Salar de Uyuni

Keegan Tudehope
Mar 3, 2017
11 min read

Day 16

Starting in San Pedro, Chile, Ellie and I woke early to be ready for our tour pick up from our hostel. We had booked a tour of the southern Bolivian landscapes that includes, the desert, national parks, lagoons, valleys, wildlife and the top attraction, the Solar de Uyuni - the salt flats of Uyuni. The pickup eventually happened although it was late and we walked to the parked van that was sat outside the border control office for Chile. Here we met the other tourists, who will be in our group. We would be sharing a 4 x 4 with 2 couples, one from Holland and another from both Chile and Spain.

We began to get to know one another as we waited to clear border control and were soon on our way. In a short drive, we had entered Bolivia and stopped at a small, box building that was the Bolivian border control headquarters. The building was as unprofessional as the staff member, who didn't even look at our identification page of our passport before stamping us into the country. The group then met our driver, Emeterio, who had breakfast ready for us by the big Lexus 4-wheel drive resting in front of the volcanic mountain in front of us.

Breakfast was nice, fresh bread with avocado, ham and cheese along with tea, coffee and juice. Although simple, it surpassed our expectations after hearing some negative comments about food on these tours. Emeterio loaded our luggage on top of the car and secured it with a tarp before we began our tour. It's hard to describe 3 days of touring the countryside of Bolivia without boring people to death and without reusing adjectives to describe how incredible it is. The vastness of the landscape and how this generates a feeling of awe and amazement would be too difficult to describe accurately. I'll try to let the pictures do the talking for the next few days of blogging, but will touch on the experiences, locations, landmarks and other interesting tales of the trip.

I recall in the first day as we drove through the desert, Guillermo from Spain saying it reminded him of the movie The Martian, with Matt Damon and it was absolutely true. The landscape at that time was like we were on Mars evidenced by the picture (picture) and it wouldn't be the only time we would consider having been on another planet. Before long we had arrived at our first stop, Laguna Blanca, a dark lake with some flamingos that were too far away to capture on camera with any desirable detail. Then we went to another lagoon, this time a green coloured water giving it the name Laguna Verde in Spanish. More flamingos graced the lagoon but again were too distant for even our zoom lens. Flamingos appeared to be the only animal in the first few hours, until we came across some members of the llama family. There was probably more wildlife than this but we were yet to see them as we continued to the Desert Talida and later a hot spring with an amazing view, where we stopped for lunch.

Having been at a high altitude in San Pedro and having driven over mountains with a top of 4000 meters’ altitude we, in particular me and Guillermo were finding it difficult to get enough oxygen. The walk from the hot spring to the lunch room was only 500 meters’ maximum with a slight incline, but felt like a marathon. For lunch, the group ate sausages, salad, mashed potato and vegetables; again, succeeding Ellie and my own expectations. Over lunch and the mornings excursion we had begun to get to know the others and were enjoying their company. Guillermo and Karina, who live in Santiago were helpful as Guillermo spoke both Spanish and English very well and acted as our translator for the next few days. While Mitre and Pelle, who are from one of Ellie's favourite cities - Amsterdam, spoke Dutch but also English very well, allowing us to build friendships amongst the group.

With full bellies, especially me that couldn't stop eating the delicious mashed potato, we were led by Emeterio to the next locations, first some volcanic geysers similar to those we had seen in Iceland, although none were exploding. They were bubbling and steaming, leaving a putrid smell in the air, yet was still cool to see up close. The second stop following lunch was the Colorado lagoon, which is pink and home to lots of Flamingos. They kept with tradition and remained far away from where the 4WD could get to. To get to this location we had to cross the highest altitude of the trip, some 5000 meters above sea level. To assist us in avoiding sickness, Emeterio supplied us with some coca leaves which we sucked on for 20 minutes. Evidently, sucking on leaves is not that nice especially when you didn't know to suck and were chewing them to begin with, but eventually we got the idea and maybe it helped. It was hard to tell.

