| Dec 11, 2005 - Salar de Uyuni
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 | | show all 160 | | The train graveyard | | More trains at the graveyard | | A closer look at the trains | | |
| The Salar de Uyuni tour is much more than just a tour of the Salt Flats (a salt desert), though that is the main highlight. It is the largest salt desert in the world, though before this trip I had never even heard of one before so I don't know how impressive that really is. You can do the whole tour in 3days or 4days, with the extra day just giving you more time on the way back to see more things. Due to the rush, we decided to do it in 3 days. Our tour group was a cook and a guide/driver, then Me, Ami, and Griet, an Israeli guy named Gil, Fanny a girl from france, and Pon, an australian guy. It was a very cool group to have and we all got along really well. Here's how it went.
Day 1: We left from the town of Uyuni and headed first to the "Train Graveyard" just a few kilometers outside of town. It is nothing more than a collection of old rotting and rusting trains, but on a bright blue day with gogeous surroundings, it can actually be a nice location. From there we drove out onto the Salar, the salt flats, the desert itself. The entire area is a large expanse of blindingly white ground contrasting sharply with perfectly picturesque skies. We stopped right on the edge when we first entered, stood dumbfounded with our mouths open for a few moments, then started running around like school children during recess and snapped a million photos. When the giddiness subsided a bit we piled back into the jeep and headed out to an island full of cacti in the middle of the desert. I call it an island because for parts of the year the entire Salar is under a few inches of water. Since December is rainy time I thought we would have this, but the heavy rains had not started yet. While its nice to have the dry ground, I hear that when everything is just one massive puddle it adds an entirely new type of beauty, with all of the surrounding scenery being reflected perfectly in a large mirror of water. We explored the island for a while and had lunch here. Pon also discovered an amazing photo to take, from the ground and looking at a distance, which creates a wierd illusion of distorted depth of field. Therefore, if one was to jump in the picture, it comes out like you are soaring, as you all can see. Pon found it out by accident on a timer shot, and then we had to make about 6 tries for him to get the same shot of me. I just felt I needed to give due credit. From there, it was back in the jeep again and driving until we got to our hostel for the night, just outside the Salar.
Day 2: This day we woke up around 5am to get an early start, had a quick breakfast, and headed out to an old graveyard. This time it was a real people one. An old pre-Inca civilization that lived here used to mummify their dead, and then seal them in these tombs of rock above ground. Well now a lot of them are opened and you can view the bodies, well-preserved for about 2000 years. Or so they say. It was an interesting yet creepy location tohang out in early in the morning. From there we drove on, and stopped in a barren setting of rocks hills and shrub to view an active volcano in the distance. Back in the car and on to a lake full of flamingos for our lunch. We hung out there for about an hour and snapped a whole bunch of flamingo photos. From there we starting driving through a much different scene. The ground turned to sand, the mountains got farther away, and all we could see were very small little bumps or hills in the sand, like small ripples frozen in time on a great sand lake. Then we arrive at this one small spot that has a large yet tight cluster of strange boulders with interesting shapes and edges due to the carvings of the wind. The wind is very strong here, so while it was warm and sunny, its still about 4,500m of elevation and we had to get our jackets on just to leave the jeep. The famous shaped boulder here is called El Arbol de Piedra, or Tree of Rock, only because it sort of resembles a tree. We got out and played on the rocks, scrambling to the top of some for a better lookout and cool photo-ops. Eventually it was on to Laguna Colorado (also known as Laguna Roja which means the Red Lake). This was our last stop of the day before getting to the hostel, and it was the nicest one of the day as well. After having to actually plead withour driver/guide to let us stop here and look around, since it was getting late and he wasn't being cool, we got out and watched a gorgeous and tranquil sunset by the lake. There were two parts to the lake, the upper which had a large salt deposit in it and some flamingos, and a lower which was just glass-still and overpoweringly beautiful. We stood, stared, and talked there for a while. Now 2 days out in this tour in middle of nowhere, the silence was actually very noticeable. The lake, as advertised, had a red tint to it, and the moon was out which added a nice touchto all the photos we were taking. Just before leaving we decided to do some group timer shots, and since it worked so well for Pon and I, we decided to try the jumping ones again. You can see the results for yourself, but there were much more attempts than I am going to show you. We then moved on to our hostel, and our second and final night. We ate a fast dinner and went to bed.
But, at about 1am I woke up feeling really bad. For the second time on this trip, it strikes me at one of the worst times. Without getting too graphic, I was having these burps that taste like sulphur. I learned when I was in Nepal that this means you have some bad stuff in your stomache, probably living in there and producing this gas, and you can start antibiotics right away. The thing is, my antibiotics were about a 9 hour drive away in Uyuni. So I just tried to get some sleep, and braced myself for the hell that I knew would come but wasn't yet experiencing. This changes some of the next day's details as well.
Day 3: For almost all of this day I stayed put in the car, feeling crap. We woke up at 4am, once again to get an early start, and the stars out here in this wasteland were like nothing I have ever seen before. While loading the jeep I wandered off just for a moment to sit down and gaze up, and it was just as impressive a sight as any I had seen so faron the tour. We then drove on through an area of sulphur geysers (yes I recognize the irony). Really it is just a lot of steam being released through the earth, and at some points you can look into these holes and see bubbling clay-type liquid. We were here about sunrise time, and then continued on to a natural hot spring where we had breakfast. While the rest of the group got changed to bathe, I just slept in the front seat of the car, and couldn't eat anything. From here we drove on to Laguna Verde (or Green Lagoon), but again I couldn't get out. But I still got some photos at least since Ami's batteries died, so she used my camera and we decided we could just burn a CD for her later, which worked out good for the both of us. The next stop was near the farthest spot south and west of the tour, near the Chilean border. A lot of people end the tour here and cross into Chile, which is what Gil, Fanny, and Pon did. So I got out to say some goodbyes and take final pictures. For the rest of the day we were mostly just heading back to Uyuni, and I was trying to sleep laid out on the back seat of the jeep. But its a long and very bumpy 9 hour ride back, which is not a comfortable thing when your stomache is in shambles. Actually, it totally sucked and I was in miserable agony for most of it. The only times I got out now were the frequent stops we had to make for me, and I won't get anymore graphic than that. We stopped at another lake along the way, and some really cool rock formation place, and at both places Ami took some good pictures. So thanks for that Ami. We eventually got back into the town of Uyuni in the evening, and I swallowed those antibiotics faster than a frog swallows flies.
Overall the trip was still very cool. I sorta wish I had done it in the reverse order though, which I heard about after, so that you get the big long drive over on the first day, and you end with the salt desert which is the coolest part. Plus, the whole thing is much more of a driving tour than anything else. You end up covering about 600 miles in 3 days, so really you are just in the car from location to location, and just get out to see one of the attractions for a bit. Then its back in the jeep for another few hours till the next place. However I would recommend highly to anyone who is coming to these parts. It is all uniquely beautiful and a wonderful area to explore.
There are a ton of websites that talk about the tour, where you can see some photos, if you just google the Salar de Uyuni. Here is one such site I found. http://www.ultimatejourney.com/Bolivia2.html |
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