Sur America: Salar de Uyuni...The Salt Flats!!!

Our furthest stop south in Bolivia would be the infamous salt flats just out of Uyuni. They are over 10,000 square kilometers of SALT! The typical thing to do is a three day tour with six people and a guide in jeep. Luckily, we already had a group of 6 friends we had previously met and were all converging in the tiny town of Uyuni at the same time. This meant we could walk into a tour agency and book a tour the morning of, which is ideal, since the town of Uyuni itself is quite dusty and dull.

First though, we had a little adventure getting from Potosi to Uyuni. We left Saturday night on a 6pm bus from Potosi, hoping to reach Uyuni by 10 or 11pm. Signs that this trip was going to go poorly:

1. Upon purchasing the ticket at an agency, they told us to go to the Ex-terminal, not the Nuevo (new) terminal.

2. Upon arriving at the Ex-terminal, Diana Tours (our bus) was by far the shittiest looking thing in the lot.

3. 45 minutes outside of Potosi, going up a slight incline, I realize I could walk faster than the bus was moving. Strange noises are also coming from the engine.

4. The bus starts hobbling, like it has a flat tire somewhere. It was a physical limp that actually caused your body to sway.

5. The bus driver pulls over near the top of the hill and says there were problems with the engine. (My thought here is, fine, lets turn around and coast downhill to Potosi, still only 45 minutes away. But that is not the mindset of a Bolivian...if the thing is still functioning, we are still going forward. The future and consequences of actions are not part of their thought process.)

6. The bus breaks down 3 hours later, 10pm, in the middle of nowhere with fluid pouring from the engine, onto the cement..Our bus just had its throat slit.

So anyway, those were the signs and we broke down and were stuck in the cold darkness in the middle of nowhere. There was a group of about 5 of us gringos huddled by the side of the road, trying to figure out what was going to happen next. A guy jumped up on the top of the bus and began throwing down all of our luggage and people unloaded all of their stuff from the broken bus. We sent a delegate to the mob of locals at the front of the bus and found out we were waiting for other buses to pass by to hop on and take us to Uyuni. Apparently there were others coming...when, we didn´t know. The only answer we got when we asked how long was "Si." So we waited, but surprisingly, only 30 minutes later, headlights appeared on the road coming in our direction. The bus was flagged down and stopped and mobs of locals pushed us out of the way. We shouldered back but we weren´t good enough at pushing in as the big Bolivian women with their large sacks on their backs. The bus admitted a handful of people and then said it was at capacity and took off. Us gringos and the rest of the locals that didn´t make it on were left once again by the side of the road. The gringos huddled together and made a pact that we wouldn´t let the locals push us off the next bus and we weren´t spending the night by the side of the road...it was all for one and one for all!

The next bus came only 10 minutes or so later, roared by our waving mob and came to a stop about 100 meters down the road. We all took off in a full sprint towards the bus, fully loaded with all of our heavy backpacks, flip flops on, running in the night screaming at the top of our lungs: "Go Team Gringo!!!" Rolly bags were spinning out of control on the pavement and Jon was about peeing himself laughing but we got to the bus first and held our ground for the slower mob of locals. We found out that the bus could admit 20 people...there were maximum probably 15 people that needed a ride, but if anything maybe we got some respect from the locals...or more likely solidified their view that gringos are in fact loco.

Anyway, on to Uyuni, since we did after all make it there. We met up with our group of friends the following morning and headed out on our tour by 11am. The first stop were the salt flats themselves. We drove out onto the flats and took the pictures all travelers take with figurines and bottles of alcohol, using the infinite flat surface to do optical illusions with the relative sizes of people. We saw some workers out on the flats digging up piles of salt to be used to eat. We also saw buildings and statues made out of pure salt. There was even a Salt Hotel out in the middle of the flats: walls, beds, tables, everything made of salt blocks. The salt was scaled into a white, reptilian looking floor. It was very different from anything I had ever seen before, and the massive expanse of it all was pretty spectacular. We were told by our driver that the salt "crust" was only about 1 foot thick in some places with many feet of water beneath.

On the way to our accommodation the first night we stopped at the Train Graveyard, with all kinds of old rusted train engines, cars and parts that we could run around in and climb on. We drove through a landscape that looked strikingly like eastern Washington...home sweet home (for me). At our accommodation we enjoyed a bottle of rum and played cards the entire night, celebrating the birthday of one of our group members.

Day two of the tour we stopped at a giant garden of volcanic rock formations that we could scurry around on and take pictures (Jon spotted a Viscacha...looks like a rabbit-squirrel hybrid, should have been named a rabbel) and a bunch of lakes. The landscape was changing as we went, sometimes we felt like we were on Mars as we drove through rolling hills of red dirt and rocks. Then we would pass snowcapped mountains and giant orange and grey volcanic rocks. The change in scenery over the kilometers we drove was incredible! Only really pictures can describe. We also stopped at Arbol de Piedra...a stone tree! We took pictures there and our final stop was at Laguna Colorado, a massive red lake! (Jon inserts dorky info here: The lake gets it red color from the algae and plankton that feed on the mineral rich water. This laguna is rich in sodium, magnesium, borax and gypsum, which also accounted for the white shores. Three different flamingo species feed on the plankton in these waters, waters that can reach -20 C at night. Flamingos use a cool filtering system to feed. ...nevermind, back to the blog) That night was spent drinking another bottle of rum and playing more cards.

Day three we woke up at 4:15 to head out by 5 am. Our first stop: Geiser Sol de Manana...basically a bunch of sweet gysers! We took a picture by a Peligroso (Danger) sign, and then walked past it to see where the steam was coming out but our guide laughed at us and asked if we had read the sign we just took a picture of and told us to come back. We got to the famous Thermal Baths (along the shore of Laguna Verde, this one a seafoam green from lead, sulfur, arsenic, and calcium carbonates, don´t worry we weren´t swimming in the lake) by 7 am and got to take a quick dunk in those before bolting off to the Chilean border where we said goodbye to our group of friends (all 4 of them were heading to Chile) and Jon and I headed back to Uyuni. That night we caught overnight buses to La Paz (different ones since there was only "one seat" left in each bus), glad we didn´t have to stay a day in Uyuni.