Evan's Salt Flat Tour

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Our next adventure. We took ANOTHER overnight bus (god how we hate them) to Uyuni from La Paz. It was the bus ride from hell. The first three or four hours were on bitumen but then we hit a gravel road - full of corrugations! The whole bus rattled and every tiny crack seeped dust into the interior of the bus choking us. By the time we finally arrived at 7:30am in the morning (surprisingly having slept some - thank you nurofen), with a new fine layer of dust, we were rattled to the bones and couldn´t wait to get off. We really pitied the poor tourists who were planning to return on that bus to La Paz.

On arrival in Uyuni we were hit by tour operators from all sides trying to sell their tour of the salt flats. We got some information, took a few brochures and then wandered around the corner to an operator who had been recommended to us. The tours are pretty much all the same - the only variances are the skill of the driver, whether the driver speaks English (not in our case, or any other case we heard of although all the tour offices say they have drivers with English), whether you have a cook, quality of food and most important - the vehicle! We think we came out of it with a pretty decent all round tour even though the driver spoke no English (he still liked to talk to us in Spanish even though we only understood about two words - luckily other tourists on board could interpret), had no cook (mostly our food came from our accommodation places) and a lot of things on our 4WD were broken (that was definitely the norm).

We booked our tour and then headed out for breakfast, bought a few snacks and water, got our exit from Bolivia stamp and headed back for the tour. We piled into the car with our driver and 4 French tourists travelling together - who luckily spoke English and Spanish! First stop - the Uyuni Train Cemetary. Evan had been keen on this for some time and he raced off as soon as the car stopped to make the most of our whole 15 minutes visiting this site - even got in some surfing! 😊

Then strangely we drove back into town where we parked in a random location and our driver disappeared for some minutes - this happened more than once in random places on the tour. Very strange. By this time my stomach was really hurting and I made a visit to a local baños. It was not good and I didn´t feel any better. No idea what caused it - breakfast, the large orange juice I had, or the crap airplace-like food on the bus the night before. Typical for my worse sickness for all of our travelling to be while we were on a tour! The day rapidly detoriorated and I spent more time checking out the local facilities than I did the tour sights - hence the tour becoming Evan´s salt flat tour. I had to see some of the sights from the photos he took!!

Next stop was a museum to see information about salt mining in Uyuni - neither of us made it inside. I was in the toilet most of the time (not even imodium worked!). But we did get to laugh at a couple of tourists innocently talking to llamas and then getting spat at! It was hilarious - we guess the llamas took exception to something they said. Onwards into the middle of the Salar de Uyuni - the salt flats of Uyuni. It is the worlds largest salt flat, is at 3653m above sea level, and has an area of about 12000m2.

It is absolutely incredible to see - just whiteness everywhere with faint car tracks going in all sorts of directions. Our driver told us the flat is about 140m deep in the middle. We stopped at the place where they are actually mining the salt - in extremely primitive ways - shovels! The triangular piles of salt are really beautiful to look up - all lined up in perfect rows.

Then we got to see what some creative people did with all that salt - they made salt hotels! Same sort of idea as the igloos for eskimos I guess, but these look like normal hotels you would find anywhere - they just happen to be made out of salt bricks. Very odd. Even the bed bases are made of salt, and the chairs and tables etc etc. The hotel we visited had some great salt sculptures as well. I got to see the toilet again - not much to rave about there.

We drove further south and stopped at the main highlight of the day, Isla de los Pescadores - a strange green island in the middle of all that salt. It is a beautiful island (the toilets were pretty nice here too!) covered in giant cactuses and surrounded by blinding white salt flat. It makes a really striking feature when you drive up to it. This is the place where all the tourists venture out onto the salar and take all sorts of funky wierd perception photos. Unfortunately I wasn´t really in a state to play that game. Luckily it was the last stop for the day before our hostel (at the edge of the salt flat) and I was able to go to bed and rest. After a bad night I managed to be much better the following day and began to enjoy and take part in the tour of something other than the toilets!

Day two of the tour we headed out into the desert. We did a lot of driving on this day. Luckily the scenery was really beautiful and always changing. The colours in the landscapes were extraordinary. Lots of mountains and even a volcano. Our first stop was the town of San Juan. None of us were sure why we stopped there - our driver disappeared for a while though so we wandered for a bit until he deemed to come back. We then passed by the ruins of an old soap factory (or so our driver told us they were - seemed odd to us - salt factory seemed more appropriate!), drove some more and then stopped at some rock formations. We also passed a couple of lagoons and got to admire the local flamingos.

