The wonders of Salar de Uyuni and around..

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Lake Titicaca, apparently the world's highest navigable lake, is not the only unique natural sight Bolivia has (though technically only half of it is Bolivia´s, and according to Peru it´s the ´caca´ half..). As it has lost all its coastal areas in disputes with its neighbours over time, Bolivia is completely landlocked and the continent´s highest, most isolated and most rugged country. To quote our guidebook, it's landscape is one of extremes - Bolivia has some of the warmest, coldest, windiest, driest, saltiest and swampiest areas of the world. A tour through the Salar de Uyuni and the surrounding dessert and national park area provides some good views on the uniqueness of this country. It was this tour that had made us decide to include Bolivia on our itinerary...

Stephen had been very keen on the trip from the beginning onwards, whereas I had some doubts. First of all, the salt fields were about a 16 hour bumpy bus ride away from La Paz. And then, the salt fields did look pretty awesome, I had to admit that, but spending 3 full days in a jeep.. That sounded a bit much. Add to that the stories you read everywhere about crappy hostels on the way without heating or warm water, jeeps with too many passengers, dangerous and at times drunk drivers, and you can maybe imagine some of my hesitation. Especially given that although I didn't have any major altitude sickness problems, at times I would notice some discomfort due to the altitude, and the tour would be at high altitude too, comfort was a bit higher on my list than usual.

After hours of online research, we did discover there were some alternatives. First of all, there was a local flight with Amaszonas that would get us to Uyuni much more quickly and comfortably. Second of all, there turned out to be a significantly more comfortable alternative for the trip, with a private jeep and driver and stays at the Tayka hotels, the local 'luxury' chain. No 5 star hotels, but all hotels were reported to have warm water and heating, and good meals. So there was our dilemma.. Yeah, we had the money to pay for it, and it wouldn't end up to be much more than a weekend trip from London would cost us. But it was a multitude of what the 'standard' tour would cost.. Were we getting too snobby?

We eventually decided that this was a once in a life time experience, and we may as well do it the way we would enjoy it most. As we run into several other couples around our age on the way, we realised we weren´t alone in our decision (although reading the blogs makes it seem everyone decided to roughen it up..) And when I got a little bit sick on the first day, I was extra pleased about this choice, as it allowed us to skip the last (not so interesting) site, have a lukewarm shower (next day it was warm..), rest in a big, quiet, private room, and have at least part of a meal after that. But I am getting ahead of myself..

Our trip started out extra early, as we had heard the day before that our flight had been moved forward to 6.15 AM.. Oh joy. We were lucky enough that our hotel in La Paz was used to early departures and arrivals, so we were able to have a small breakfast at 4.45 AM (..again, oh joy..) before heading out to the airport.

Immediately once we got to Uyuni, we were reminded of one of the downsides of having an economy that is almost fully dependent on tourism - scamming tourists becomes an art. Our short trip from the airport to town turned into a frustrating experience because of this.. But okay, let's not let it spoil the fun. We had a couple of hours to kill before the start of our tour, which we did at a lovely breakfast restaurant owned by a Bolivian/Swedish couple. The Swedish style pan cakes were very yummy, and reminded me of the Dutch ones.. Then our driver came to pick us up for our tour, and we were happy to see we'd be going around in a comfy Lexus 470.

We started off with a visit to the train cemetery, which made for some cool pictures, and then continued to the 'salt factory', i.e. a shed with some equipment to make salt ready for consumption, a guy who gave us a 2 min explanation, and lots of stalls for tourists to buy stuff. As we found out quickly, some of the stops were going to be more interesting than others.. The highlight of day 1 was obviously the Salar de Uyuni, which is the world's largest salt flat spanning over more than 12 square kilometer. It used to be a part of a prehistorical salt lake, and now has turned into a pretty surreal and unique landscape. It is still surrounded by its former islands, and it feels a bit like a frozen lake covered with snow.. Other than that the snow is actually salt. It´s truly amazing and incomparable to anything else I have seen before. The landscape of just salt as far as you can see, and therefore the lack of proper perspective, also makes a great setting for silly pictures (see attached). Salt mining happens, but only at small scale (manually) and no salt is exported due to a lack of demand from elsewhere, so the landscape will probably not be at severe risk for the next while.

That night we stayed in a salt hotel, where indeed everything, including the walls, were made out of salt. As long as they stay dry, salt blocks apparently can stay good for a long time... Who would have ever thought that I´d spend the night in a place built of salt? Life is full of surprises..

Day 2 was a day of beautiful lagunas, with many flamingo's and other wild life. Each of the lagunas we passed on our tour was filled with its own minerals, borax, sulphur, etc. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, but has the most minerals of any of the countries. But due to lack of money within the country, exploitation beyond the simple manual labor of e.g. the salt mining is often done by foreign companies, e.g. the Japanese companies we saw. At night we stayed in what could justifiably be called the middle of nowhere, in our desert hotel (which had a wonderfully warm shower, I guess that's the upside of being in the desert - water warms up quite easily 😉).

Our plan for the last day had been unclear until the very last moment, as apparently the local communities had blocked off the national park that we were supposed to visit, in protest against how the revenues were shared (what was that song again, it's all about the money..?). But we were lucky and could go through to see some more incredible sights, including some more wonderful lagunas, such as the laguna colorada or verde etc, a set of impressive geysers, and some lovely thermal baths.. Whereas we thought we had pretty much seen all the impressive stuff already, there were more amazing sights for us to see on our final day. Good thing the park had opened up just in time! I imagine the thermal baths would be even more amazing if you haven't had a warm shower for 2 days, but they were pretty nice and comfy for us too 😉. When walking around the geysers, are guide was unusually directive on where to walk. When we jokingly asked whether someone had ever falling in, it turned out that about one or two years ago an Israeli had fallen in, and within 2 minutes his body had completely disappeared. Ouch. There seems to be this thing about Israelis anyway. Somehow, they love to travel to Bolivia. But they are not necessarily the most beloved group of tourists by the locals.. Compare them to the Russians in Western European holiday destinations. Our guide was complaining how they often demand to stay longer at the salt fields, which means the drive back to the hotel is in the dark and therefore more dangerous. And that the drive is not free of risk was demonstrated by a car that was still down a cliff, a remainder of an accident about a year ago in which all passengers, including the Israeli guests and the (inexperienced) driver died.

Our last stop on the trip was San Christobal. The town struck us by how new and well constructed it was, and it turned out to have been entirely newly built by a Japanese company, as the original town was located on top of valuable mineral resources. Now the citizens have been moved down the mountain to the new town, complete with church, playground and market, and many of them are employed in the (open air) mines 30 mins away. It made me wonder what the future of Bolivia will look like, and how the potential economic upsides of mineral trade and the potential social and environmental downsides will balance out..

Back in Uyuni, very very dusty, we were pleased to find that the hotel we'd booked turned out to be a little gem. The French owner (with Bolivian wife, yes, of course) had completely renovated the building and created four lovely, boutique hotel style, rooms. The shower was wonderful, and the room was warm. You learn to really appreciate these kind of things.. To top things off, the French toast the next morning was as you´d hope French toast by the French would taste, ergo delicious, and we left to the airport with a big smile on our face. The fight with the airline staff about Stephen´s camera back pack which was supposedly too big (but of course we refused to check it in) could not even wipe the smile off my face 😊..

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