Travel, Photography, Life.
Salar de Uyuni Tour
My 4-day tour of the salt flat and other natural wonders surrounding Uyuni in Bolivia.
Salt Flats Tour Day 4
Nov 24th
November 20, 2005
Day 53
We were in no rush today. We only had about five hour left, including all of the stops for the day, so we got to sleep late, eat breakfast, and throw the Frisbee around some more before taking off. I began to see why going all the way back to Uyuni in three days was a route that a lot of people chose, but I didn’t mind the relaxed pace because I didn’t have any deadlines.
Our first stop was at the Valle de Rocas, which, as the name implies, was just a valley with a bunch of rocks. Next, we drove to Villa Alota, a tiny town in the desert. It had a nice looking church and a few other buildings to look at, but the streets were empty. I wasn’t sure if anyone actually lived there, or if was just a ghost town.
Next, we went to San Cristobal, which was only slightly more lively. There was a small market, but there wasn’t much for sale there other than food. The town also had an empty soccer stadium and a church made completely out of stones. Most of the towns we stopped at had no electricity, running water, or entertainment other than the occasional soccer game. Needless to say, I wouldn’t want to live in any of them.
We got back to Uyuni, which seemed like a sprawling metropolis after the previous towns we had stopped at, early in the afternoon. I decided that I wanted to go a bit north to Oruro next to relax for a few days before heading to Sajama National Park and Chile. The problem was that the only bus going to Oruro arrived at 3:00 AM. I don’t particularly enjoy arriving in unfamiliar places by myself in the middle of the night, but I didn’t have much of a choice, so I bought a ticket for tonight.
I still had a few hours to kill before my bus left, so I went to an Internet cafe to try and get some of my pictures uploaded. That was a really bad idea. Not only was it expensive, but the computer I used was horrible. I have to learn to check the computer’s statistics before attempting to use it from now on. Sorry for the techno-speak, but a 200 Mhz processor and 64 MB of RAM are not sufficient to run Windows XP, Firefox, and a Java Applet for uploading photos. I wasted two hours on the Internet and crashed on the tour agency’s couch until it was time to leave town.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Salt Flats Tour Day 3
Nov 24th
November 19, 2005
Day 52
It was still completely dark outside when we got up today at 4:00 AM. Actually, everyone else got up at 4:00, but I just laid in bed for twenty minutes saying, “I hate mornings. I can’t believe I’m paying for this.” Somehow, we still managed to leave at about 4:30. I couldn’t fathom why we would have to get up so early to go and drive all day.
After about an hour of driving, the sun finally came up. We made our first stop at the Michina Geysers, just as the sky was getting very colorful. Seeing the steam shoot out from the ground with lots of colors in the background was amazing. I guess that’s why we got up so early. We walked around an area that was full of boiling water and rising smoke. Unfortunately, I could only enjoy myself for about ten minutes because it was probably about -10 Celsius and very windy. My hands were numb by the time were got back into the truck.
After freezing our asses off, we made a short drive to the hot springs of Challviri. The water was only slightly warm, but it felt great after walking near the geysers. We stayed in the are for awhile and had breakfast. This was also the part of the tour where we split up. The hot springs are located in the far southwestern part of Bolivia, just a few miles from Chile. Chris, Katrina, and Anita all left to go to Chile. Kirsten, Stephie, and I joined Jill and Marie, from France, for the rest of the tour in their truck.
Our last stop before making our way back toward Uyuni was Laguna Verde, the Green Lagoon. It was very calm and highly reflective with Licancabur Mountain in the background. Supposedly, the color of the lagoon was supposed to change at around 10:00 AM when the sun got high enough in the sky, but I couldn’t tell. We sat at the lagoon for over an hour and leisurely made our way back. From this point on, there would be no rushing to see everything.
We stopped for the day at about 2:00 in another small town in the middle of nowhere. At least the hotel we stayed at had running water, hot showers, and electricity for two hours per day. We got settled in and relaxed for a few minutes, at which point normally we would eat dinner and go to bed, but it was still the middle of the afternoon, so we had to find something else to do.
