made from the way the weather has affected the formation of the stone. It was pretty cool to see how powerful the weather can be. It was on this day that we really noticed the difference in doing the tour from Tupiza. The route is a lot less crowded on day one and two but here a lot of other jeeps are on the route coming from the other direction but ending up in the same places. So that was good (we were only two jeeps versus like 20).
We made it to a Laguna to find a hotel sitting there and I mean this is nowhere near anything else. Of course it was closed. I wonder if it is always (it is winter here now, maybe summertime it gets business?). As we visited one of the last lagoons the reflections of the surrounding mountains were just gorgeous in the lake and I really felt
lucky to be on this tour. It was just one beautiful scene after another and all so different! How is it possible!!!?
On we went to meet our first salt flat, Salar Chiguana. It is much smaller that the Salar de Uyuni but still we were driving along it for ages so it was pretty big! When we hopped out of the jeep I wasn’t expecting the ground to be so hard, it was very compressed! We passed an army barracks on the edge of the Salar. It had pretty funky buildings shaped like little eggs or something. We had to give away some lunch left overs to get passed a barricade, have no idea why but the young soldier looked pleased with himself!!
The last part of day three was a lot of driving to get to our impressive destination on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni – a hotel made totally from Salt! I mean down to chairs, tables, light shades, bed frames, and steps. It was sooo cool. We also had a room to ourselves for the night, BONUS! It was a lot warmer here (the building was better but we were also at
a lower altitude) so the evening was spent playing cards, having yet another yummy dinner before hitting the hay to be up for our sunrise over the Salt Flats. Such a good tour so far and the main event was yet to come!!!
Day Four So up we got in the darkness and cold to pack up the jeep one last time. We drove down the road a few minutes and we were on the Salar De Uyuni, the largest salt flats in the world. They are 12,106 sq. kilometres. It was part of a salt lake in prehistoric times but when it dried up, the salt flats were left behind. As soon as we got on the flats though we had to stop. Another jeep was stuck as it had veered off normal course. It’s great here cos the guides all help each other out all the time and about 6-8 jeeps stopped and got this one out of bother. At one point we were sure that we were going to view the sunrise from the breakdown point but luckily we made it to an ideal spot to watch the sky light up across the horizon in
a red, purple and yellow hue before the sun itself peeped up over the seemingly endless white world ahead. It was truly remarkable.
After watching the sunrise we headed to Isla del Pescado or Isla Incahuasi. This is an island lying in the heart of the Salar that is covered in cacti. They are everywhere. How it’s possible I don’t know!! But with white salt flats all around rises this plant ridden hill with panoramic views all around. We climbed to the top slowly. The cold nights and days are catching up with us both now and we are not feeling tip top, especially John. When we get there and take it in, the silence, the scene and the almost alien landscape ahead, it is relaxing and fulfilling.
We have a breakfast at the foot of the hill at little salt tables. Yummy cake, cereal, dulce du leche, warm tea while watching a football competition between gringos and guides. This is the life!
Next stop on the enormous Salar is for the customary photo shoots that take place here. It’s perfect for cool photos because the landscape just lets you do cool jumping shots or standing on
top of things or picking people up or eating each other etc. The two groups from Tupiza got together to take a range of photos, some good, some bad but we only have a few for now! It was such fun, just an excuse to be a big kid while using nature to our advantage!
After our photo shoots were done, on we went to reach the edge of the Salar, stopping briefly at the sneered upon hotel on the salt flats (as it is damaging the salt pan with its sewage system) then we stopped at the salt extracting town of Colchani to visit an artisan market and to have lunch. Our final adventure of the day was to what is known as the Train Cemetery just outside the town of Uyuni. The old trains are pretty cool and are laid out a very big area with graffiti here and there on some. We had a bit of fun climbing on these too for photos! There is also unfortunately a rubbish cemetery lining the train cemetery and the outside of the town which was a shame to see after all the beauty of the past few days.
Once settled in Uyuni for the night we had a walk around the town which really is only there for tourism in the Salt Flats but it isn’t a bad wee place. That night a group of us had some dinner and Chris, Tamsyn, John and I ended up in a place called Extreme Fun Pub having pisco sours and the like. It wasn’t wild by any means on our part but the pub itself does have some interesting drinking challenges to try to overcome. …. If we weren’t so wrecked from the tour I'd have been up for it but I know this, they wouldn’t be allowed in Ireland cos everyone would be giving them a go!!! (There were a lot of Irish names on the wall for giving it a go J). What a four days though, just so many good memories!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.198s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.1184s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb