Salar de Uyuni

Well I better tell you about the fabulous tour we did on and around the Salar de Uyuni before I forget it all and it´s a distant memory.

The road to Uyuni from Potosi itself was long and bumpy but made agreeable by a little Bolivian girl called Erica who was sat behind us. As all the seats were taken her and most of her family had to sit in the aisles. I know this wouldn´t happen at home due to breaking god knows how many health and safety laws but hey this is Bolivia! For some reason this little girl (she was about 2 or 3) took a shine to me and just stood in the aisle staring at me. She was wrapped up in a few layers of clothes and a woolly hat as it was pretty damn cold. Anyway, she took great delight in wearing my sunglasses, pulling hairs out of my arms and trying to wink at me; she couldn´t quite manage it and just kept blinking at me. So after about 6 hours we arrived at Uyuni which I have to say is an absolute dump which is understandable as it is only really a dropping off point for tours into the Salar (which I think means Salt flat or just flat). Of course everything is twice the price, accommodation, food, drink which is understandable. A few people aren´t too happy about this and some even go as far as not doing something like a tour because they think it´s too touristy! What I say is what do you expect? This kind of thing happens all over the world (even England GASP - look at the price of a pint in a pub next to Tower Bridge for instance!) so just get over it. If you want to do something then just do it and stop friggin moaning about the price. One day you´ll be dead!

Anyway, we got our tour booked ($90 each before you ask) and stocked up on provisions. The original tour company we booked with phoned us on Monday morning and told us they didn't have enough people to fill the jeep so we were transferred to another. So Monday morning we hooked up with the remainder of the tour party (Beatrice, Marie, Charlie, Jeffrey and our now legendary driver, Ephrain - see below)


We set off at about 11am and after 20 minutes drive arrived at the train graveyard just on the outskirts of Uyuni. Apparently in its heyday this was the entrance point of train lines from Chile and Argentina but lack of support from the government and with roads now being used more the train lines are no longer used (or rarely). The trains which most of them were built in good old blightey just sit there on the tracks rusting away. They look really good though against the bright blue skies and make a good picture.

After leaving the trains and after a brief stop at the obligatory tourist "shops" at a little village we stopped at one of the two salt hotels on the salar. I think these are now open again after briefly being shut down for dodgy sanitation (seems a bit harsh to pick on these hotels as opposed to all the other dirty ones in S.America!!). Again this was really just a photo opportunity but quite interesting none the less. Thinking about it I wish that the refuge we stayed at was as "clean" as this "dirty" hotel, but more on that later.

We then drove over the salt flats for about 30 minutes to Isla de Pescado. The only way I can describe the salt flats is like driving across a massive Christmas Cake! It is so bright that you have to wear sunglasses otherwise you can get "Snow Blindness". And yes it does taste like salt too (well why wouldn´t it , it is salt!) At fish island, we set off to climb it where we could really appreciate the expanse of the flat, whilst our driver prepared lunch of beef steak, salad and Quinoa, a kind of cereal like couscous. There are hundreds of Cacti on the island too , and Michelle managed to find some comically shaped one´s; "that one must be a man". After taking some photos of ourselves on the Salt Flats holding each other in our palms and general larking about we set off again.

After a while we left the Salt Flats and the terrain changed to desert (or dessert as the Belgians called it - they were obsessed with food!). Apparently, the salt layer gets quite thin at the edges, right down to 50cm, so the driver was very cautious when leaving it. The rest of that day was then spent driving to San Juan, the small (small being the operative word) town in the middle of nowhere where we spent the night. Again this was a fantastic place for photos, as it looked like a ghost town. They did have 3 basketball/football courts though - maybe they filled up during the summer, or held the National Bolivian basketball trials, I don´t know. Check out the pics on Flickr. That night was a fun one - about 4 tour groups sat in a long (cold) room, ate chicken and chips and were entertained by the local kids band. The usual mix of panpipes, guitar, drum and tambourine but this time played by under 10s! We gave them a couple of Bolivanos and sent them on the way, but then a second band turned up comprising of panpipe and guitar again of similar age. Now these really were terrible and I didn´t want to give them anything but Michelle told me to stop being mean and she gave them one of our Twix (we had a six pack with us). Well you should have seen the kids face anyone would think he´d won the lottery!

