Salar de Uyuni: Salt and Freezing

South America. Warm. Jungles and rain forests and deserts and beaches, right?. Not in the altiplano region of southern Bolivia. Keith and I knew it would be a bit cold so we stocked up on warm weather items in La Paz. We took an overnight bus from La Paz to the southern town of Uyuni which sits 500 km south from the capital, half of the journey occurring on rough dirt road.

We took seats on the upper level of the double level bus in the very front. We were above the driver which means we had a panoramic view of Bolivia as it crawled by. Keith drifted to sleep within thirty minutes, before we even crawled out of the deep bowl of a valley that houses La Paz. I spent the next thirteen hours not sleeping. I watched as we stopped in the middle of nowhere because of a large burning mass in the road, which turned out to be politically charged road blocks. Without knowing that at the time my imagination ran wild. I was banking on plane crash because there were other smaller fires in the vicinity. But no, it was simply a group of people showing their disapproval country’s political situation by setting the road on fire.

We arrived in Uyuni as the sun rose over a rather desolate setting. Off to the right I could see a white band on the horizon that looked just like a field of snow. It was the salt flats–the main and possibly only point of interest in the area.

The plan was to price out and book a tour for the next day and spend the day hanging out seeing what Uyuni had to offer. We soon learned that that would not require a full day. Not even close. The town serves as the source of all the salt flat tours, with a cluster of hotels, restaurants and hapless bars. The internet cafes are painstakingly slow, but it helps to remember that complaining about slow internet in the middle of a frozen desert in the continent’s poorest country is not exactly worthy of much sympathy. As the day dragged on it was evident that we could have grabbed a tour as soon as we departed from the bus that morning then take a bus back to La Paz the same day that our tour ended three days later. In fact, many people do a tour and never spend more than two hours in Uyuni, let alone spend a day and a night there like we did.

We booked a tour at the average going rate–you definitely do not want to go too cheap on a three day tour that involves covering lots of distance in four-wheel drive vehicles with poorly paid local drivers. We were told to be at the office the next morning at 10:00, which as usual meant 10:45 in Boliviano time. The office person led us out to a mid-sized four wheel drive truck that was completely different from the one that he had pointed to from a photo with boyish enthusiasm just the evening before that was supposedly ours.

We met our guide and the other people in our group. It was three Germans and a French girl along with myself and Keith. The guide spoke no English which was very good for my slowly progressing Spanish. Listening and comprehending Spanish is still tricky if it is spoken fast but this would be three days of good practice.

We crammed into the two bench seats in the back of the truck and set off into the salt flats. At over 4,000 square miles, the Salar de Uyuni salt flat proudly boasts the prestigious title of “largest salt flat in the world”. As we steered onto the salt flats it reminded me of being on a giant lake in Maine that was frozen over, minus the drunken ice fishermen and snow mobilers. The further into the flats we traveled the more it seemed we were in the middle of some  white ocean.  The only signs of life were the roads we traveled and tiny distant islands that seemed a lifetime away.

It was a very surreal place–like being in some weird early morning dream.  In fact, for the rest of this post I will describe the imagery primarily with photos.

The Salar de Uyuni is a vast, empty landscape filled with salt–25 billion tons of it, in fact.  Believe it or not they actually have accidents here even though the salt is not slippery at all like it may appear in these photos. We few weeks prior to my visit 11 people died in a head on accident with two jeeps.  And yes, you are not alone wondering how the hell two of anything could collide in this landscape–I wonder the same thing.

There’s really not much to do in the salt flats.

Once we arrived at the distant islands,  we discovered that they were full of tall cactai.  For 15 bolivianos ($2), I hiked a winding trail that wove through the rough terrain.  Keith did it for free starting from the sign that read:  FINISH.  That’s good ol’ English ingenuity for you.  I suppose it was the Manchester discount.

The Salt hotel is where we spent our first night.  The entire place was built with salt blocks and Atacama cactus skeletons.  There is a salt hotel that sits in the middle of the salt flats but is not very environmentally sound but we stayed in one just off the flats that was quite nice.  This was a cold place mostly because of the incessant winds.

Looking west just after sunrise on the patio of the salt hotel.

We couldn’t leave for the day’s trek until our guide fixed the car.  This is him putting packing tape on the window so that the window stayed up.  But I’m positive that everything under the hood was just fine.

Flamingos. Talk about a weird dream.  We reached a lake covered in pink and found hundreds and hundreds of pink flamingos.  Bolivia is a very interesting country.

At the end of a rather long day in the truck we parked at the edge of Lago Colorado, which is a blend of dark blue, deep crimson, bright white and pink from a few flamingos.  I wish I had brought along a painting canvas.  And a space heater.  And maybe my own truck.  But the scenery more than made up for the chilly and cramped adventure.

Morning. Day three.  Our 5:00 AM wake-up led us to some geysers then to this place for sunrise.  There were hot springs there which are normally my favorite things in the world, geographically speaking.  But I will proudly wear the title of “hot spring snob’ for this place.  The water was only 80 degrees (usually they are in the 90-100 or more range), and I was already freezing so the prospect of hopping in wasn’t on my list at the moment.  Luke warm springs were not gonna do it.  Call me whatever you want.  Keith and I went ahead to the breakfast table where we pondered how mad the rest of the group would be at us if we poured the hot coffee and tea over ourselves for warmth.

All the promotional photos of this place that I saw before the trip showed a magnificent reflection in the lake of the volcano.  Apparently, reflections were on vacation and will return when it is less freezing and the lake isn’t frozen over.  Still, the place place was great for shooting, ice or no ice.