Salt Flats and into the back of BEYOND!!!!!
Trip Start
Feb 11, 2010
1
9
48
Trip End
Jul 15, 2010
Uyuni, Potosí, Bolivia
Monday, March 1, 2010
Day 1
First stop on the tour was the Salar de Uyuni. It is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometres and is 3,656 metres above sea level. Luckily neither of us seemed to be suffering from altitude sickness (Yet!!). Due to the rain in the area over the last week or so, the flats were covered in a layer of water. This meant that everything was reflected perfectly in the lake, the mountains looked as though they were floating in mid air. It made it pretty difficult to tell what was real and which was the reflection, it looked amazing. Jimmy told us that when the salt flats are covered with water they become one of the largest mirrors on earth. Despite the water we were still able to take some awesome pictures. We came onto the flats armed with numerous props to take our "illusion pictures". In the middle of the lake there is an old hotel turned museum, it stopped being a hotel because of the bad smells coming from the salt flats.
From the salt flats we had a long drive to Villa Alota, a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere, where we were setting up camp for the night. The hostel had no hot water and you had to pay for the privilege of a cold one (meaning we were onto day 4 with no shower) we were beginning to smell, luckily we were armed with baby wipes. There was also only lights from 7.30 to 9.30, meaning it was an early night for everyone.
Day 2
We were woken up by Jimmy shouting "Vamos, Vamos" at 6.15, way too early for my liking. We had a full day of lakes and other stuff ahead of us.
First stop, Laguna Colorada, 4280metres above sea level is a shallow salt lake within the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve and getting pretty close to the Chilean border. The lake itself is really red but it contains borax islands that are really white and give the lake a brilliant contrast in colours. There were so many llamas chilling around the lake and absolutely millions of flamingos hanging out in it. Apparently the flamingos were of the James' variety (not a clue how they differ from any other type of flamingo).
After lunch we set of in search of Laguna Verde which is right on the Chilean border. It is located at the foot of the Licancabur volcano, we were assured by Jimmy that it was inactive. The lake was really bluey green in colour, it is 4300metres above sea level. Right next to Laguna Verde is the Laguna Blanca, which as you can imagine is very white in colour. The more lakes we were seeing the more they all seemed to look very similar apart from the varying colours.
On our way to these two lakes we stopped at Sol de Manana, geysers that are at 4800metres above sea level. In this area there is intense volcanic activity, the geyser field is full of mud lakes and steam pools with boiling lava with little protection from the 200ºc heat. Depending on the pressure the hot steam of the geysercan reach heights of between 10 to 50 metres. They were pretty impressive although absolutely stank because of the sulphur, it smelt as though someone was having really bad "problems".
Our final stop of the day was at the Termas de Polques hot spings (4400m) adjacent to Salar de Chalviri. This was the perfect way to finish off the day. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, for some reason I thought they would be something like a jacuzzi - not so. The water was so still and it was absolutely boiling, a complete contrast to the air, it felt so good to be in water, even if we couldn't have a wash in them (there were signs).
Back to our accommodation for the night, once again Marie-Bella (our cook) made us a delicious feast for dinner. It was another early night, without a shower ready for tomorrows activities.
Day 3
The final day of our tour, as we'd packed so much into the previous two days there wasn't alot left to see. Our first stop was Arbol de Piedra, a rock tree. It was really random, as we drove through the desert we got to this "tree". To me it didn't look much like a tree at all, but I guess it had the general shape about it.
There were more lakes to see, four in total, all really close together (Lagunas Honda, Chiarkota, Hedionce and Canapa). After 3 days and seeing so many lakes they were all starting to look the same. I think Jimmy could sense our boredom (with lakes) as we weren't even stopping anymore, just slowing down so that we could take some pictures then carrying on.
The final stop on our tour was the Train Cemetery, just outside Uyuni. It is considered one of the major tourist attractions in the area - it was wierd. The train cemetery was produced after the collapse of the mining industry. Many trains were abandoned thereby producing the train cemetery. It was the strangest thing I have seen, I can't believe they can make an "attraction" from a load of old trains.