The next day was a fairly early start, breakfast at 6.30am and then setting off at 7am. It wasn´t too cold to be honest as the sun was just about up when we left. The morning drive took us up above 4000m to a viewing point of Ollague, Bolivia´s only active volcano. We could just about see a thin plume of smoke emerging from it which was pretty cool. Whilst we were messing about at the viewpoint an odd creature came running over the rocks and then quickly disappeared. It was like a cross between a rabbit and a fox (a fabbit?? or a rox??). The driver did tell us the Quechuan name for it (one of the indigenous languages in Bolivia) but I can´t remember it.

After the volcano we went even higher to one of the many glacial lakes. These really was pretty stunning as it was just thawing out from the night´s frost and there were a flock of pink flamingos on it. Apparently they´re pink because of the tiny micro-organisms that they eat. They must have been bloody cold whatever colour they were because it was freezing. After this lake we travelled even higher to more lakes and stunning scenery and then stopped for lunch. Now I know the English do odd things in odd weather; for instance sitting on the beach fully clothed with a windbreak out, but having a salad picnic at 4200m above sea level at -5 Celsius I think has to take the biscuit. Michelle was fairly reluctant to even get out of the jeep but I think she felt she had to make the most of it! After lunch more driving at even higher altitudes after which we arrived at our accommodation (in the loosest sense of the word) at the Laguna Colorada in the Reserva de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. This Lake had a red colour to it again due to algae that lives in the it. I climbed up a viewing point while Michelle sat down (she was suffering with the altitude about 4500m now) to get a birds eye view. It really was a cracking view but so goddamn windy it nearly blew me over. My nose and lips, about the only bits of me that were exposed, couldn´t take much more so we headed back to the "refuge".

Now a word about this so called refuge. I know that some (or probably most) Bolivians live in poverty and don´t have the luxury of running water or central heating but this refuge was the absolute pits. It did have windows in it, for all the good they did it felt like about -10 in there. Our group had a dorm but the beds in them looked like they belonged in a Japanese concentration camp (yes I have seen Tenko!). When you sat on the bed the springs virtually touched the floor underneath. Now I know they said it was basic but I don´t know why we just didn´t sleep outside. We were warned that some people get dodgy stomach as the food is prepared in unsanitary conditions. I had a look in the "kitchen" and the food was being prepared on the floor with one gas burner - that would explain why I had crippling stomach cramps during the night (ten times worse than the incident in Arequipa with the rubber gloves and the plunger - I´ve only told a few people about this as it´s too embarrassing). It also got to below zero in the dorm room and down to -15 outside at 5.00am when we had to get up. On the plus side though as the air is so clear and there´s no lights the star scape was amazing, it almost looked like you could reach up and touch them they were so close.

After a breakfast of pancakes we set off to the Geyser field. When we got there it was still below zero but the sight of the geysers erupting was impressive. There was even one that was a constant stream of steam (apparently it´s artificial but I´m not sure how they do it) which we quickly dipped our shooed feet and gloved hands into to warm them up.

After the geysers we got to the hot springs. After a quick Banos stop we all dipped our feet into the hot springs and God how good was it. The water was about 25 degrees and it did everyone the world of good. After 5 Min's of that we could feel our feet again (our own not each others!) and we hopped (pardon the pun) back into the bus.

After setting off from the springs we were on the last legs of the tour. We stopped briefly to look at some rocks that apparently resemble a Salavdor Dali painting (I think its the one with lots of rock pillars with elephants in it) and then we got to Laguna Verde which wasn´t as green as it usually is due to the weather. The green colour is caused by the Arsenic content and not algae. After a few photos we then headed to the Bolivian/Chilean border where we obtained the necessary stamps and left Bolivia behind.

Overall this tour was definitely the highlight of Bolivia and we are both really sorry we had to leave. Even though we struggled with the altitude constantly, the sights, sounds and people were absolutely great. The scenery just around the Salt flats is absolutely amazing and some of the best I´ve seen and the photos although good don´t do it justice. The hospitality of the Bolivians (which we´ve yet to see in Chile, although we may be being a little harsh on the Chileans) was unbeatable and for a people with literally have nothing they open their arms to us tourists.

So that´s it. We´re now in La Serena, Chile and are hoping to go on an observatory tour tonight as it was cancelled last night due to cloudy weather. I hope you´ve enjoyed this blog and the photos on Flickr. It has taken me over an hour to write and now I´m going for a lie down!

Adios,

Matt

p.s. I thought the rock landscape was similar to this Dali painting below, but looking at it I don´t think it really does. Still the landscape (and indeed the painting) are still good.