Salt Flats!! In (mostly) pictures

We got into the tiny, dusty town of Uyuni around 7am. We were really well-rested because we had sprung for the nice seats on the bus for the first (and only!) time. It was amazing because the seats fully recline and are extra wide. We had booked a tour in La Paz, so we found the office and then went out for breakfast. At 10:30, we met our driver and headed out on the three day tour through the largest salt flats in the world. 

Day One

For some reason, our tour group changed a lot. We started out with a really nice Bolivian professor and his Norweigan friend. They only stuck with us for the first day, which was a bummer because I got to practice a lot of Spanish with him. 

The first stop on the tour was the train cemetery. Uyuni used to be a major railway hub, but for some reason it isn´t anymore. Someone built some swings and a bunch of people added graffiti and they turned it into a tourist attraction!

Swings!

The grafiti says "I need a mechanic with experience", haha.

Next stop was the “ojos de agua” (eyes of water) which was a crazy area where hot water is constantly bubbling up from the ground and forming little ponds of water in the salt. We also stopped, at the Bolivian professor’s insistence, to check out a massive llama farm. Then we got our first glimpse at the massive salt flats. They go as far as the eye can see. Closer to town men work all day mining the stuff so it can be used for building and making souvenirs and I think some of it even gets shipped out as table salt. We went to lunch and picked up a kid from France and a fiercely patriotic guy from Switzerland who would stay with us the rest of the trip. We also stopped at a really elaborate hostel made entirely of salt and took some funny pictures.

Llamas

Salt waiting to be transported

As far as the eye can see

Everything is made of salt!

You don´t have to be very far away for the perspective to get totally thrown off

This is what it looks like while the photo is being taken.

Turns out pretty great, but the shadows mess it up!

The last stop of the day was out to the Isla de Pescado (Island of Fish) which is a giant fossilized coral island. Here we also said good bye to the Bolivian and Norweigan and picked up another couple that spoke French and Spanish but not much English. Unfortunately, everyone in the group now spoke French but us. Actually I could follow along a little, tiny bit with their conversations because French and Spanish are fairly similar. Mostly, it just made dinner conversation really difficult though.

The cacti were all in bloom which made everything extra beautiful!

After the island we drove for awhile to our first resting point for the night, another hostel made totally of salt! The tables, chairs, bed frames, and walls were all made from salt!

Day Two

We woke up at 6am and drove a long ways (the salt flats can be seen from space so the distances between things are realllly far!) On the drive we saw two blue lagoons, a green lagoon and a yellow pond. Something about the minerals here make the ponds different colors I think. Anyway, really cool! We ate lunch by a big pond filled with pink flamingos.

Spotted a herd of llamas on the drive

After lunch we kept driving until we got to a crazy rock garden. The entire area for miles and miles was barren except for this one spot filled with enormous rocks. Thousands of years of erosion by the wind have given the rocks really unique shapes, including one that looks like a tree.

Driving

Rocks!

Piedra de Arbol (Rock Tree)

A description of this day wouldn´t be complete without describing the music we listened to the whole time. I have no idea where our guide found his music, but we listened to really terrible 80s music for awhile, then traditional Spanish music for awhile, then some American pop music, followed by several songs of Eminem. Once we had listened to everything once, we went back and kept the terrible 80s music on repeat for the rest of the day. It really made the tour quite unique and also nearly drove us crazy. By the end we were singing along because we knew all the words.

That night we stayed in a much less nice hostel, BUT it was on the edge of a stunningly bright red lagoon filled with flamingos. It was way cool.

Bright red lagoon

Five-star lodging!

But the lake is pretty dang cool.

A woman was doing research on diseases in the flamingo population. Keegan got to nerd out with her for awhile and I got to translate

It was cold outside!

Not the best quality, but we got to see the moon rise and it was beautiful

And the sunset

Day Three

We woke up even earlier on day three, 4am! We got to see the sun come up over the mountains, which was gorgeous. Unfortunately, we were driving east so the sun was really bright on the windshield. Our driver was a grumpy, badass old man and was not deterred at all, he just stuck his head out the door and kept driving.

The first stop was to some awesome geysers.

Next we got to sit in a natural hot spring for awhile. The previous night and all morning I was freezing, but sitting in the hot springs warmed me up for the rest of the day. It was so relaxing and nice.

Finally, we got to the last stop which was the border with Chile. Half the tour was driving back to Uyuni, but we were getting off here. We said good-bye to our Francophone friends and hopped on a bus bound for San Pedro de Atacama, a town in the north of Chile. The bus ride was 45 minutes so Keegan fretted about the border crossing (international borders cause him unfathomable amounts of stress) and I tried to distract him by talking about what an amazing experience the three day tour was. We had seen some beautiful country, learned some French and some 80s songs, and now we were bound for Chile!