Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia – Is This Really Planet Earth?: Part 2

January 20-22, 2018

Though my arrival in Uyuni was rather cloudy, which probably altered my view of it a bit, the next day was a bright shining sunny day, with beautiful puffs of clouds in the air. I wasn’t feeling awesome, but I was stoked to get on the road. I knew that there were TONS of people who do this tour every day, so I was hopeful that maybe we would get a few minutes head-start to beat some of the crowds. Thus, I arrived with plenty of time to spare to the agency.

There, I met our guide / driver, Miguel. He was a native of Uyuni, and at 25, was already married with two kids. He was very smiley, and seemed to really enjoy what he did. He told me he was the youngest of all the drivers for this company, but had already been driving for a few years, and this company treated him well. That was an immediate good sign.

Afterwards, our group started to arrive. We were going to be seven altogether, myself, a Swiss girl about my age, a Korean guy who was only 19, and three Chinese – a married couple and their friend. I was really the only one who spoke enough Spanish to translate, so I ended up doing this, which was actually pretty fun for me. Turns out that the two Chinese guys have lived in South America working for a Chinese telecoms company for five years, around Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and now Bolivia. Yet, still, their Spanish was still pretty limited. The woman of the couple had just arrived to begin living their with her husband. The three of them were probably in their mid-30s. Overall, I was just impressed that they had been living in South America for so long, as I always had the impression that this was quite unusual to leave China for an extended period, especially as a married man. Also, the Korean guy was only 19! I was super impressed here too, because you don’t often see a lot of solo travelers from Asia, I think largely due to the language barrier, but also I think it’s just still a pretty new phenomenon to travel solo. He was studying astronomy of some kind at a university in Chile, so he’d be transferring back to San Pedro in the middle of the third day, as would the Swiss girl, Severine.

We departed around 10am for our first stop on the tour – an abandoned train graveyard just outside of town. This was a great start to all of the bizarre sights to follow. It’s so, so dry in this part of the world, that the trains haven’t disintegrated, even though some of them are more than a hundred years old. They date back from when Uyuni was a major train hub for the shipping of minerals from as far as the Pacific Ocean. Along with our group, we met a couple of the other crews from our agency, and I got to be friendly with a Mexican guy about my age who was working remotely in software engineering, and a younger French guy who was studying at a university in Brazil. This was actually pretty fun to see, as we got to climb in / on / around these train cars and take some pretty cool photos. But, after about 15 minutes, I think we were all ready to leave.

The next stop was completely unremarkable, and just a planned “spending stop”, where you could buy any of a million trinkets related to sand or salt, some smoothies, and some action figures (mostly dinosaurs) that you could buy to take cool “perspective photos” with later in the day. Thankfully, Miguel was super prepared and told us not to buy any of that stuff because he had everything already.

We then drove some more to a part of the salt flats that had geothermal activity, causing a sulfurous liquid to bubble up from the ground. It was another few-minute stop that we were all pretty ready to leave soon after we arrived. That said, this was our first taste of the salt flat, and with the thin layer of water on top, it was a pretty spectacular sight, but really only a fraction of what we’d see soon after, since we were still alongside another 20 groups and it felt pretty crowded.

Salar de Uyuni

The next stop was for lunch, at the famed Salt Hotel, which is probably a two-hour drive from Uyuni, but at the beginning of the salar, so you can get the feel for its expanse. It’s also the site of the famous Dakar Race, which they’ve done in South America for the last ten years, even though it originated in Senegal.  We had some time to walk around and take photos as Miguel was setting up lunch for our group. Within a couple of minutes walking around outside, I was definitely burned, and I had been stupid (excited?) enough to leave the car without bringing my sunscreen. Add that to the list of reasons why I didn’t feel so well. Thankfully I had my floppy hat at least.

This place though, is absolutely incredible. Even though we were still surrounded by a lot of people, you start to get a sense for the vastness of the salt flat. Just walking away from the hotel / parking lot area, you feel like you walk a mile but everything still feels close. You look back, see the dozens of cars, and just keep walking to get a clean shot of something. Then when you walk back, you realize just how flat this place is. It feels like walking on a treadmill, or swimming upstream, where you are working, but don’t feel like you’re actually moving anywhere.

We went back for lunch, which was a pretty cool experience. Everything was made of salt – the chairs, tables, light fixtures, everything. Pretty neat. The vegetarian food was decent and basic, some rice and veggies and salad. Nothing to write home about, but hearty and tasty enough.

Next we drove some time to the middle-of-nowhere part of the salar to take our photos. This was what most people were super excited about. Making sure they got their perfect Instagram shots. Granted, it was pretty amazing, and seeing some of the photos now, months later, I’m still in awe, but I wasn’t really obsessed about all the different poses / gimmicks. I did get the obligatory dinosaur rodeo one, and then we did a couple of group shots – what looks like a scorpion, the cool “dino scare” video, and a mirror-effect video. Miguel was really a pro at this, and super helpful – laying belly-down on the floor mats of the car on the salar to take the best photos for us. He was a real gem.