Our new guide, a large, fat man with a tough image that could’ve landed him on the cast of The Soprano’s, suggested fishing. We piled ourselves and a bunch of neighborhood kids (making about 15 people in all) into the truck and drove down a long, bumpy road to the river. The kids took off upstream with their net. I thought it was a little unfair to be fishing with a net, but then I remembered that we were fishing for dinner, not for fun.
The rest of us walked with our guide downstream a bit. He had a more familiar looking setup: a shiny lure attached to some fishing line with a bobber. He demonstrated how to throw out the line a few times and guaranteed that there were huge trout in the river. The river was completely free of potential snags except for one tiny little patch of land in the middle, but our guide made a direct hit on about his third cast and left it up to us to get the lure unstuck.
Given that there was only one line for the five of us, and that line was stuck in the river, I quickly got bored and started throwing my Frisbee around with Kirsten. I’m glad I had been fishing before and knew enough to bring something along to stave off the boredom.
The snag was eventually undone, and we continued fishing, playing catch, and sitting around for an hour and a half before giving up. None of us got so much as a nibble. I figured the kids upstream probably caught all of the fish in their net, leaving none for us. To my surprise, however, they also left empty-handed. I guess fishing with a net isn’t unfair after all.
I thought our dinner was going to be a plate with rice around the edge and a trout-shaped empty spot in the middle, but we actually got to eat sausages. I explained to the German girls that not only do we have bratwursts and other sausages in Wisconsin, but we glorify them by dressing people up in sausage costumes and letting them race each other in a baseball stadium. They were slightly amused.
When your day begins at 4:00 AM, it can seem very long by the time it gets dark. Nobody seemed to want to do anything on the last night of our trip, so I took a nice, hot shower and called it a night early again.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Salt Flats Tour Day 2
Nov 24th
November 18, 2005
Day 51
We got up early this morning, had a small breakfast, and started driving. Our first stop of the day was Volcan Ollague, an active volcano looming in the distance across the Chilean border. Next, we went to a series of lagoons. Every lagoon we saw was home to hundreds of flamingos. I was very happy to see them because I was told that there would be flamingos on my Islas Ballestas tour, but I didn’t see any. Each lagoon seemed more beautiful than the last with their colorful algae, blue skies, and mountains in the background.
After doing a few hours of sightseeing, we stopped for lunch. The area we stopped at was inhabited by dozens of “scrabbits,” animals with heads of rabbits and tails of squirrels. I couldn’t quite figure out how the scrabbits could survive at nearly 5000 meters without any food in sight, but then I saw some other tourists throwing their leftovers to them. I guess that explained it.
We drove for another hour after lunch through some very bumpy terrain and arrived at the “Arbol de Piedra,” or tree of rock. It was a giant rock that barely seemed to be able to stand up on its small base. There were also some other big rocks nearby that provided some much-needed exercise for me when I climbed them after being in a truck for the last two days straight.
Our final stop of the day was at Laguna Colorada, a large lagoon that was part ice, part salt, part mud, and all flamingo terrain. I walked with my group to the Mirador, a lookout point at the top of a hill about halfway across the lagoon, where I was treated to even more spectacular views.
The place we stayed at was not nearly as nice as last night’s. There was no running water, the bathroom smelled horribly, it was much colder than last night, and all six of us had to sleep in the same room together. The only consolation was that we had to get up the next day at 4:00 AM, so we basically just ate supper and went to bed very early. One good thing about being at high altitude is that is makes you very sleepy, which comes in handy when there’s nothing to do because it’s pitch black due to a lack of electricity.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Salt Flats Tour Day 1
Nov 23rd
November 17, 2005
Day 50
I knew that I was about to start a four-day trip in which I would have no contact with the outside world, so this morning I attempted to use the Internet before I left. I found out that it costs three times as much as normal here, and it is horribly slow. For me, the lack of decent computers with good Internet connections is the most annoying thing about Bolivia. Of course, considering that new computers cost more than the average Bolivian makes in a year, I probably shouldn’t complain about it so much.
There was mass confusion when we were supposed to start our tour. The vehicle we were supposed to ride in, an old Toyota Land Cruiser, wasn’t there yet. We were told that it was gassing up and would be ready shortly. Also, only Chris, Katrina, and I were at the tour agency, but six of us were supposed to go on the tour. Anita, an Australian girl who we were supposed to meet last night never showed up and we had no idea where the other two people were, if they even existed.
