Uyuni Salt Flats and ensuing adventures

Because I felt like I had done enough work on my BA I decided to get out of La Paz and go see the Salar de Uyuni on a three day trek through the wilderness of southwestern Bolivia. Some years ago when I started talking about studying Bolivia a friend of mine forcibly made me look at pictures from the salt flats and ever since I knew I needed to go. So I packed up my things and boarded a 10 hour-ish overnight bus from La Paz to Uyuni.

After getting very little sleep on the bumpy bus ride I showed up in Uyuni and got on a tour leaving that day. Basically you get put in a Toyota 4Runner with 5 other tourists and a driver who drives you for the following three days. So the first order of business was going to the Salt Flats or Salar de Uyuni (above). In this part there's a small layer of watering covering the ground, which allows it to reflect the sky. 

For a little perspective (or lack thereof) there I am in a drier part of the Salar. The sky was amazingly large throughout the entire trip, which felt wonderful after being cooped up in a city for so many months. The people in my car were great and we had a great time chatting throughout the whole adventure.

Here you can get a better sense of just how reflective it was, as Fabian goes to get out of the car. 

I took this picture from atop this isolated mountain in the middle of the Salar just to get an idea of how expansive it all was. The "road" you can see is actually just a track in the sand created by cars driving there. 

We spent the night in a salt hotel, which was a structure built completely out of blocks of salt. The floor is also just loose salt. While a novel concept for a building, it was not the most enjoyable place to stay. The table and stools are also notably blocks of salt. The tour company organized all of our meals over the days and that night we had this delicious chicken that had ham stuffed inside of it. A wonderful way to end a very long day that had begun on a bus careening down a bumpy dirt road in the middle of the night. 

The next day our first stop was this super fun set of rock formations that sat in between great views of some dormant volcanoes. I had a great time climbing around with the two british girls in my group who it turned out had met in a climbing club during college. 

Then we stopped at a lagoon and saw flamingos!

What was really crazy is that the green mountains that followed the salt flats gave way to this sandy desert. We stopped at a series of rock formation where I climbed up to get a good view of this radically new biome. That night we stopped at another small hostel (this time not made out of salt). This place was way deep out in the middle of nowhere so that night I went out and the clear night sky was full of more stars than I had ever seen. It was absolutely wonderful and I just spent a good deal of time staring up and smiling before heading into bed because we were waking up at 5 a.m. the next morning. 

The first stop of the day were these awesome geysers that you could just walk right up to (no fences like national parks in the US). It was loud, sulfurous, and beautiful.

Then we drove to a hot springs where everyone hopped in for a dip to get clean since the hostel the night before lacked a shower. It felt great to soak in the nice warm water. Just next to the hot spring there was a herd of llamas wandering out into the lagoon. 

Our last stop of the trip was this city of rocks, which made for great climbing. After messing around there for a while we began the long drive back to the frontier town of Uyuni. From Uyuni I boarded yet another 10 hour long night bus ride. Not particularly enjoyable transit but it got me back to La Paz where I need to be to catch my flight.