3. Bolivia - Salar de Uyuni

covering 27 Dec – 28 Dec 2018

Salar de Uyuni - salt as far as you can see

We were setting off to see what turned out to be some of the most stunning scenery we’ve seen anywhere.  Very different, very charismatic, very wild and remarkably empty of humans.  First though was the inevitable coach journey.  A little after we got going, the driver’s mate, there’s always one, came out from the cab and turned on a film with a ridiculously noisy soundtrack.   I shouted as loud as I could from halfway down the bus and told him to turn it down.  To my surprise a chorus of similar calls followed me along with shouts of ‘nobody wants it’ and the like.  It was just like the House of Commons except that he did change his mind and turned the whole thing off.  He made his way back into the cab to a round of applause.  Very satisfying.  About three hours into the trip we stopped at some out of the way café and Heather realised that a woman and four young children were travelling in the luggage hold under the bus.  We think it was the driver’s family but after that they all travelled in the front of the bus.  What a place.  Health and safety anyone ?

We had to spend the night in a place called Potosi, a real dump made worse by the mud and sand streets after rain.  After dinner we were on our way back to the hotel and stopped to get some cash from an ATM.  It was a double, separated by a glass panel and in the other side were two men asleep on the floor without even a blanket.  Even I was moved and folded a reasonable sized banknote which I dropped on the floor between them.  As we moved away Heather said to me that there was someone else going in to shelter.  I nipped back to find him carefully picking up the note for himself, so I opened the door and grabbed it back.  He looked very nervous and I’m sure he didn’t understand the words I used but he certainly understood the gist of it.  I was bloody annoyed.

Just a short distance from Potosi lies the village where Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were killed, according to folklore.  It seems that two bandits held up a wages mule train and were identified because someone recognised the brand on one of the mules as belonging to the Silver Mine whose wages had been lifted.  In a shootout, it seems one of the bandits was badly wounded, then shot by the other who then killed himself.  They were buried in an unmarked grave in the local cemetery.  They were never identified but it was claimed they were Butch and Sundance.  DNA evidence has not matched DNA from relatives of the pair, so it remains unproven.  As always absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence so they might be there.  I remember reading some years ago that there were doubts about their deaths and the sister of Butch Cassidy claimed that her brother had visited her in (I think) the 1920s.  If it wasn’t them who were shot and buried, they’d hardly come forward and point it out to anyone. 

Colchani - a salt producing town

Our adventure, and it was an adventure was a two night, three day, four-wheel drive vehicle trip across the Uyuni Salt Flats and the northern Atacama desert into Chile.  It was so empty that we stopped in a small salt producing village for lunch on the first day, stopped in a very small hamlet early in the morning of the second day and then no village at all until we finished at lunchtime on the third day across the border in Chile.  Apart from the two remote hostels we stayed in, that was all we saw of any habitation in the three days.  There was a driver and a guide whose information was definitely incorrect on a number of facts I knew, so in my mind it tended to negate most of what he said.  He also had a habit of constantly chewing handfuls of coca leaves so half the time he seemed pretty well stoned.  Then there was us two plus Ian and Eric, two Taiwanese Californians in their late twenties.  Ian was a packaging designer for Apple and Eric an actuary which in the insurance world is considered to be someone who finds accountancy just toooo exciting.   Eric told us that taking our ages and what we were doing into account, we were outliers, which I took to be a great compliment.

The salt flats are simply amazingly outlandish.  The remains of a huge one-time lake they lie as flat as can be on a curved surface and are impressively huge.  We only saw the southern corner of them and in the distance the mountains are visible in pretty well every direction.  The blindingly white salt looks just like snow but is hard and there are vehicles darting here and there across the surface, shimmering in the heat haze when a little further away from us.   We stopped about half an hour onto the salt at a café and a big collection of national flags flying.  I noticed there wasn’t one Union Flag there.

The very best time to see the flats is when rain has fallen and there’s a surface coating of   water.  This is when the horizon becomes difficult to see and land and sky blend seamlessly. About another

water cover showing the hexagonal salt pattern

half an hour or so driving further on and yes, you guessed it, we hit the water !  It was about two inches deep and spread as far as we see.  Vehicles must last a short time here being regularly and thoroughly covered in salty water.   So we stopped and all climbed out into clear warmish water to paddle around.  In places the salt was slightly uncomfortably rough and there were the occasionally flat discs raised above the water which were very 
uncomfortable.  There were 
hexagonal salt crystals floating on the surface and much larger hexagons visible on the bottom.   It was true, the horizon was impossible to see in some directions.  We had blue sky and puffy white clouds to complete the amazing views.

two inches of water as far as you can see

the land and sky blending together

It was the size of the place that really impressed.  It’s the world’s largest salt flat coming in at just over 4,000 square miles (11,000 square kms) and sits 12,000 feet above sea level.  Once we’d finished our paddling about and Eric and Ian had packed away their drones it still took us a further two hours of driving through two inches of water at perhaps 40 to 50 kms an hour to get to the edge of the salt.  It really is one of the natural wonders of the world.

Eric, Heather and Ian doing the Sayar stunts

two hours of driving to get to the edge !

Salar at sunset

Then we were headed into the desert, but that was tomorrow – and as they say, tomorrow is another day.

That night we stayed in a hotel made of blocks of salt and the electricity had failed ! 

the hotel made of salt

*** for any photographers amongst you, none of these photos have had colours enhanced by hue or saturation changes.  Some have been cropped, some lightened or darkened a little but that's all.  The colours really are outstanding.