#95 - Salar de Uyuni Part 1: Salt flats

07/05/2011 (posted 09/05/2011)

I slept really well last night and had loads of dreams, mainly about people and things from back home. I have been thinking about home a lot I guess - I am very excited about the prospect of being home, no matter how lovely South America is.

The woman came and told me we were leaving at 10:30 - this meant I had time for breakfast. I went to a cafe and got fried eggs, bread, juice and tea for very cheap.
And then we left.

Our group is: Clarke from Canada, Walter and Hessel from Holland, Emilio from Canada and Hannah from South Korea. The tour consists of us being driven around in an old, battered 4x4 for hours at a time and occasionally stopping to observe the natural wonders.

First stop was an abandoned train yard, which is as weird as it sounds. There were loads of rusty old trains and carriages in the middle of this field which looked pretty cool but were also totally incongruous to anything else.

We then went to the famous Salar de Uyuni itself, the world's biggest salt flat.
And it was awesome.
It is so flat that some of the Earth's observation satellites use its surface for calibration. That is just one of the cool things about it. It can only really be described as a massive flat plain of dried salt that stretches as far as the eye can see - it's pretty weird to look at but beautiful as well.

The great thing is that because it's such a plain background, everyone who visits takes crazy photos with random objects. We took some with objects including toy dinosaurs, finger puppets, my tie-dye tshirt and we also took some that look like we are climbing out of a pringles can.
It sounds stupid but when you see the photos, you'll see how funny they are.

We also managed to find an area covered with water and because of the perfect flatness, the sky was brilliantly reflected in its surface.

After some lunch, we left the Salar and had a three-hour ride to our stopover for the night. I spent two hours of this journey in the back of the 4x4 which is the most uncomfortable part and by the end, my knees were in agony.

We got there and had a couple of hours to kill. Clarke and I had both had similar ideas about what to bring to cure both boredom and the cold nights - I had Scottish whisky, he had rum.
So our room (Me, Clarke, Walter and Hessel) played cards and drank rum & coke for a bit, and then it was dinner. It was when we had to walk to dinner that it transpired that we'd drank too much.

And then we went back to our room to sleep.
I have talked to many travellers who I have met during my time out here and the general consensus is that the nights suck on this tour. I heard one guy say that the air is so thin you can hardly breathe and he got one hour's sleep.
Great.

JG