13.12.-16.12.10

Salar de Uyuni / Bolivia

I would have loved to take the night bus from Sucre to Uyuni but as there wasn't one; I left SUCRE on Monday morning, 13.12.10 at 7am. As the direct bus was fully booked I had to change buses in POTOSI which wasn't too bad as I could stretch my legs for a while and get a bite to eat. On the bus I met Lauren and Tom from Melbourne in Australia.

After a 10 hour bus ride through a beautiful landscape we arrived in UYUNI. Uyuni is an otherworldly and totally isolated town in the middle of the dessert with an elevation of 3.669m. It seemed like that Uyuni is the exit for all tourists who venture out to the extraordinary "Salar de Uyuni" (salt flats).

As we all wanted to do a 3 day trip through the world biggest salt flats we booked our tour with the recommended tour company EMPEXCA for the following day. While we were looking for a restaurant we bumped into a German couple who I met a few times before in Bolivia. We convinced Carsten and Melly to join us on our tour so we would be only 5 in a Jeep instead of 6 people.

But on Tuesday morning, 14.12.10 we were introduced to Valentina from Rom who would join us. Well I don't know who we managed to fit 6 tourists, the cook and the driver in the jeep but somehow we did. After all the backpacks, stove, cool box and food were tightened up on the roof we left Uyuni for our first stop the "cemetery of the trains". The cemetery is part of the "train museum" where we could take some cool photos of the old rusty locomotives which were left there 50 years ago.

Then we continued our way to the WORLD'S LARGEST SALT FLATS. The salt flats also called the SALAR DE UYUNI and are 12.106 sq. kilometres big and lying on an altitude of 3.653 meter.

I don't know how our lovely Bolivian driver LINO managed to find the right way in a maze of tracks crisscrossing through the "white dessert" but somehow he found the first "salt hotel" where we had lunch. While ANNA our Bolivian cook prepared our lunch we had about an hour to take some incredible photos. Just check them out on my album "Salar de Uyuni"

The lunch inside the salt hotel was delicious as always and really unique as we were sitting on salt chairs around a salt table and everything was just white around us.

The next stop was the "Isla del Pescado" (island of the fish). When we approached the island we knew where the name came from as the island looked like a fish from a far distance. The island at the heart of the SALAR is a hilly outpost covered with huge cactuses and surrounded by a flat white sea of salt tiles. The cactuses on the island are mostly about 8 - 10 metres high and only grow aprrox. one cm per year. For our first night we stayed in one of the few salt hotels and it was a quite unique experience to sleep on a salt bed.

After an early start the next day we went to the"Laguna Colorado". During the 1 ½ hour ride we saw loads of wildlife e.g. Llamas, vicunas, emus and foxes. The "Laguna Colorado" is a bright red lake with loads of minerals in it; only 25 km from the Chilean boarder and filled with thousands of flamingos.

For the rest of the day we drove long distances but stopped at various places as e.g. "Laguna Blanca"!!!

On our second day we got up at 3.45am as Lino (our guide) told us that we would leave by 4am. Puuhh.....it was definitely not easy to get up that early especially as it was freezing cold. It must have been around 0 degrees but they provided enough blankets to keep us warm.

At 4.15am we got a bit worried as there still wasn't a glimpse of Lino, our guide and Anna, our cook. So we knocked on their door and as we assumed, their alarm clock didn't go off. Our hands and fingers nearly fell off when we helped Lino putting up all our backpacks on the roof of the car. Wow what a difference to the heat during the day.

We finally left our basic hostal in the middle of the dessert at 4.45am and drove straight to the 4.950m high "Sol de Manana geyser basin". The geyser basin has boiling mud pots and sulphurous fumaroles and smelled like rotten eggs. As we didn't have any breakfast I got quite sick of the smell.

We all took some beautiful photos with the steam of the mud pools and the rising sun in the background. From there we drove to the nearby "Therma de Polques" hot springs. Because we arrived quite late the natural pool was filled with lots of other tourists and Lino suggested driving to another, not far away hot springs.

As soon we arrived there at around 7.30am we all jumped into the nice and surprisingly clean warm pool….and we had the whole pool just for ourselves!

Half an hour later Lino and Anna called us for breakfast. As we told Anna the day before that it was Tom's birthday she surprised Tom with a nice little "strawberry pancake cake" and some candles on it. The whole breakfast was very special at it was in the middle of the nowhere and no one else was around us.

At around 8.45am we had to leave this beautiful stop and drove to the nearby boarder to CHILE where a Shuttle bus was waiting for us. I found it very hard to say Good Bye to Lino and Anna as they have been a fantastic team, Lino a great tour guide and Anna an amazing cook.