Salar de Uyuni

On the morning of Wednesday July 8th we woke up early in Tupiza and loaded our things on top of a Toyota Land Cruiser bound for a 4 day off-road trip through the Bolivian mountain desert. Together with our driver, Lazaro, the cook, Luisa, and our two new friends Tanja and Sean from South Africa we took off into the dry, freezing and strange countryside. Luckily our team (from La Torre Tours) was great. Luisa kept us well fed and Lazaro, though he used words sparingly, used them very efficiently and kept us on a great schedule. Most importantly he kept his Land Cruiser (the only type of vehicle used for this trip) in excellent shape. The result was 4 days without a crisis, leaving us free to shiver and enjoy the amazing scenery.

Emily's friend the cactus

Taking the trip to the Salar de Uyuni (huge salt flats) from Tupiza is becoming more and more popular because the quality of the tour companies and thus the experience is much more reliable. The alternative is to leave from Uyuni where many (not all) tour companies are notorious for break downs, bad equipment, and even accidents which have caused several deaths in recent years. Because Tupiza is east of many of the key destinations of the tour it means that the tour is a little longer and a little more expensive than tours from Uyuni, but it also saves the Salar itself for the very end which is a nice finale. The first day we went high up into the mountains above Tupiza and started heading west toward the Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve. On the way to our first night`s accomodation we passed through a giant Llama ranch where Luisa provided us with a lunch of dried Llama meat to go with the setting. Llama meat is not great. That night we stayed at a very basic hostel in a tiny mountain village. The setting was beautiful; the cold was bone chilling.

Sunrise

On day two we woke up at 4:30 am and were on the road by 5:30. We had to get an early start because there was alot of driving to do and, as Lazaro told us, we would be passing over the most challenging roads. Sometime just before dawn we passed through a massive ghost town that was once a Spanish mining city. We could still barely see but could make out countless ruined buildings stretching in every direction there in the middle of nowhere. As the sun rose and thawed out our numb extremities we plodded on, breaking through thick layers of ice that had formed on river crossings. Just before noon we enterred into the Eduardo Alvaroa National Reserve. Shortly after we were at the hot springs for lunch. This was a definite highlight and because Lazaro got us up so early we were the only ones there, besides a few wild vicuña walking through the steam in front of us. Relaxed and completely thawed out, we went down to the Laguna Verde and then to our hostel for the night...again, freezing.

Thermal Baths

Laguna Verde

On day three we woke up early and thanks again to Lazaro we were the first ones at Laguna Colorado to see the Llamas taking a thermal bath and flamengos eating brine shrimp; this was another highlight for us. In the summer there are thousands of flamengos here, we saw 50 or so, but they were obviously the toughest flamengos of the group. The rest of that day we passed several more lakes and finally arrived at the Salt Hotel. Yes, it is made almost entirely of salt but I couldn't bring myself to lick the walls.

Llama bath with Flamengos in the background

Pigeons

The last day was dedicated entirely to the Salar de Uyuni. We woke up before dawn and watched the sunrise from a random point in the middle of the salt flat. Next, we walked around "Fish Island" which is covered in gigantic cacti, some of which are around one thousand years old. Being on the Salar is amazing and the type of experience that is hard to describe in too much detail because it is so vast. You can't really say much about what you see, its more about how it makes you feel. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat on Earth and even from the middle of it, it is impossible to imagine how large it is.

Land Cruiser at Dawn

Sunrise

My Lovin' Spoonful

Giant Cactus on Fish Island

That afternoon we got to Uyuni just in time for the World Cup Final (not a coincidence) which was a pretty disappointing game but at least we enjoyed the Huari beer. That night we had to get back into Land Cruisers to get back down to the Chilean border. When I said we were at the Lago Verde on day 3 we were actually right at the border but we still had to see the Salar which required the backtracking. The next day around 1:00 we were on a bus crossing over from a dirt road onto a paved highway, the transition from Bolivia into Chile.

Us