Uyuni salt flats tour

I am not going to share the 700+ photos that I took during this 3 day tour through the Bolivian Altiplano… All I can say is that it was amazing! We left the Bolivian border in a 4x4: Fred, Jasmine, Laurie, Camille, Elke our driver and guide, Simon, and me of course.

On our first day, we visit lagoons of different colors, caused by algae and minerals in the water. Then, we stop at Dalí desert where we can literally imagine the melting watches hanging from the rocks. Nothing is better than a bath in thermal waters before lunch, then geysers Sol de Manaña in the afternoon. Laguna Colorada is our last stop for the first day. A lagoon with red water and full of flamingos, I have rarely seen anything as beautiful. We go to bed at 8, and sleep at once after this very tiring day of seeing beauty in its purest form.

The second day is if possible even more beautiful than the first one. A Stone tree and other rock formations, a volcano, strange plants, and flamingos, my new passion. We arrive in the evening at the salt hotel, the floor is covered in rough salt, and the walls are built with salt blocks. Just look at the photos, I think they speak for themselves, although reality was even better.

Day three: the Uyuni salt flats, the world’s largest salt desert, formed over the years with lakes drying out and rain draining the mountains of their minerals. It is situated 3600 above sea level and measures 150X100km. There are some islands in the desert; we visit one of them, Isla Inca Wasi, full of giant cactuses. As the desert is all flat, there is no perspective, and as the good tourists that we are, we take some of those photos you have probably seen before. Next up are the salt mines. Every family owns a truck and transport what they collect to town where it is transformed into salt sculptures or other souvenirs. We finish the tour in Uyuni, where we visit the train cemetery, the city’s only attraction. These old trains used to transport minerals to the pacific ocean but when the mining industry collapsed around 1949, the trains were left to die here.

photos Salar