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One of Bolivia's biggest tourist attractions, and possibly one of the world's most impressive natural phenomena are the Salt Flats. This enormous stretch of land consists of salt, 30 feet deep, left over from what was once an ocean. Having heard about it from travelers I was excited to see this magical place for myself.
The 14 of us booked a tour and left on Thursday night for a 12-hour over-night bus. After a long and bumpy ride we finally made it to Uyuni, a small town where we got breakfast and then piled into jeeps. We stopped at several places along the way including small slum towns, and a train graveyard before making it to El Salar. Never in my life have I seen anything resembling this place. It looked like snow had covered the Sahara dessert. For as far as we could see, there was white, flat land. We had lunch at a building made entirely out of salt including tables and chairs! We later stopped at an "island" which was a small dirt hill covered in the biggest cacti I have ever seen, and home to several large llamas.
After taking too many photos trying to capture the strange lack of perspective, we continued on our way to our hostel. Driving over a dirt/mud section the jeep in front of us unfortunately got stuck.
The hostel was also made entirely out of salt, including our floor and beds! This first night was pretty cold, but the salt was good insulation. The next morning we woke up early, and made our way out in our jeeps. We stopped at lava formations and a view of an enormous volcano. We then drove to a lagoon whose shore was made of borax, a white plastic-y material. We had lunch there, out of the back of the jeep, which was pasta and chicken served out of plastic bags.
The next stop was a lagoon surprisingly infested with flamingos! The pink tropical birds clashed with the background of snow-capped mountains.
We then drove to an area of really interesting rock formations carved out by the strong wind, and finally to our destination for the night - the red lagoon. Due to strange algae that live in it, this lake is actually maroon-colored and looked like the remains of a bloody war. Flamingos were munching away here, too.
With a complete lack of light pollution, the night sky was incredible. We could see the Milky Way and there were actually too many stars to make out constellations!
The next morning we woke up at 5 am and drove through a volcanic area of gazers before arriving at a huge natural hot spring at the edge of a lake. We ate pancakes for breakfast while watching the sunrise over the water, and then got into the spring which at first was extremely unpleasant in the very chilly morning. The water was amazing. Warm and relaxing, the sun rose up above us and it was hard getting ourselves out.
On the way back to Uyuni, we stopped at another flamingo lagoon before lunch (which was at a small village where we saw alpacas wandering around, and a lady washing her clothes in the half frozen river).
We then had 3 hours to kill in the little town before the long bus ride home. We decided to find a restaurant to eat and relax at. Unfortunately, although we ordered our food over 2 hours before our departure, there was only one woman working and cooking so we barely got it in time. Eventually we got on the bus and curled up for the long, long ride.
When we arrived back in La Paz we gratefully took showers (mine was unfortunately very cold because we ran out of gas at the house) and although running on very little sleep, Sarah (my roommate) and I decided to go exploring for the day. We had omelets for breakfast at Alexander's, an Internet café near the apartment, and headed towards the witches' market. This market is one of my favorite parts of La Paz. Stretching about 5 by 3 blocks, it is packed with small artisan shops selling a variety of alpaca-wool clothing, leather-made items, jewelry, and other hand-made crafts. It is vibrant, colorful, and full of life. This is clearly the touristy part of town and walking down the street you hear little clips of conversation in different languages. We perused through the shops, heading up towards the Bolivia market. This section is where the locals shop not only for all food items, but also for electronics, furniture and clothing. It is loud, stinky, and appears extremely disorganized. We wandered for a few hours, buying fresh mandarins to eat, before making our way back down to the main plaza where we bought a full coconut to drink the milk from. We sat on the steps people-watching for a while where a few more volunteers joined us for dinner. On our way home we bought groceries and invited all 14 of our crew to join us for dinner at our apartment and watch a movie. Needless to say we all slept extremely well that night!
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