25 to 27 February 2016
My trip to the Salar de Uyuni started with quite a hangover due to the desert party the night before. At least I didn’t miss the pick up at 7am at the hostel. But only because I had positioned myself in the patio with all my belongings once I returned from the party at 6am. This ended up in utter confusion over where I was when I was eventually woken up by the tour guide entering the patio. Luckily I was seated in the front of the seven seater jeep, so I didn’t have to talk to anyone for much of the day.
We crossed the border without much ado at about 5,000m above sea level. The landscape was beautiful and untouched. The mountain peaks had snow because of the recent rain. In my awake moments, I marvelled at the colours of the plain, the mountains, the lagunas. I particularly loved the serenity and beauty of the scene when at a distance a herd of lamas crossed the still laguna in front of a high mountain. The photos don’t quite do it justice.
Just before lunchtime, we stopped at a hot spring. It felt like a hot tube with a stunning view and was perfect for my fragile state. Refreshed we went on to have breakfast, which further helped my recovery. Afterwards we passed through more stunning scenery and saw colonies of flamingos.
I spent the night with my fellow jeep travellers, a French group of five friends, in a small Bolivian community. I think it was called Villa del Mar, but where would the ‘Mar’ come from? Maybe from a time when Bolvia still had access to the Pacific (a sensitive topic). The accommodation was basic, but I was happy about a hot shower and hot food. It gets quite cold at night in these heights over 4,000m above sea, so I was tucked into my sleeping bag with a hot water bottle. Luckily the altitude did not affect me and I had a good night’s sleep.
The next day, we visited various rock formations and more lagunas with great colours and wildlife (lamas, salamanders, different birds, rabbits). We arrived in the town of Uyuni in the afternoon, probably the ugliest town I have been to on my trip. Ugly Uyuni. It is dusty, dirty, loud, shabby, depressing. Our hostel with private rooms was ok though. We went to bed early as we had to get up at 4am to drive to the Salar, the salt flats, to watch the sunrise.
You could see the beauty of the light changing before sunrise reflected in the Salar. It was covered with shallow water due to the recent rains. We were told that this usually only happens about four weeks in the year. After breakfast at the former salt hotel in the lake, we took the mandatory perspective photos. You position people at various distances and they appear as 2-D. Hm, I am not explaining it well and I also don’t know how it physically works. Check the pics- some better some worse…
The Salar is indeed so salty that even a little bit of splash leaves you with a lot of white salt on your feet, legs and trousers. In the evening in our bus to Potosi, you could tell exactly who had done the Salar de Uyuni tour that day!
The final point on the tour programme was a visit to the ghost train town. A standard in the tour programmes, the site was full of tourists climbing in and out and around the deserted train wrecks. I was also quick to mount the carriages and asked my French friends to take the necessary photographic evidence. The trains were part of a project to build a big train network and transport minerals from La Paz to the Chilean sea. However, it was abandoned in the 1940 due to a combination of political problems, technical difficulties and a declining minerals industry. The trains were left to rust and did so much quicker because of the salty winds from the Salar.
We finished the tour with lunch. I had lama meat for the first time, which tasted in between beef and lamb. The restaurant’s radio was playing Evo Morales’ speech, Bolivia’s president, who was in town to open a new road. He had just lost a referendum to change the constitution to allow him to stand for president again. Was he annoyed by the many adverts painted on walls and houses in Uyuni (and the rest of the country) asking people to vote ‘no’?
Returning to Uyuni, the French waited with me until I found Christian whose tour finished an hour later. They were great company and played Wizzard with me. Once Christian turned up, we went straight to the bus terminal, or rather the street from where the buses left, and boarded our bus to Potosi. No point spending any more time in Uyuni than necessary!
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