The Blaus - South America and Europe

16 - 19 del Marzo - Salar de Uyuni

The Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats) in Bolivia is made up of the most bizarre collection of natural wonders you can imagine in one place. We have heard many stories about it from our friends who have traveled in South America, as it is one of the sights that a tourist must see while here, but nothing could have prepared us for the severe beauty and strange extremes that we encountered on our three day tour. The only way to visit the Salar is by jeep or 4-wheel drive trucks that cross the desert and salt flats between the cities of San Pedro de Atacama (Chile) and Uyuni (Bolivia). There are usually groups of six in these tour vehicles. We got very lucky and were matched up with two other couples, who were wonderful and interesting people. One couple was from Switzerland and the other from Luxembourg (but originally from England and France). By the end of the three days we felt like family and we began learning French under the blue skies of the Bolivian salt flats.

Our first day in the Salar was very eventful. We went to see the jade waters of Laguna Verde, which glowed green when the minerals in it were stirred up by the wind. An incredible sight with a giant dormant volcano at the foot of the lake. Then we went to natural hot springs to bathe in a shallow pool, and the temperature was perfectly comfortable for relaxing in the sun. After lunch we went to see the geysers at Sol de Mañana, which were spitting and bubbling brown muddy water like cauldrons and smelled of sulphur (huele mal). We ended the day with a trip to Laguna Colorada, whose water was a color of red that I have never seen before. It looked as if the water was on fire and the flaming orange color of the water was contrasted by the gypsum and salt crusted white shores. The lake was home to hundreds of flamingoes, so we sat on the shore and watched and listened to them as the sun set. We climbed to high altitudes on the first day of our tour, so we chewed coca leaves and drank tea made from coca leaves (mate de coca) to fend off altitude sickness (this is what the locals do, and it seemed to work for us). That night we nearly froze to death at high elevation in a very simple accomodation (refugio) in the middle of this vast expanse of desert.

The second day we got back into the 4-wheel drive Toyota truck to continue the journey across the desert to the Salar. We stopped at many more lakes along the way, each was as beautiful and unique as the last. One lake was so silvery and glassy that it looked like a giant pool of liquid mercury. In its reflection we could see a perfect upside down image of the distant volcano situated behind it. Later we stopped at a dried up river bed where the rock formations looked like something out of a Dali painting. The shapes of these rocks were formed by the rushing water that once ran through the valley. The most famous of these rocks was the piedra arborales (rock tree), which literally looked like a petrified tree. We drove past la montaña de siete colores (the mountain of seven colors) that looked like a backdrop created in chalk pastels with colors of yellow, green, brown, red, purple, white and orange. We stopped for lunch on some volcanic rocks that created a lunar landscape and we admired a smoking active volcano in the distance. Next we drove through a small village, where we stopped to talk to one of the locals who was herding her llamas and digging for some kind of root that grows naturally in the ground. The llamas here are like pets...pets with many valuable properties (their wool, their meat, etc.). They have colored string tied to their ears and around their necks, which they are given on their birthdays. We ended the driving tour as the sun was setting and then we visited a very sacred burial ground in caves in the hills above the hotel where we would stay that night. This "museum" was founded and maintained by the pueblo (the people that live in the town). We saw amazingly well preserved relics and mummies in these caves. Everything in the caves was left exactly the way it was discovered, and life has not changed much in this part of Bolivia, because the methods of weaving and cooking are still the same today as they were hundreds of years ago. From the hilltop, we watched the sun set over the white expanse of salt flats, with these huge cactus perched on the hill in the foreground. That night we stayed in a hotel made of salt (apparently, salt is a great building material in a place where it never rains because of its excellent insulative properties). Everything in the hotel was made of salt--the tables, the chairs, the floor was sprinkled with rock salt...a very surreal place. We had a wonderful traditional Bolivian meal by candlelight with our four travel companions.

Our third day we drove through the Salar, which is covered in about six inches of water right now. It was completely surreal to drive through and then walk around in this shallow, salty, white water. They say that this is a dried up lake bed that has salt under the surface of the earth, which is released when it rains, and this is how the salt flats were created. At times as we drove through it we would look out the window at the horizon and we couldn´t decifer where the salt flats ended and the sky began. We stopped for a quick hike on an island called Isla del Pescado (not sure why it´s called Island of Fish), which was studded with these cartoon-like cacti. We then drove to the salt-mines near the far end of the Salar, where they make mounds of salt that are shaped like cylinders. Once excavated, the salt is then transported to facilities where they add iodine, making it safe for consumption. We ended our three day tour in Uyuni, and parted with our Swiss and Luxembourgish friends there. We look forward to sharing our photos with you, as words can not do this place justice.

Our friends from Luxembourg are going to the US next to travel from NYC to SF in a campervan. If anyone would like to meet them and show them around, please let us know. She is worried about how Americans will receive her as a French woman...freedom fries and all. We would love it if they were to meet some of our warm, open-minded, worldly friends from home...to help make their experience in our country a good one.

posted by The Blaus @ 7:33 PM