Bolivia: Salar de Uyuni

Uyuni - where Toyota Landcruisers go to die.

We flew to Uyuni from La Paz, so were able to take in the salt flats and the town from above.  The town is in the middle of nowhere.  The airport is a strong competitor for smallest airport I have ever seen and is definitely the emptiest.  It consisted of one main  building that was unfinished and largely empty except for one check in desk.  Only Amaszonas airlines flies in and out of Uyuni.

Uyuni Airport

Empty Interior of the Airport

After arriving, we booked a salt flats tour with one of the many companies vying for our business.  All of the companies use Toyota Landcruisers for their tours and most are a good ten years old.  Most tours will pile seven people (6 tourists and the guide/driver) in for the three day tour, which is mostly spent in the car.  For some extra comfort, we paid a little bit more and were placed in a group with only four passengers - the two of us and two girls from Spain.

Landcruisers lining up on the streets of Uyuni

Our first stop on the tour was the train graveyard, which is only a few minutes outside of Uyuni.  It’s exactly what it sounds like; a big area full of old, rusted trains.  Some of the parts had been turned into teeter totters and swings.  We had about twenty minutes to explore and climb on things like children on a playground.

Next, we drove out to a small town, if it can even be called that, on the edge of the salt flats.  There were plenty of stalls selling crafts to the tourists and a small salt “museum,” which had a few sculptures made of salt. 

Many tours stopped for shopping

At the Train Graveyard

We continued on to an area just outside the town where the salt is mined. It is piled up into “salt mountains” to dry before being transported to a refinery.  Some people thought it would make a good picture to stand on top of one of the “mountains.”  As soon as anyone played on the piles, a woman wearing a balaclava and carrying a shovel came running over and made that person pile the salt back up.  This of course was another photo opportunity.

Flags on the Flats

Salt Mountains

Finally we made it out to the salt flats.  The salt flats were formed when a prehistoric lake dried up and left an estimated ten billion tons of salt behind.  At over 4,000 square miles, Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat.  We stopped for lunch at Isla de los Pescadores, an “island” in the middle of the flats that is covered with cacti, some more than 1,000 years old.  Since this was our longest stop on the flats, we also got to take pictures, playing around with the perspective.

Isla de Los Pescadores

That's Me in the Palm of Simon's Hand

Giant Cookies

After a few hours, we continued our drive over the salt flats, with nothing but white as far as the eye could see.  Eventually, the salt gave way to dirt again and we arrived at our hotel for the night.  It was made completely of salt.  The walls, the bed frames, the tables, the chairs, the floor…everything was salt.  As you might imagine, it’s difficult to install any sort of heating in a salt hotel and it was COLD. We had dinner and then crawled under our covers with quite a few layers of clothes on.

Dining Room in the Salt Hotel

Ready for a Cold Night in the Salt Hotel

The next day, we spent a lot of time in the car, stopping from time to time to take pictures of the incredible scenery.  The rocky landscape of the “white desert” looked like something from another world.  We got to spend quite a while enjoying this area as the Landcruiser broke down here.  Another driver from the same tour company stopped and together with our driver, Oscar, they were able to get the truck running again after a nervous thirty minutes.  This was not a place we would want to be stuck for too long.  We carried on and saw some amazing lakes, volcanoes, and rock formations before arriving at Laguna Colorada where we would spend the night. 

One of the lakes we stopped at

It was freezing and did not smell very nice

Flamingos on the lake

Simon and one of many crazy rock formations

In the middle of nowhere - the spot where the Landcruiser broke down

Distant volcano

Laguna Colorada is at about 16,000 feet above sea level.  Because of certain minerals, some portions of the water are a deep red.  It is a very beautiful and unique spot, but also absolutely freezing.  This was also the only place that I started to feel sick from the altitude.  Our accommodation for the night was nothing more than a stone refuge.  The toilet "flushed" with a bucket of water.  The metal roof was weighed down by rocks and old tires.  When we signed up for the tour, we were told the second night accommodation was "basic" and it definitely was.  As we sat at the table waiting for our dinner, all four of us kept going back to our bags to get more and more layers.  Eventually, we started pulling the blankets out of the room.  We finished dinner around 7:30pm and went straight to bed simply because we wanted to get under the covers.  I managed to stay warm all night but was wearing two long sleeved thermals, two t-shirts, a fleece jacket, thermal pants, two regular pants, two pairs of socks with a hand warmer between, a buff, a beanie, gloves, and an eye mask,  This was under two sheets, a sleeping bag, three heavy blankets, and one light blanket.  I could barely move. 

Laguna Colorada

Our luxury accommodation

At 5:30am we set off again for our final day of the tour.  The first stop was the geysers.  I expected to this to be similar to what we saw in Iceland, but it was completely different.  The area looked like something from another planet.  The way the morning sun shined through the steam just made it look all the more eerie.  Because nothing was roped off, you could walk right through the area and among the many boiling geysers.

Geysers

After the geysers, we visited another lake and hot springs that you could swim in.  Even though the warm water looked inviting we opted not to go in since it was still freezing outside and nobody looked happy when they got out of the water.  Our last stop before beginning a very long drive back to Uyuni was Laguna Verde, a lake colored green by arsenic, lead, and copper.

Hot Springs

Laguna Verde

We took a different route back to Uyuni and passed by a few towns and llama farms.  Unfortunately during a large part of the drive we got to listen to the driver’s mp3 player, which seemed to consist of one Bolivian pop song that repeated over and over again.  The main chorus was just someone shouting, “Uyuni! Bolivia! Lima!”  The song still haunts me.