17 Uyuni

June 10, 2017 in Bolivia ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

08/06/17-10/06/17 Uyuni

We flew from La Paz to Uyuni to embark on a three day tour of the Salar De Uyuni, ending across the border in Chile.

Unfortunately due to heavy snow lots of roads were closed, including the border crossing, which meant that the tour company had to change our tour to just two days, ending back in Uyuni, and we would have to get a 13 hour bus from Uyuni to San Pedro De Atacama via an alternate crossing. It wasn't ideal but the weather is one thing we can't control so didn't have much choice.

We met a lovely couple from Australia/New Zealand, Max and Lisa, who are travelling with Max's mum, whilst on The Death Road. We found out that they were doing the same tour as us and so arranged to be grouped in the same 4x4.

The first day of our tour was Tom's birthday. We started by visiting the “train graveyard”, which is the remnants of a rail car factory dating back to the 19th century. We were able to climb on and look around all the old steam trains.

That afternoon was the main event, seeing the salt flats. They were impressive, and driving across them in our 4x4 neither of us had seen a landscape comparable before. We got some time to play around taking some pictures, taking advantage of the white background to take some perspective pictures.

Following this, we visited an area of volcanic rocks covered in cacti, which felt very out of place compared to the surrounding salt flats, where there was no sign of life for miles. That evening we watched a beautiful sun set over the salt flats.

We then traveled to our accommodation, a salt hotel, where the walls and furniture were made completely of bricks made of salt. Even the floor was salt gravel. It was freezing, and we were glad to have our thermals.

The following day we were driven back to Uyuni, via two lagoons where wild flamingos lived. They were very beautiful. We were surprised to see them in an area with so much snow, as always pictured them in more tropical locations.

It was interesting to see how much the landscape changed on our way back, and went through areas of coral (where the land was previously ocean) and bizarre volcanic rock formations.Read more