Salty!

After an 11 hour night bus from La Paz, Bolivia, over some very rough roads (often it seemed like we were just driving across desert, with no actual road, VJ insisted she would love to come back here with the Subaru and rally race that stretch!), we arrived at the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. We set up a custom tour such that it was just us, the driver/guide and our Toyota LandCruiser, and a custom itinerary that enabled us to pack in more than the usual tour.

We started at a ¨train cemetery¨filled with lots of old rusted-out steam locomotives, and stories from our guide about how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had fled all the way down to Bolivia to escape the law. Also, with all of the silver mining and lucrative business going on in the area, it was yet another great place for these two outlaws. Or so they thought. Bolivia proudly boasts that they are the country that finally captured and killed these two banditos.

We then continued on to the edge of the salt flats to see how the salt is ¨mined¨, processed, bagged and sold. We got the chance to visit a local home and bag some salt with them.

Then, it got REALLY good..... we hopped in the LandCruiser and drove out into the middle of the blinding white salt flat that extends forever....
In total, Salar de Uyuni is over 12,000 square kilometers, so once you are in the middle of it, the blinding white extends to every horizon. Apparently, Neil Armstrong said he could see it from the moon. The salt surface is then cracked into an endless and fascinating number of polygons, as the moisture below the salt cracks the surface in an attempt to escape. Also, the continuous flat white surface really plays tricks with your sense of perspective, and as a result, you are able to do some really fun photography tricks (we´ll try to upload some soon).

We grilled up lunch (llama steak) at one of the islands, a coral reef leftover from when this was all 400 metres underwater, complete with huge cacti. Then, our driver treated us to a different vantage point: he invited us onto the roof of the truck where he ¨secured¨us with a large rubber strap he called a Bolivian Seatbelt. He then drove around one of the islands, but we were mostly focused on the new view of the salt flat and enjoying the breeze.

After that, we drove to a volcano on the edge of the salt flat where we saw some flamingoes and then hiked to a cave that contains some mummies. We´ve seen a few mummies in museums now, but seeing them ¨for real¨up close and in the open (close enough and open enough to touch) was strange.

We finished off by driving out into the middle of the salt flat again to see the sunset.

An amazing day! The salt flats are a bit out of the way and tough to get to, but really worth it! It´s hard to describe the incredible sight of the endless miles of blinding white salt! We´ll see if some of our photos do it justice.