Blogs from Uyuni, Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 7

Everybody talks about the salt flats when you arrive in Bolivia, it seems a must on the tourist route. And to access these much talked about flats, you need to go to the town of Uyuni. My friend Jonny and I set off far too early on a cramped bus to the middle of nowhere. Actually the whole journey felt like the middle of nowhere, it is so arid and wide and open and seemingly deserted. We stopped in the windswept and tired looking town of Potosi for only half an hour and I ate a later regretted empanada. Around Potosi it was just dry, windy open spaces with only rocks, some meagre scrub and lots of ratty alpacas being led by cholitas. But then the landscape slowly changed to rainbow mountains that were creased peculiarly, ... read more

4:30 am start the next day. Pitch black, and -10 degrees outside. The creeks and marshes of the altiplano were frozen solid. All of us, at some stage in our lives, had driven through our fair share of swollen creeks in big four wheel drives. Driving through the same creeks when they were solid ice was a new experience. The ice necessitated a different approach. First, you had to go very slow, much slower than you might expect. If you hit the ice fast there was every chance you might go spearing off into the creek. Then, you needed to gauge if you were likely to break the ice. If so you had to then worry about a razor sharp shard slashing a tyre and leaving you stranded. As the first of the various Landcruisers (and ... read more

The border crossing is a wooden shack in the middle of nowhere, health and safety doesn´t exist, dead dogs can be found in the street, toilets often have to be flushed with a bucket of water and don´t have toilet paper, the showers are cold... Bienvenido a Bolivia!!! It´s the poorest country in south america and on first impressions it really feels like it, but it´s still a really amazing country. Like most backpackers travelling around south america we did the famous salt flat crossing from San Pedro De Atacama in Chile to Uyuni in Bolivia. It´s a 3 day, 2 night trip in a 4x4 and it´s epic! Over three days you see Geysers, Lagunas in every colour you can imagine, hot springs, a train graveyard, flamingoes, salt hotels and then finally end at the ... read more

This morning we were picked up by our guide who explained what we would be doing for our day at the salt flats. We drove to a train graveyard first, which was on the way to the salt flats. It was a bit ghost like, but pretty fun climbing in and out of the old trains. The whole area was covered in coral, because 1000’s of years ago the salt flats were under water. Then we drove to a salt mine, where they showed us how the salt is made and purified. A lot of the buildings were made entirely out of salt, which some of us didn’t believe until we licked the walls! After that we headed out onto the salt flats. It is the most amazing place, 100’s of kilometres of white salt, you ... read more

Into Chile and Bolivia... So with my face back to its handsome normal state, we left Salta and headed across the Andes into Chile. San Pedro de Atacama was our destination, in the heart of the Atacama desert. It is a gorgeous but tiny little town, basically built to cater for tourists venturing into the desert. On our first day we took a half day trip to Death Valley and the Lunar Valley – basically a geologist’s fantasy set amongst loads of active (but not since 2006!) volcanoes. We took in sun set which if I wasn’t trying to catch my breath after the climb (remember we are at 2000 meters – good job I remembered my inhaler) would have been amazing! We then had a night out on the tiles with a guy called Jack ... read more