Salt flats and getting to Brazil

---

Salar de Uyuni was one the top highlights of almost every traveller we had met in South America, so with high expectations we booked in a 3 day / 2 night trip out of Uyuni to the salt flats then south into the wilds of Bolivia towards the border of Chile and the Atacama desert. Typically, travellers use the tour to cross into Chile and continue south along the west coast of South America, but as we had a date with Iguaçu Falls and our tour to Rio we did the full loop back out of the desert to Uyuni, a total of about 900km driving in 3 days. The salt flats of Bolivia is an enormous ancient sea that was pushed to about 4000m above sea level when the Andes were formed. The sea then dried out, leaving behind a 20-30m thick layer of salt that stretches beyond the horizon in every direction. There is no life on the salt flats with the wind and heat creating an almost perfectly flat, bright white surface it has become the go-to tourist destination for hilarious, perspective-warping photographs.

On the first day of the tour we headed towards the flats, past an abandoned set of trains left to rust in the desert and had lunch outside the Salt Hotel, a hotel in the middle of the flats made entirely of salt blocks (including the beds which looked particularly uncomfortable). Along the way we learnt about how the locals collect, refine and sell the salt, rode bikes across the flats and spent the afternoon trying to get the perfect photo of the two of us jumping over and between giant dominoes. In the afternoon we visited a former island covered with cacti, the only sign of life rising in the middle of nowhere amidst the salt before we headed for a sunset lookout and then off the salt flats and to the edge of the desert to sleep the night.

Day two saw us leave the salt flats behind and head into the massive expanse of high altitude desert that dominated almost all of southwest Bolivia. We visited a number of coloured lagoons filled with flamingoes and took photos with some of the famous rock formations that had been carved over the years from wind/sand erosion. In the evening we celebrated New Years Eve with wine, card games and lights out at 10pm (electricity is very limited and expensive in the middle of the desert) and the promise of a very early wake up call on New Years Day.

2015 started with a pre-dawn (4am) wake up and pack in the freezing cold and a short trip out to experience sunrise at a set of natural gas giesers and mud pools (possibility the coldest place on earth at that moment) followed by hot springs at 5000m altitude (with the obligatory new years day bottle of sparkling)! It was a special and unique way to say hello to the new-year and a real highlight of the adventure.

After a reluctant exit from the hot springs we drove to the Chilean border to drop off most of our tour group and began the long drive back to Uyuni spotting a huge desert fox, an emu (real name?) and more flamingoes before arriving back in Uyuni to shake off the layers of salt and dust and have a well-deserved shower, change of clothes and sleep. The next morning we began our two-day journey traversing Bolivia to border town of Puerto Quiarro, across the frontier (complete with 5 hours waiting in the sun at the Bolivian side of the border to get our exit stamp), onward to Corumba, Brazil and into the Pantanal.

In all honesty, we were happy to leave Bolivia. The combination of home sickness over Christmas, high altitude, sub-par food, unhelpful locals and utter chaos when trying to travel anywhere made Bolivia the most difficult country of the trip so far (and probably the toughest either of us have travelled). However, Bolivia also gave us some absolutely stunning highlights, offering mountain biking the Death Road and celebrating New Years day in the Salt Flats. Overall, it’s a must-see part of any South American adventure but we had to work very hard to get the best out of the experience.

---