Salar de Uyuni
I took the bus from La Paz to Oruro where I was able to take a train to Uyuni which would have been a very civilized way to travel had it not been for the back to back children's movies in Spanish with no subtitles.
In Uyuni, I signed up for a tour the next day and found a nice restaurant with a raging fire to warm up next to.
The tour lasted 3 days and I was lucky to be traveling with a good bunch of people. All the tour companies use Toyota Land Cruisers, and they take quite a bruising (the guide said they only lasted about 2 years doing the tour).
The first day we drove across the Salar, a vast salt lake (about 2m thick with water below) about the size of Lake Titicaca. The salt is processed commercially by local communities who also build houses and chairs out of bricks of salt in the middle of this desolate wilderness.
We stopped at the Isla de Pescado which offered a surreal panoramic view.
After the Salar, we drove for miles across barren high desert, sometimes following established dirt roads, at other times just weaving across open terrain (often with parallel plumes of dust from other trucks off in the distance).
The earth is very rich with minerals here and the mountains and lakes had amazing colors as a result.
The wind was fierce in places (100kph) and has carved out strange formations in the rocks jutting out of the desert.
The accommodation and food was pretty basic on the trip but our cook did a remarkably good job all things considered.
Returning to Uyuni we stopped to fill up at a petrol station with no electricity where the petrol was pumped by hand.
We were rushing back to Uyuni so some of the group could catch a bus, so we barely had more than a minute to poke around the train cemetery outside of town where abandoned steam engines are slowly rusting into the desert. The sun was setting as we drove away.
In Uyuni, I signed up for a tour the next day and found a nice restaurant with a raging fire to warm up next to.
The tour lasted 3 days and I was lucky to be traveling with a good bunch of people. All the tour companies use Toyota Land Cruisers, and they take quite a bruising (the guide said they only lasted about 2 years doing the tour).
The first day we drove across the Salar, a vast salt lake (about 2m thick with water below) about the size of Lake Titicaca. The salt is processed commercially by local communities who also build houses and chairs out of bricks of salt in the middle of this desolate wilderness.
We stopped at the Isla de Pescado which offered a surreal panoramic view.
After the Salar, we drove for miles across barren high desert, sometimes following established dirt roads, at other times just weaving across open terrain (often with parallel plumes of dust from other trucks off in the distance).
The earth is very rich with minerals here and the mountains and lakes had amazing colors as a result.
The wind was fierce in places (100kph) and has carved out strange formations in the rocks jutting out of the desert.
The accommodation and food was pretty basic on the trip but our cook did a remarkably good job all things considered.
Returning to Uyuni we stopped to fill up at a petrol station with no electricity where the petrol was pumped by hand.
We were rushing back to Uyuni so some of the group could catch a bus, so we barely had more than a minute to poke around the train cemetery outside of town where abandoned steam engines are slowly rusting into the desert. The sun was setting as we drove away.
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