After the Colorado Lagoon, the next and final destination for the day was the hostel in the Villa Mar village. We arrived there around 5pm just as it started to rain heavily in the surrounding areas, which limited us to the hostel until dinner at 7:30. To pass the time we played some cards with the competitive Dutch couple in UNO, Dobble and Yahtzee. Pelle was the Yahtzee champion, UNO was won by everyone but myself and the Dobble champion had to wait until tomorrow to be determined. Dinner came on time and we all enjoyed some spaghetti with what was determined llama cheese and flamingo mince, although neither were true. Out of 3 meals, all were of a good standard and the day’s excursions were awesome so it was a great start to the tour. By now it was time to head to bed, once again early but for good reason. More on that tomorrow.

Day 17

After a terrible sleep, I woke with the others to have breakfast at 7:30am. I had difficulty getting to sleep, had a headache, woke multiple times through the night with cotton mouth (dry mouth) and felt terrible in the morning. I felt better after some paracetamol and drinking more water as I discovered that at altitude your body is working harder to get oxygen and therefore your body uses more water and possibly the oxygen from the water. I'm no scientist or doctor but water is H2O - as in hydrogen, 2 x oxygen, so it must be true. It doesn't really matter, what matters is I felt better drinking more water throughout the entire day. A tip I give to anyone climbing mountains in the future. The obvious side effect of this was the increased need to urinate, which meant there was a lot of outback number 1s going on behind rocks or any other privacy structure. I know, too much information.

Moving on, pancakes for breakfast were not bad although the South American custom of having sweets for breakfast every day is getting old. So much sugar is not good for you I'm sure. They say it's a 'sweet' way to start the day. No, they don't really. But what was sweet was the rain had begun to die down after having heavy showers overnight. This meant some wet, muddy and rough dirt roads for us as we headed for our first stop of day 2. We visited some rock formations in an area called the valley the rocks are volcanic formations that shook up from the earth in a range of size, shapes and locations. One of them looks like a camel and the other is said to be the 3 wise men, although that one takes some imagining. Luckily, the rain had stopped but there was still cloud cover which prevented us of being able to see the huge distance of the rock formations as Pelle pointed out to me. It would have made the photos better as well but it was still a cool thing to see.

Next stop for day 2 was another lagoon, Laguna Catal, which was surrounded by lots of llamas, birds and again flamingos. They were closer than yesterday but still right on the limits of our zoom lens. I felt like my dad with how bad I wanted to capture these pink, feathery flying creatures. He is unashamedly a bird watcher and so was I for 3 days, call me David Attenborough. We would see more birds and wildlife at the next location, Laguna negro or black lagoon, which was probably the best of all the lagoons we had seen. It took a short walk to get to through some more varied rock formations but it was worth it as we discovered the dark black, calm water with some really green grass contrasting the bronze rock walls that surrounded the lagoon. In the area of the lagoon we saw a few species of birds, some with babies along with more llamas, donkeys and even some rabbits. It was one of the highlights of the trip for some when we recalled our favourite parts of the tour as it was a beautiful place.

The next stop was equally impressive, the Inca Canyon, which was extremely deep and wide. We went out on a ledge as we like to do and took some photos before moving on to have lunch in a small village. Here we saw our first puma, luckily it was stuffed, but they are known to the area particularly in the rocky areas. They feed on llamas and alpacas and we saw a carcass proving that they were around. Lunch was once again good with plenty of food, another potato dish and some tuna to scare flies away because of its awful smell. The tour continued with Emeterio showing us another canyon and later an old town with a railway from the 1800's. The town was very run down, especially the railway. We took some cool photos in the town and then found a basketball court where I played with a young boy named Ollie. He only had a soccer ball but we shot some hoops and had some fun. While I got in some preseason training, the others were having some honey beers and a coca leaf beer as well.

This was the last tour stop for the day before driving to the hostel, this time with private rooms in the salt hostel. The name comes after the fact that most the building is made of salt and it also borders the salt flats of Uyuni. As we arrived with some daylight left we walked around to check out the huge cactus plants on the base of the hill and got up close with some alpacas or llamas. Once we exhausted the outdoor activities we decided to play some more Dobble with Pelle and Mitre to decide the Dobble champion and to waste some more time. It was clear cut, Mitre was the champion. This preceded dinner, which was chicken, chips and salad. Once again not a bad meal although could have used some more time in the microwave. Not to worry, we had tomorrow to look forward to with the salt flats planned which we were really looking forward to. We weren't looking forward to the 4am wake up time, but it meant we could see the sunrise so it wasn't all bad. Finally, we had a reason to be a grandma and grandad and have an early night.

