I have now seen the sun set over 12,500 kilometers of pure salt.
The salt flats of Uyuni are one of the most spectacular natural formations that I have ever witnessed. Surrounded by mountains, the Salar appears to be a giant lake of salt that at parts goes down more than 50 meters. Currently they use the salt for commercial production (to be used in food) and also to build Salt hotels on the flats for tourists.
(view photos HERE)
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We took a bus from La Paz overnight thursday night (about a 12 hour bus ride down to Uyuni). The first 7 hours or so were perfectly nice and smooth, but then things took a turn for the worse, as the road became unbearably bumpy. The rattling of the bus sounded like a machine gun, but I was actually able to turn the experience positive as I simply imagined that I was in a massage chair and that helped ease the pain for a bit. As we neared Uyuni the windows completely iced up, and thus when we actually arrived no one wanted to get out of their cozy blanketed seats. The town was basically dead at 7:30 in the morning and we rushed to find our company in the freezing cold. The town clearly was clearly built around tourism as the main street was lined with tour agencies -- one of which was ours. We ate breakfast and then met our guide (and the three Brazilian ladies who would join our group), loaded up the jeep and headed out.
The first stop on our journey was the "train cemetery," which was exactly how it sounds -- a graveyard of rusted old decaying trains. By itself it probably would have been a pretty cool sight, but unfortunately it was absolutely littered with tourists clamoring to get a photo of themselves standing on top of the train, and thus it lost a little bit of it's appeal.
Our next stop was the salt flat itself, which was overwhelmingly expansive. Everywhere you looked was miles and miles of white, flat ground. We took our standard tourist photos (including several trick photos that used the hindered depth perception) and then headed on to the salt hotel where we ate our lunch. We then drove for about 2 hours all the way across the flats towards the base of the volcano Tunupa where our hotel was located. We drove over several different formations of the salt, including salt formed into thousands of tiny cylinders that poked up, beautiful hexagonal formations, and my personal favorite, salt with a two inch layer of water on top which reflected the surrounding mountains with absolutely perfect clarity.
When we approached the land at the base of the volcano, as if we weren't already in a strange enough dream world, we saw a flock of pink flamingos posing outside our window. The flamingos were so majestic and composed that I had to remind myself that no... these pink creatures weren't actually a normal sight...
We arrived at our hotel, unloaded our gear and then walked around to take pictures. The town seemed to be built with simple stones stacked on one another, and in one of these stone enclosures we found a pack of llamas, of which we took about 1,000 pictures of (for your convenience I've eliminated a lot of these pictures from the facebook album). We returned to the hotel for coffee (and a game of hearts to pass the time) and then dinner, which was soup, spaghetti, bread and a bottle of wine. When we had each had enough wine to warm us up a bit and make us a little sleepy, we put on a few more jackets and our gloves, scarves and hats and headed to bed (the nights there got absolutely freezing and our hotel had no heating).
The next day we woke up to watch the sunrise over the mountains and then headed out to the volcano. We walked to a cave where Incan mummies were buried and then had a chance to hike up to a viewpoint, where we had fantastic views of the flats and of the volcano itself. Next we drove over to Isla del Pescado (fish Island) which was another bizzare sight -- a small fish-shaped island absolutely covered in cacti.
As we drove back to catch our bus in Uyuni, we were able to pause for a bit to watch a spectacular sunset over the salt flats.
I definitely caught the travel bug on this trip, as I feel like there is so much of this world that I have yet to explore. I also was once again reminded (and overwhelmed) by the absolute beauty and diversity of landscape that Bolivia has to offer. From miles and miles of salt to volcanoes to the world's highest lake, to incan ruins to cities like La Paz, there is so much to see here.
Speaking of, on somewhat of a whim we decided that tomorrow we will embark to climb (literally climb) Mount Huayna Potosí. It will be a two day trek, hiking to high camp tomorrow, going to sleep around 6 pm and then beggining a 6 hour trek to the summit at 1 am. We'll hopefully be able to observe the sunset from the peak, which is situated at 6,080 meters (19,947 feet) -- higher than Mount Everest Base camp. It's going to be one of the toughest hikes of my life... But I am so pumped. After all, when will I ever get another chance like this?
As they say... When in Bolivia....
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