Our overnight bus from La Paz arrived on time in Uyuni – and pretty early in the morning, too. We got everything settled with our salt flats tour, which was scheduled to leave at 10:50.
Around noon, they announced our names and which 4×4 we’d be in. Our driver was Lorenzo; along with the two of us there were 4 Brits in our car: Neil, Paul, Peter and Dominic. Our group headed out quickly to our first stop: the train cemetery. The site of 30-40 rusted trains from about 100 years ago, it was a lot of fun to walk around; there were a few trains with some pretty cool graffiti, too:
The rest of the day was spent picking up our cook and playing on the salt flats. We found out that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid here for a while when they were in South America. They’re filming a new movie of it – we saw the horse truck running along the Salar. The salt flats are pretty amazing – there’s so much white up until the horizon that you lose perspective pretty quickly. We had fun:
We also stopped at Incahuasi, a rock island in the middle of the flats. It’s also known as Fish Island because – alledgedly – a Lonely Planet editor called it that because he thought it might look like a fish when seen from above. It doesn’t, but it does show you the power of the anecdote!
We traveled another hour or so to our salt hotel for the night, Samarikuna. Pretty cool place:
The next day, we drove and saw a train. Then, an Uruguayan who had brought his own car (a POS Suzuki) on our tour, broke down in the middle of the plains. We had to stop and help him.
Five hours later, when his front shock still wasn’t fixed, our guide showed him to the main road while we stopped for lunch. For the rest of the day, we drove along the plains; we did get to see three of the seven lakes that had been planned for that day. We stopped for the night at a salt hotel that was at 4300 meters – the highest altitude we slept at during our trip, and we could feel it!
Here’s what we saw that day:
The final day, we left early to catch a sunrise at some geysers, as well as stop at the hot baths (we saw a few pink flamingos there as well). We passed along the Salvador Dali desert to the Laguna Verde. After a short return to the hot baths, we continued north to return to Uyuni. There were a few stops along the way, but nothing tremendously memorable. We stayed over in a $10 hotel in Uyuni, and caught a bus to Potosi the next day.
Enjoy!
Hey Joan! Thanks for your comments! Don’t worry – we’ll keep the pictures coming. Hopefully we’ll run into each other again soon!
Steph and Matt, Welcome home. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your pictures all year. I looked forward to seeing them every day. (keep them coming). The photography is magnificent and some of the pictures took my breath away. Amazing!! I especially liked the penguins. You were very lucky to have had such wonderful experiences. Looking forward to seeing you soon, maybe at Jen and Jack’s some time. Regards, Joan Sullivan (Jen’s mom)