Bolivia: Uyuni and the salt flats. And the sky came down to Earth...

After coming back from the jungle I was not wishing to spend any time at all in La Paz, so I went to the bus station there to buy a ticket to Uyuni. There had been several problems the previous days with the routes to and from Uyuni due to heavy snow and rain but fortunately some bus companies were operating again. The overnight bus took approximately 12 hours and the road was far from wonderful: in other words, it was yet another mostly unpaved, bumpy and cold road. That didn´t prevent me from falling asleep at 9pm approximately despite the terrible loud movie they played on the bus with Silvester Stallone dubbed to South American Spanish (thank the lord for my iPod!).

Uyuni was, as expected, damn cold. So cold that the snow and rain from the previous days had flooded the roads South from there and all the way to the Chilean border. I was confirmed last minute (nothing surprising in Bolivia), that our 3 day tour would not leave in the end, and we were only left with the option to take a 1 day tour, visiting only the salt flats and leaving out the different lakes (Laguna Verde, Laguna Colorada, etc.). This that in principle was dissapointed, didn´t come as a bad thing in the end, as it would give me more time to continue my route towards Sucre and then Santa Cruz, avoiding this way missing my flight to Buenos Aires from there on the 15th July. Chances would have been fairly high considering how other tourist had got stuck in the area in the previous days. Obviously, this meant also that I would spare myself some cold (with freezing temperatures of -15c at night in the area at night) and even a bit of money. At the end of the day, I came to see the salt flats. And that´s what I saw...

The tour started with a visit to the train cemetery close to Uyuni, where they keep the "corpses" of the original trains used for the transport of minerals from Potosi during the 1900-1950´s. It was something definitely different. So it was the amount of garbage that can be found in the surroundings of this not-so-nice town of Uyuni, where not much can be done apart from eating pizza at tourist places, freeze your ass, suffer electricity shortages and miss for a good hot shower.

Afterwards, we visited some pre-inca ruins where we could see some really ancient mummies in what was the beginning of the salt flats. Really interesting, but we couldn´t wait to see the biggest salt lake in the world.

The fact that the salt flats had gotten flooded only made the views better. The water covered partially the salt flats making them almost like a real lake, and reflecting the sky in a rather surreal way. The 4x4 didn´t have any issue when cruising this amazing landscape and it seemed like we were flying in a reflection of the sky rather than driving. The pictures don´t make any justice to the views I could contemplate. It was like being in a different planet and one could hardly get tired of driving through the infinity of this white dessert where many people have died in the past when getting lost and running out of fuel (apparently, there is a huge amount of lithium in the ground that prevents any compass from functioning properly hence making the drivers lose their direction).

We came back in the evening with the feeling of having experienced something unique. South America has the power to easily inspire such things. Every day is a new experience. I promise to bring back all these memories to Europe and lots of stories to tell.