Salar de Uyuni (Molly)

It's hard to know what to say about our trip to Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats). The majesty of the place rivals anything I've seen in the world, including Angkor Wat and now Macchu Pichu. Photos don't do it justice, as you can't capture the scale or your place in a 360 degree landscape that stretches out to the horizon. Perhaps the best person to capture it was Salvador Dali, who was inspired by the landscape.

After a somewhat turbulent overnight bus ride, which ran over gravel roads the last 4 hours of the trip, we stumbled through the town of Uyuni, which felt straight out of a spaghetti western. I wouldn't have been surprised to see tumbleweeds blowing through the wide, dusty streets. The surrounding land is rich in minerals, and apparently they built the town with wide boulevards in the expectation that it would become a major city, only to see the population shrink when mineral prices went down.

We fell into the offices of Red Planet, eyeing up the other red-eyed travellers to see who might be in our group. On a three day trip in a small 4 wheel drive with no showers, it becomes very important who you're with.

Luckily, we instantly hit it off with our lot: Emmanuel and Matthieu from Mauritius, Julian from England, and our guides, Bismarck and Juan, as well as Ali from Kentucky, who was in another van but who quickly became part of our group. The entire trip was a laugh from day one. We think it was probably the travel charm gifted to us by the woman in La Paz.

Our first day, first stopped by a 'train graveyard', where they let us climb over 100 year old, rusting trains. I was glad of my tetanus shot.

We then went to the eponymous salt flats, to see the process of harvesting, drying, and packaging salt. And to take photos using the ridiculous perspectives you can get on the perfectly flat surface:

We then went to a cactus island in the salt flats. That's right: a cactus island. People live here.

Not enough salt yet? We stayed in a salt hotel that night. Yes, that is literally a hotel made of salt.

Our rowdy group occupied ourselves by playing the card game 'spoons'. For those who don't know it, the game involves lots of fast play, with grabbing of spoons at a key moment. One of the guys in the group, a quiet German, was castigated for not showing enough emotion when taking his spoon, to alert the rest of the players. Thereafter whenever taking a spoon, he would calmly but firmly say "EMOTION."

A number of other bloggers have said the trip would be better named 'a tour of Southwest Bolivia', and I would very much agree. We spent three days on the road, and only the first of those was in the salt flats. The second day we drove up and up, through meadows filled with llamas, tiny stone houses clinging to hills, and pink flamingoes paddling in pink lakes, peaking at 5000 metres. By this point, our group was comfortable enough with each other that we uniformly belted out My Heart Will Go On when it came up on Juan's playlist, with no sense of shame.

By the time the sun was setting, it was biting cold, and it took all our efforts to make it to our last stop: thermal pools. It was worth the stripped-down 100 metre dash.

Pools as seen the next morning. We couldn't see them at night, but they felt heavenly!

The next day, after a few scenic stops, it was a long ride home. After some surprisingly excellent NY style pizza, we said our fond farewells and hopped onto our last overnight bus to La Paz. 

Traveller tips:

Red Planet was an excellent tour company for the salt flats, very worth the money. Our guide, Bismarck, and driver, Juan, were both excellent. It was heaven to be able to visit the hot springs at night, and I think we were the only group who did that. We did the three day tour, which was great - I pitied the people who came just to the salt flats and left without seeing the rest! 

Overnight buses: We took Panasur on the way down and Trans Omar on the way back. We preferred Trans Omar, mainly because it went a slightly more circuitous route which avoided the awful 4 hours of gravel roads near Uyuni. However, I would only recommend them if you get the full bed cama seats. In Trans Omar, be aware the bathroom is pretty basic (no seat) and no food is provided, but there was a thick blanket and nice seats. Wifi existed but didn't really work well on either bus, and in both buses the temperature dropped in the middle of the night but was okay. Panasur had basic food and decent toilets, but the seats didn't go down all the way and weren't as comfortable.

Eating in Uyuni: When we were killing time before the bus in Uyuni, we went to Minuteman Revolutionary Pizza at the Tonito Hotel, which was recommended to us by Red Planet. It was fantastic, and from what we heard, by far the best food in town.