Day 18

The last day of the tour would be spent primarily on the salt flats. The group woke up at 4am for a 5am departure in order to catch the sunrise from the top of an island in the salt flats. They call it cactus island as it's covered by cacti and because it appears as an island in comparison to the flat salty surface surrounding it. To get there we had to cross the mixed dirt and salt flats we had seen from our hostel yesterday. Like a mix of salt and pepper, it was a brownie, grey colour. However, as the sun hadn't risen yet we could see very little. We drove through some salt flats and all we could see was a white surface, then through some water as it had been raining. This was a cool effect as some salt rose above what was now a black surface and reflected from the headlights, it might appear in the video (3:42 onwards).

The other cool effect before arriving at cactus island was driving with the headlights off. The driver was doing this to get his bearings based off the silhouette of the mountains in the distance. When we arrived at the island we climbed to the top, looking at all the different cactus plants before settling in at the top to watch the sunrise. We were easily the first on the flats and then first up the hill, although, the good spot I got to film the sunrise was overtaken by late comers who moved down in front of my camera. Nevertheless, it's still a nice sunrise.

Breakfast was served at the base of the island on a table and chair set made of salt blocks. We ate cake, chocolate slice and more sweet food. The breakfast of Bolivian champions. It was good so we were then able to drive and get some sweet photos on the salt flats, firstly on some dry surface then on some wet. On the dry, salty surface we got lots of perspective photos as you see people do. It was difficult to be original as everything's been done before. We mimicked some but not all. Here's a few of them. (click to enlarge)

Then we stopped in some inch-deep water that was causing the mirror effect we got in some photos and the mirage affect in the distance. As I'm trying not to describe and letting the pictures do the talking I'll stop there. However, I must say we have never seen anything like this landscape before and found it to be the most incredible natural landscape we have seen. The 360-degree view of nothing but salt flats from horizon to horizon is incredible and something I hope many people can see some day. The clouds that rest on the horizon, rather than in the sky, with and without the mirage or mirror effect didn't seem possible, yet it was. It was just an amazing experience and worth every penny. (click to enlarge)

They wanted you to spend more pennies at the next stop after exiting the pure salt flats and into a small town made up of around 50 or more souvenir stalls. We budgeted though and settled for lunch and made a purchase of chocolate and coronas instead. A good way to end the tour. The tour wasn't finished though with one last stop at the train cemetery in Uyuni, which was the town we were staying in that night. It wasn't special, there were some cool pictures you could take to be hipster but after a few big days we weren't interested too much and settled for a couple of photos.

Emeterio then dropped off the other guests at the bus station as they were moving on to different cities. We farewelled them and soon farewelled our guide. He was fantastic, so we gave him a nice tip and shouted him a beer. Our afternoon then consisted of a few errands, such as laundry, hostel check in and booking a bus ticket for the next day. We ate at a restaurant in the Main Street, which was opposite our hostel called Sal Negro, who were unfortunately out of llama steaks. Dinner wasn't too bad although I watched them take my steak out of the freezer and 20 minutes later serve it to me. Jamie Oliver told me to let it sit at room temperature before cooking, that didn’t happen. Ellie ate a vegetarian lasagne to get some more veggies in before we went to bed, obviously after showers. You probably guessed it was an early night even though we had little to do the next day, we had earnt a good rest I think.

Day 19

Before heading to La Paz, the political capital of Bolivia, we had a day in Uyuni. It's a small town that connects many tourists to the salt flats and other destinations. Other than the train cemetery, collecting laundry and visiting a bank, there wasn't much to do. We used the time to rest, catch up on blogs, emails, messages, wedding invites, diary entries and so on. The major outings from the hostel lobby were for lunch (llama steak) and this amazing haircut.

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15 Bolivianos worth, to the Aussies that's $2.80 and to the English that's £1.74 and I think it's not bad, at least that's what Ellie said. Later in the evening we got some snacks before hopping on an overnight bus to La Paz. It was easily the worst bus we had been on, despite the food service and Wi-Fi, the roads were terribly bumpy and bouncy. It was the end of our time in southern Bolivia, a beautiful part of the world.

Here is a video I made to show the vastness and beauty of the different landscapes we experienced on the tour.The Salt Flats are towards the end, but the rest is worth a watch and is accompanied by some traditional indigenous Bolivian styled music.