Tuesday, March 4 was a very early day as I had to catch a 6:30 a.m. flight to Uyuni, so I could get there in time to begin my 3 day trek through the Salt Flats, lagoons and desert of this beautiful part of Bolivia. When I got to the tour operator’s office, they told me that my tour had been cancelled due to the rest of the tour not being able to get a bus on Martes de Challa (coincides with Pancake Tuesday in Canada, I think). Anyway, the woman working in the office was super nice and offered to help me find another tour operator, but that didn’t work out since no other companies offer English tours to the Salt Flats, so the alternative was to book a room for the night and go the next day and instead of flying back, take the bus (there were no seats available on the plane the next day) back. They also invited me back to participate in the tribute to Pachamama which I was happy to attend because I also got to meet the husband and wife owners of the company and drink a few beers (while spilling some for Pachamama, of course).
Well, as you can imagine, everything worked out beautifully. I got a room for $13 for one night, and it had a private bathroom. It is not on any booking site and neither are a number of other local hostels and hotels. So, the lesson there is to get the tour company to find you a place to stay rather than using an online site. The cheapest hotel on a booking site was about $60. The airline is going to partially refund the return ticket, and well, the hotel I had booked is still up in the air. I spent the rest of the day on a sunset tour to the Salt Flats that lasted for about 6 hours.
Now, it is quite possible that my original 3-day tour would have had some fantastic people on it, but the one the next day certainly did as well. The entire group was 17 customers, 3 drivers and a guide. In my vehicle were a very funny, former bar manager from Nevada (he quit his job to travel; I hope some of my friends take inspiration from this), a well travelled couple from Belgium (the Flemish part) who volunteered to sit in the less than comfortable back seats for the entire 3 days much to the relief of the long legged guys in the middle seat, a Kiwi with a very nice camera who lives in Scotland and works in the gas industry, the guide who is named after a city in Germany, the excellent driver and myself. Everyone in the car got along quite well and found many common things to talk about. In addition, there was a very well travelled young man from Denmark who gravitated to our conversations quite frequently whenever we had a stop, but he didn’t want to switch vehicles because he was in a vehicle with 5 girls all to himself and some of them spoke Danish. In several countries in Europe, it is very common for young people to travel the world for several months to a year before deciding what they want to pursue in college or university. In other countries, young people must complete military service after high school, and it is common to travel after this then think about higher education.
The first day of the tour (now Wednesday) brought us first to the train cemetery which is exactly as it sounds. Next, we headed to a small village where salt is processed and bagged and finally to the famous Uyuni Salt Flats where we spent a great deal of time taking perspective pictures like the one below (and burning our lips due to the reflecting extremely intense light you find at 3600 m altitude).
Isla Inkahuasi is an island in the middle of the salt flat that has cacti scattered all over it.
The penultimate stop was the edge of the salt flat where there was still some water on the salt. A little earlier in the year, you would find that a much larger part of the salt flat is covered in water, but at this time, it is mostly dry. The last stop was our hostel for the night that was made out of salt. Even the dining room had tables and chairs made completely out of salt (be careful not to spill your hot tea).
The second day was lagoon and desert and volcano and high altitude day. The highest point was about 5000 m altitude in a semi active volcano with steam geysers and boiling pools of mud. The lagoons were different colours and they all had white edges that turned out to be borax rather than salt or ice or some other white substance. They also had many flamingos of the Chilean or Andean variety eating up the various coloured algae that you could find at each pool. The colours included red, green, blue and yellow. Here is a picture of the red lagoon. The red algae is due to the iron in the area.
And this blog would not be complete without a picture of the steamy volcano.
…to be continued