Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. 27-29 de Octubre.

What a way to enter Bolivia - highlight of the trip so far!!

This border crossing now overtakes all others…….one man in one small building (at 4700m) who wasn’t interested in checking any of our luggage and didn’t even bother to open our photo page as he stamped us into Bolivia. Sweet as!!




 

The most popular way to get to Bolivia from this part of Chile is by a 3 day jeep tour across the Andes and the Salar de Uyuni.

This is a journey requiring ample investigation as there are numerous companies and all seemingly with very mixed reviews. Stories exist of tourists having to drive because of the driver being too drunk or high on drugs. Or tourists spending hours waiting in the vehicle while the driver is visiting friends!

Am happy to say that we hit the jackpot with our tour and had an excellent driver/guide (Omar) and a great group of six 27 year olds (even another Clare Louise which is a first). Fair to say we had an absolute blast over the 3 days, all squeezed into our trusty Land Cruiser.

Laguna Verde




The jeep wound across various antiplano's alongside volcano's, lagoons, hot springs and the highest geizers in the world (5300m). The first night was spent sleeping at 4800m which was surprisingly ok. Although did frequently wake up puffing after simply rolling over in bed!!


Descending to Laguna Colorada and massive fault line.



Laguna Colorada is bright red from the vast quantities of algae and
minerals in the water/ground - hence is a haven for thousands of flamingo's.



The famous Arbol de Piedra region. Matt standing on rock over 25 million years old. Omar tells us (and wikipedia confirms) that this area is geomorphical formation of volcanic rock due to wind erosion. Is quite amazing to see as these rocks just jutt out from the middle of a sandy desert.



Montana de siete colores - super mineral rich landscape.



Team Omar

Bano todo natural (small issue of lack of discreet spots for the females of the group).

Co-habitation - we were all hoping for a shot along these lines.



Hotel de Sal - made entirely of salt. Fun concept until you wake with the dry's all throughout the night and a water-induced hangover in the morning!


The final day of the trip began at 4am as our group opted to get to the salt flats for sunrise. I think for all of us this was the most anticipated part of the journey. The trip was without a doubt made better by the fact that this was our final destination which meant much built-up excitement within the group. 
Sunrise was absolutely stunning (& freezing until the sun came up) and then driving across it was very surreal. Definitely outweighed all our expectations.



Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt plain on earth, 12,000 square km and sits at 3660m. Omar informed us that the salt is on average 7m thick with 9m being the deepest part. There are something like 30 cacti-laden islands on the desert.

Isla Incahuasi

One very smiley Isla Incahuasi resident.

The only disappointing part of the trip was that we didn't get enough time to sculpt our trusty-token-tourist photographs on the salt plain. Obviously much creative discussion had gone on regarding these pics so we were all a teeny bit upset not to have had the time to utilise our props and pull them off.
Fun times anyway!!

Team Omar and our trusty Land Cruiser.
These vehicles last just 2 years doing this trip!

After a good frolic on the salt flats we travelled past the Uyuni Salt Mine. This was fairly eye opening to see men spending their life breaking up concrete-like salt with pick-axes, even more eye opening to hear that 50kg of salt is sold for approximately 10 Bolivianos. This equates to about AU $1.40 so not a pretty wage for the miners.
Following that we made a quick visit to a train graveyard and then finished up at the township of Uyuni.

Train graveyard - Really neat idea but unfortunately this has become a bit of a local dump,
due to the Bolivian Antiplano and associated wind alongside careless locals.
Certainly no tidy kiwis here in Uyuni.