We then drove a bit more to a part of the salar that still had an inch or so of water on it. I never really understood how this is possible, considering how little it rains, and how dry it is, but this is the magic of nature I suppose. After looking back at these photos, I can definitely recommend that you wear bright colors, preferably yellow or orange to contrast against the bright blue sky. The Chinese girl totally nailed it. It was pretty funny that the next time I tried to wear my sandals a few weeks later, even though I had washed them off, they were completely stiff from all the salt, and actually gave me a small blister!

On the way off of the salar, towards our hotel for the night, we spent probably three hours driving straight, at about 15 mph. When I said above how I could understand how drunk driving might be an issue, this is what I was talking about. The landscape barely changes, you don’t even have to touch the steering wheel if the tires are well-aligned. It was completely bizarre, and completely beautiful and incredible. Since I was in the front seat, for space issues of course, I was also tasked with running the playlist, which, with people from five different countries and about 15 years of age difference, wasn’t as easy as you’d think. Not that anyone complained, but I couldn’t really tell ever who was listening versus sleeping or wearing headphones. Either way, my main concern was to keep Miguel happy, and he liked a lot of hip hop, EDM and Red Hot Chili Peppers, so we got along just fine.

By the time we reached dry land, the sun was already beginning to set, and the reflections became absolutely spectacular. They also had to deal with a flat tire on one of the other vehicles. This was a good reminder of how desolate this place really was. Every car carried two spare tires, a jerrycan of petrol (learned that the origin of this is from WWII when Germans, aka “jerrys” had the device first), and another one of water. Additionally, every night, they would wash down the cars thoroughly, getting all of the salt and dirt out from the wheel wells and engine area. I was pretty impressed, and it attested to how long these cruisers had lasted. Plus, we were always traveling in our caravan of four vehicles, so you were never too far from help. Still, it was pretty scary to think about getting stuck out there, which apparently does happen to some people who try to go it alone, outside of a tour, and die without enough supplies. It’s really easy to get lost out there, where everything looks the exact same, and you don’t have a sense for how far you’re really going.

We passed through a lot of quinoa fields on the way to our accommodation, which made me realize how ridiculous we are to pronounce quinoa the way we do. As with any other standard Spanish pronunciation, you would say it “kee-no-ah”, not like we have made it sound like something super fancy “keen-wah”. Good ol’ cultural appropriation at its finest.

Our hotel for the night was also a “salt hotel”, but not as fancy as the one in the beginning of the day. It was rather dark, but super quiet, and the food was decent enough. You could purchase wine, but honestly, I wasn’t feeling strong enough to handle that, plus alcohol at elevation is already a bit tricky. At this point, Severine and I got the others to open up a bit, and it turned out their English was pretty good, and we had some nice laughs and moments as we explored each others’ cultures. I even got to chat with one of the Chinese guys, Leo, about shooting stars at night, and he gave me a few tips that really helped. But, it was an early night for everyone, as we had a 6am start the next morning.

Lagos Altiplanicos – Part Two

We got on the road pretty early, and spent some time getting to the first stop, one of the high-altitude lakes where there were more flamingos! I was pretty excited to see them again, and was armed with some more of the info that I had learned a few days prior. This one was a bit of a smaller area, so it felt a bit more intimate. However, the difference between Bolivia and Chile stood out, where there weren’t really any barriers and any warnings of staying away from the flamingos were not well-heeded.

Then we got back in and drove for a pretty long time through complete desert landscape. This was another crazy moment. No roads here. No signs. Just you and another three Land Cruisers on a route they knew by heart, rolling through the desert at a decent clip. It felt like the landscape from the Kalimari Desert track in Mario Kart. Just the fact that Miguel, and the other drivers, knew where they were going was amazing. You could just imagine in their heads “when you see the red mountain with the two notches, turn left at a 45 degree angle”. Just crazy. We stopped for a picnic lunch out of the back of the cruisers, which had been prepared by the hotel the night before, so we had noodles, salad, etc., instead of just cheese sandwiches, which I had feared. We even had an encounter with a visacha, which is a rodent that looks quite like a rabbit (but not related) that is common in the area, which decided to hang out right next to our picnic area.

After lunch, it was back in the cruiser for another lake-with-flamingos stop, this one even shallower, and then on to a random spot in the desert, called the Árbol de Piedra, where there were odd rock formations created by the wind, one of which looks like a tree. Another cool photo opp, but not something to write home about, beyond just how bizarre it was to be in this landscape outside, with the intense wind, and absolutely no living thing around you for miles upon miles.

