Salar de Uyuni

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In the middle of the Altiplano is the Salar de Uyuni, one of the biggest salt lakes on earth. I spent some days in the town with the same name visit the salt lake and to acclimatize to the high altitude conditions around there and the passes to come.
With a group of mostly spanish speaking guys I had a guided tour of the lake. We drove in a run-down jeep across the extensive white, visited a salt producing family (Well, is more packing than producing, since the salt is already there. It just has to be dried and filled into plastik bags.), visited Isla de pescadores, a cactus island, had fun with salt crystals, and in the evening stoped for some pictures at the old train cementery. It was one of the best places I ever saw for photography. The rusty steamer carcasses in the evening light of the meager green plains around...fantastic. I could have spent days, unfortunatelly rain was coming up, and we had to return to Uyuni.

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Photos

Salar de Uyuni
A tour jeep is crouching its way trough the salt mud of the surface.

Salt Lake Tour
With these guys I had my visit to Salar de Uyuni. They all native spanish speakers, plenty of time to practice.

Lamas
Notice the crazy little pink bow between their ears.

Extracting the Salt
In the rainy season a thin layer of water is on top of the salt lake. To extract the salt it is first piled up in heaps to dry in the sun.

Salt Crystals
Theorie in praxis: What did we learn in chemistry about NaCl (in other words: salt)? That its ions form a cubic lattice. Here you can see that in a lot of different orders of magnitude.

Ojos de Salar
Spots where hot water and steam created colorful patterns on the lake surface are called the eyes of the lake.

Hotel de Sal
They built a hotel totally out of salt. Even the tables and chairs are made of salt. It wasn't too crowed though.

Isla de las Pescadores
The lake has got several islands, one of the larges ones is full of big cacti.

Big Mama
Older ones grow really tall.

Stone Arc
Before the Andes rose the ground forming Altiplano today was below sea level. Many rocks show shell- and coral-like structures.

Returning Home
At dry parts the lake surface had a hexagonal pattern of cracks.

Cementerio de Ferrocarril
Wrecks of once proud steam engines in the evening light.

General Relativity
It wasn't me who painted that, but this is from the Theory of General Relativity by A. Einstein.