More driving and then we arrived at our final destination - Laguna Colorado. A lake which glows red in the sunlight - sort of like the pink lake down in Esperance - but red, obviously! Our accommodation was right across from it so we dumped our stuff and then went for a walk. OMG!! We have never been so cold. Not only was it freezing air temperature there was a hell of a wind - it was like ice. It turned out to be a much shorter walk than planned. We spent the rest of the night huddled inside the buildings.

Day three was a ridiculously early start of 4:30am! We took off in the freezing cold, and five minutes later we stopped. Our driver couldn´t see where he was going. He wound his window down (electric windows in this flash landcruiser!), rubbed the windscreen and then got going. First problem - the window wouldn´t go back up! The mechanism jammed - bloody new fangled windows. So not only were we cold we had to deal with freezing cold wind coming in the windows! Evan was in the front and at the urging of the French he decided to try the heater - maybe something in the car worked! Second problem - two big jets of dust came shooting into the car. So not only were we cold, had freezing ice wind blowing at us, couldn´t see out the window, we also were covered in dust - again. Then Evan realised that not only was the windscreen fogged up - it was actually iced up! With the French ingenuity we found a new use for a credit card - scraping ice off windscreens. Finally our driver could see properly and we got moving a bit faster. Until we stopped again and our driver told us he was lost. Great.

The driver decided to keep going in a forwards direction, despite a whole heap of glowing car lights off to our left, and eventually we ended up at another hotel. According to our driver we shouldn´t have been there - he used much more colourful Spanish language! But it turned out to be lucky because we were able to follow another car which was just leaving from that hotel and we foudn the right road again. Whew.

Finally - just as the sunrise was coming over the hill we arrived at the geyser basin - 4950m above sea level. It was amazing - little holes in the dirt shooting sulphurous gas in massive jets up into the air. It felt warm but wet to the touch, but the smell wasn´t too bad. Unfortunately the cold kept us from staying too long, and after a few experiments and photos it was back to huddling in the car.

Next stop we had a chance to warm up - the Termas de Polques hot springs - a bit lower at 4200m above seas level. Neither Evan or I could face the idea of getting undressed and then having to get out of the hot springs in the freezing cold after a nice dip. So we chickened out and simply put our hands in the warm water. Evan found another way to warm up though - ice skating! It was totally wierd. The hot springs were on the edge of a lake, and the lake edge was frozen - right next to the thermal pool. And there were flamingos in this lake too! Crazy birds.

Our final stop was Laguna Verde - back up again at 5000m above sea level (think that´s the highest we´ve ever been). Absolutely gorgeous pale green lake, and we were lucky enough to see it with a perfect reflection of Volcan Licancabur which rises above it. Check out the photo.

Then it was the border. A tiny little building in the middle of nowhere - with no toilets. When we asked we were directed to an old bus body in the distance that had obviously become a dumping ground for all sorts of unsavoury things. We didn´t go close to find out.

So after what was really a two day tour, we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, a popular entry into northern Chile. We chilled out there for a night with a group of Irish lads before heading to Antofagasta for our flight to Santiago. San Pedro is a nice desert town but almost totally designed for tourists. Antofagasta on the other hand is a port town with nothing much to recommend it at all. However, we spent a nice afternoon chilling out at the local yacht club, enjoying a beer and icecream and watching the seals and turtles play around the shore and the local demolition experts attacking an asbestos building with an excavator a little too close for comfort. Nex stop - Easter Island!

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Photos

Evan train surfing
Uyuni Train Cemetary

Go figure - an island in the middle of a salt flat
As you can see, these tours aren't exactly off the beaten track anymore

EEEOuch!!
This was the only attraction in a random town in the middle of nowhere - still not sure why we stopped there

Trax's Bolivian cousin
Dreadlocks from hell! Definitely a Rasta cat.

Salar de Uyuni
Salt mines in Uyuni

Where´s the pepper?
Evan at a Salt Hotel

Salt carving at the Salt Hotel
Big Ben eat your heart out

Driving on salt
Despite all the tourists, sometimes it was very lonesome