The final stop for the day was the Laguna Colorada, a massive lake full of sediments and algae that make the color red like blood almost! It’s another super shallow lake, with an average depth of just 1 foot, and a max of 4 feet. I couldn’t believe it, but even here there were more flamingos, feasting on whatever little critters could live in such inhospitable environments. The colors here were just fantastic, as at the edges of the lake were some green shrubbery, mixed with the red and slight blue reflection of the water, against the bright blue sky, white salt ground, and purple-ish mountains. A feast for the eyes.

The second night we spent at a more “regular” hotel, with a lot of other groups this time. I was beginning to feel pretty bad, and didn’t even touch the celebratory bottle of wine that we were provided at dinner. I just stuck to tea, soup, and some of the pasta that was for dinner, which normally I would inhale, but didn’t have much of an appetite. We were staying at near 5,000m tonight, so Miguel came around while we were waiting for dinner and offered us altitude-sickness pills if we needed. With my cold, and sunburn, altitude, and probably dehydration, I wasn’t particularly sure what was wrong in my body, but I took the pill gladly, and it helped my headache to subside and get to sleep.

Miguel had given us the choice to wake up super early, getting on the road at 4am, so that we could see the geysers we were scheduled for first and then get to the hot springs for sunrise and have breakfast there. Or, we could get up an hour later, have breakfast at the hotel, and then go to the geyser and the hot springs in the afternoon. We were an ambitious group, so we opted for the early start.

When we left, we could still see the Milky Way galaxy above us, and it was absolutely spectacular. With the thin air, and basically zero light pollution, the stars were stunningly beautiful. The geyser we saw wasn’t as massive as the one I had seen at Tatia last week, but this was at the highest altitude we’d be at, nearly 5,200m. You could really feel it in every step. Since it was still dark outside, Miguel shined the headlights on the sulfur vent and we all watched in awe.

According to plan, Miguel had nailed it again – we were the only people at the hot springs for the first 30 minutes or so, and got a completely uninterrupted show as the sun came up over the horizon, making for a completely rainbow palette of color against the reflection of the hot springs pools. Plus, to relax in this while it was freezing outside, completely alone, was such a high. There was also a hotel here, so our breakfast was extra special, with cereal and yogurt, and even some pancakes! We were all pretty happy after all the good that had happened today, and it was not even 8am yet!

We packed up from here and got to see a couple more beautiful lakes before dropping off the Korean guy and Severine at the border to cross into Chile and head to San Pedro. After that, it was just me, the Chinese cohort, and Miguel for the seven-hour drive back to Uyuni. This is why I was saying that it might have been easier to do the trip in reverse, starting at the border to Bolivia and ending at the Salar near Uyuni. Next time. The upshot was that at this point I didn’t feel the need to control the music, and I listened to probably ten hours worth of podcasts on the way back (I listen at a 2x speed, and I totally encourage you to try at least 1.5x, you’d be surprised how much dead air there is and how slow people talk on podcasts).

We arrived back in Uyuni in the early afternoon, and I spent some time at the office with wifi sorting out my onward journey. I went to the ticket office for one of the bus companies and got myself an overnight bus ticket to Sucre, a former colonial capital, and the current judicial capital of the country (separate from La Paz, oddly). I had some hours to kill, so I went for a tasty veggie-rice-cheese plate at a restaurant I had passed a few days before, and just enjoyed their wifi until it was time to leave.

I had heard and read a lot of bad things about Bolivian night buses. That people have had things stolen off their person while sleeping. That the buses have been stopped by bandits on the road and robbed. That the police had boarded and also robbed them. Anyway, I was definitely a bit nervous, but figured that getting the front seat would at least give me some extra legroom. Bolivians are quite small, so the average seat was barely something I could fit in. I ended up sitting next to an elderly indigenous woman, but even then I was suspicious. This is part of the balance of traveling alone and overnight. You want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time, not be naive to the possible dangers. Even in the US, I wouldn’t leave my phone out in the open on a table at a restaurant, but when you’re away from home, you just feel a bit more paranoid. So, I locked my front backpack with my TSA lock – as best one can, you can just take a knife to the bag after all, and tried to get some sleep. Strangely, this bus was really hot, and I had trouble falling asleep, even in just a t-shirt. I ended up listening to nearly the entire mini-series of Origins, about the beginnings and cast of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I highly recommend for any Curb fans out there.

I arrived at about 5am, and thankfully, had arranged to get in very early to the hostel I was staying at. I took a taxi from the bus station to the hostel, and rang the doorbell on the completely deserted street this early in the morning. It only took a minute, but a British employee who was doing work exchange there, opened the door and welcomed me in. I apologized for my late / early arrival, but he even told me that I could access the bed I’d be in since it was empty. I was SO grateful for this, since I had expected to just hang out on a couch in a common area somewhere. I quietly entered the dorm room and immediately crashed.

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