Eventually, things got straightened out. The Land Cruiser showed up about an hour late (not bad by Bolivian standards). Kirsten and Stephie, from Germany, were combined with our tour group. Anita also suddenly appeared. She couldn’t get on the early bus to Uyuni yesterday because it was full, which explains why we never found her. She signed up at the last minute and we were finally ready to leave at noon, but there was still one more problem (Warning: the next paragraph is rather confusing).
Chris, Katrina, and Anita all wanted to be dropped off in Chile on the third day of the trip. Kirsten and Stephie had signed up for four days. That left me all alone because I had been talked into returning to Uyuni on the third day in exchange for a discount for the group. One of the tour operators tried to convince me to go back in an over-packed truck with a different group on the third day. Knowing how uncomfortable it would be riding back the entire day with nine people in a Land Cruiser, I said I wouldn’t do it. However, I would agree to return on the fourth day because there was more room in the other truck. The agency lady reluctantly agreed. It worked out well for me because I got to go on a four-day tour for the price of three, and I had planned on going for four days originally, anyway.
The first stop on our tour was an old train graveyard near Uyuni. The trains that were left there were steam powered and dated back to the 1880′s. The area around Uyuni was perfect for dumping old trains because there was absolutely nothing nearby. The first thing I noticed when I got out of the truck was how bright it was because there was not one cloud in the sky and the ground around the area was white. I’m sure glad I bought a pair of sunglasses in La Paz.
Next, we went to Colchani, a small village on the border of the salt flats. I quickly noticed that there was a salt theme to everything I saw: the museum was made of salt, there were blocks of salt scattered around everywhere, trucks showed up dumping off salt in random locations, and even all of the souvenirs for sale were made of salt. I guess this is to be expected when your town is on the border of the biggest salt lake in the world.
We continued driving to the Salar de Uyuni, which used to be a massive lake, but now is just a huge area of salt several meters deep. We stopped at a collection of salt mounds that the people of Colchani had gathered. They pile the salt into mounds to dry it out completely, after which they transport it to town to make into souvenirs for the tourists. It was one of the strangest landscapes I had ever seen. Almost as far as I could see in every direction was the pure whiteness of salt. The site seemed to be devoid of all living things other than us tourists. Suddenly it occurred to me that it would really suck if our truck broke down here.
We continued driving for another half hour to the Salt Hotel. Located in the middle of the salt flats, the hotel is made entirely out of salt. They no longer allow people to spend the night there, but they do let people enter it and take pictures, provided that they buy something at the gift shop. I bought a Coke and checked the place out. Indeed, everything there was made of salt, including the beds and chairs. Maybe it was a good thing that we weren’t going to sleep there.
Our next stop was the Isla Pescado (Fish Island), located almost directly in the middle of the flats. We were told that lunch would be ready in forty minutes, so we should take a walk around the island. The entire island was covered with cacti, but I don’t think I saw any animals at all. I wasn’t quite sure how anything could live in that environment, without any water or nutrients, but I guess cacti always find a way. Fun fact of the day: the tallest cactus on the island was 12.03 meters high. Since cacti only grow one centimeter per year, it was 1203 years old.
We had llama burgers, rice, tomatoes, cucumbers, and Coke for lunch, and began a long drive across the rest of the salt flats. The “road” was really just an area that other people had obviously driven on before. At one point, our guide, who was also our driver and cook, reached down to grab his water and drifted about ten yards off the path. I got a little scared, but the ground was so hard that it didn’t matter. If he had wanted, he could have just turned on the cruise control and gone to sleep for a few hours. That’s what I would’ve done, anyway.
We finally arrived at our stopping point for the day at 6:30 PM. It was a tiny town a few miles outside the salt flat. The hotel we stayed in was a surprisingly cozy place. There was only electricity from 7 till 9 PM, but the rooms were clean, there was running water, and a gas-powered shower was available for a small price. Our group was the only one in the hotel, so it was very quiet. We ate a nice chicken and rice supper, and considering that the electricity had been cut off and we had to rely on candle power, we went to bed rather early at about 10:00.
The photo album for this entry is here.