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Salar de Uyuni, the salt desert
Another bus ride, another border crossed, another country, time zone and currency. We now reached Bolivia!
Months back, when Anne and I started to plan this trip, we wanted to start in Bolivia and travel north. Because of cheap flight tickets to Rio, Brazil everything until now have been kind of a bonus to our trip. And a very nice bonus!
We left the coast of Chile to go to 3500 meter above sea level in town Uyuni, during less than a day. Change of climate again, now to dry and cooler and we easily felt the thin air, when e.g walking stairs.
The town lives of being entrance point to Bolivias biggest tourist attraction, the enormous salt desert Salar de Uyuni. Therefore the shops was full of selling sun hats/caps, sunscreen 50+ as well as thick pullovers, gloves and woolen socks. The desert is a bit tricky to dress for.
Well prepared, we got in a jeep with four other tourists and our driver and also our guide Wilson, together we had 3 full days ahead of us with basic living and great sights. During the first few hours the car was buzzing with stories about who we were, where we are from, how we ended up here, our different travel plans and quickly a little family was formed.
A Canadian, a British, a German, a Frenchman and two Danish girls, who took the roles of Dad, Mom, crazy Uncle, little brother and we as the Danish girls/sisters or "smurffs". Easily, this group found ways to help and support each other, and we had so many good laughs, stories and experiences to share and singing along in the jeep during the days. I'm so happy to have met this group of lovely people and it made the trip even better!
The salt flat is the biggest in the world and when we drove towards it, everything in the horizon just turn white. Closer it feels like snow landscape but it's all flat, hard, dry and not soft to walk on. Standing on it it's white as far as the eye can see and without sunglasses you're blinded from its brightness. It was so impressive!
We had lunch on a small island of rocks and cactus sticking up in the white ocean, and that's exactly what it was many, many years ago. The salt flat was once an enormous salty lake and with the water evabrevaded, highs, heat and sun, only a desert of salt left. Bolivia doesn't export any of the salt as they only get 2 bolivianos (less than 2 DKK) for a kilo.
Because it's white in white, nothing to "disturb" your eyes or give a size reference it's perfect for fun pictures! I believe that's the biggest tourist attraction about it, actually - to get pictures of "small" people getting hunted by a dinosaur, walking out of a Pringles can or standing on each other's hands. If it's hard to understand just look at the photo album and you'll know what I mean. And it was a lot of fun!
Being in a desert also give the best preconditions to watch stars. I can't remember seeing so many layers of stars and such a clear Milky Way. If it wasn't so cold I would have watched it all night long. So beautiful, impressive and mind twisting to think about the universe and feeling so small.
The following day we saw Bolivias only active volcano which in fact is only semi-active. We saw both lava rock formations and regular stone rock formations, all great for climbing! Done with the salt, we drove through dry landscape which most of all reminded me of a moon landscape. Once in awhile we would meet a lagoon but most of them very dried out.
We ended up by a big lagoon half red of flamingos and half red of the red plankton in the water that the flamingos eats and give them their colors. I learned that actually they are born grey and as they eat they turn more and more red/pink. The flamingos are endangered species and it doesn't make it easier that they pair for life and only lay one egg a year!
On the last day we got up at 4am to go to the geysers before sunrise, because that's when you see them the best. The geysers are in 5000 m above the sea level so to manage the -6 degrees we were wearing all the layers as possible, gloves and a warm hat. Afterwards we when to a natural hot spring, where we enjoyed the sunrise our a lagoon in our swimwear. So beautiful!
Here we said goodbye to Mom and Dad who were heading to Chile, while the rest of us returned to Uyuni. As we returned we even picked up some tourists who's jeep broke down on the road. Anne and I continued right away by going to Potosi, here change bus to "collectivo" car and arrived in Sucre at 1am.
We had booked a hostel beforehand and entering we were met by a enormous party! It was Friday.. We kinda didn't consider that, and when we asked for a room far away from the party, the receptionist just answered there is none but the music will stop at 3am.
I crawled to bed, super tired, stuck my earplugs as tightly as possible, still feeling like the disco was in my room, but at some point I fell asleep thinking that it was a pity for the clean sheets that I haven't had a real shower for 2 days in the dusty desert. But well, I'm a backpacker after all - smiling!
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