Brett and Emily in South America: Salt anyone? I think the Bolivians forgot the pepper.

Before Emily and I even booked our Salt Flats tour and also after we were concerned about the group. Emily when she did a similar style tour (several days in a jeep) in Australia got a really bad group. And we didn´t want that to happen to us. Fortunatley it didn´t! We had an awesome group of 5 people plus our driver. Our group was us two, plus a couple one being from Australia and the other although being born in Britain lived his whole life in Zimbabwe (his parents moved to England for 6 months so he could be born there and have a UK passport), and a Porteguese guy who had been living the last few years in Paris and London.

The begininning of the trip was a short van ride from San Pedro de Atacama to the border with Bolivia. As Chile has their border control in town we took care of that before heading an hour north to the Bolivian border. Humerously, the entire ride was paved road until we hit the sign to turn for Bolivian border control. The ride continued for another 20 minutes on a dirt road kind of heading to the middle of nowhere through the desert. When we finally hit the border there was a small building (for passport control) and 20+ Jeeps waiting for the different tour busses from San Pedro to get to the border. Wisely, the jeeps don´t cross in to Chile and pick us up in San Pedro because, unlike Bolivia, Chile has really strict border control, customs, and vehicle requirements which I´m pretty sure most the jeeps would not pass. We went through Passport Control and as Bolivia decides to charge Americans $135US to enter Bolivia I entered on my Israeli passport. Emily on the other handed entered on her US Passport and because at the border crossing we were at they don´t collect money they took her passport and stapeled it completely in a piece of paper and told her when we arrived in Uyuni she had to go to the Immigration Offices there and pay the money. We were pretty confused why they felt the need to completely staple up her passport but they did (Don´t worry when I talk about Uyuni there is a whole other story that needs to be told about Emily having to pay for the entry fee).

Bolivian Border Crossing

Welcome to Bolivia! The Ghettoness of the sign says it all

As we left the border and headed off into the Potosí Desert all 5 of us didn´t know exactly all the beauty we were going to see that day. Our first stop was for breakfast next too two small lagoons. Gregory, our driver, (through the translation of our Porteguese jeep-mate) told us the first lagoon was Laguna Blanco, or White Lagoon. In reality the lagoon wasn´t that impressive. Yes, it was really white but nothing too special. The amazingness of the stop was it was our first view of the traditional Bolivian Women´s dress. Which includes a long skirt (which poofs out), a blouse-like sweater, 2 long pony tails, and a coimically small Bowler Hat (which does very little to block out the sun and some how stays in place all the time). After our simple breakfast with the overview of Laguna Blanco we headed a few minutes walk over to Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon). As we checked out the slightly green lake, after about 5 minutes we noticed that a small part of the lagoon was changing to a more turquise color. We noticed this one spot kept getting larger. We weren´t sure if it was the way the sun was hitting the water or something else. A few minutes later we realized it was the wind, and as the wind got stronger the whole lagoon turned in to this crazy turquise color. Evidently, as Gregory told us later, everyday at about that time the wind picks up and changes the color of the entire lagoon. We continued on our trek to our next stop, the Hot Springs! On our way we made a quick stop at the, Dali Desert. It was a small patch of desert which had scattered large rocks which casted long shadows to make it look like it was right out of a Salvador Dali painting. We took a few photos and continued on to the Hot Springs. When we arrived there was already several other jeeps there. So we quickly changed into our bathing suits and hoped in to the hot spring pool. It was a great view. Unlike the hot springs that we went to in Chile which was a built pool that had hot water pumped in to it (indoors), this one was on the edge of a huge lagoon and just had built up walls with hot water running in to it (the floor was also sandy and rocky). It was absolutley picturesque. While we were there we ran in to two Israelis we had met in Bariloche (and seen again wine tasting in Mendoza) and I over heard one of them telling some Swedes that this was much better then the Hot Springs in Israel because it doesn´t smell like eggs like the one on the Jordanian border. After relaxing in the hot springs we headed indoors for some lunch. After lunch we then headed to our next stop, the geysers. When we started getting close we started seeing steam in the distance. Not exactly sure what it was when we got there we were more amazed then we possibly could have been. When most of us thought about geysers we thought about large holes shooting up water (like the ones near San Pedro de Atacama that two of our jeep mates went too). Well these weren´t that. These were huge holes shooting out steam and larger holes with large bubbling mud. It was absolutley amazing, there were dozens of holes with bubbling different shades (white, blue, red, pink, yellow, grey) of bubbling muds. We spent almost an hour just walking around and trying to get great pics of the bubbling mud. When our driver finally dragged us away back to the jeep to make it to the next spot in time all we wanted to do was continue to walk around and watch these dozens of holes. So we loaded back in to the jeep and headed to our next stop, Flamingos! When we arrived at the next lagoon, titled the Red Lagoon (not because of the Flamingos but because the lagoon is legit red) we saw several flocks of flamingos. Honestly, I think they look a little different then the flamingos you always see in zoos, not as pink. I did think to myself while we were here that it was pretty cool that basically in a month we had seen both Penguines and Flamingos (pretty much the two polar opposites when you think about birds). I got a few piucs of Emily pretending to be a flamingo (she just didn´t make the cut, I think). Our final leg of the first day was to the hostel, which was pretty basic accomendations (we were in the middle of the desert) with no showers or running water (to flush the toilets you had to pour some water in to a whole in the back of the toilet). Our driver told us that dinner would be iun about 2 hours, but he pointed us to a great overview of the Red Lagoon (oppisite from where we saw the flamingos) to watch the sunset. The five of us trekked out there to watch the sunset and by the time we returned, dinner was ready (Emily was pretty excited because it included quinoa soup). After dinner (which was interuptted twice by the generator goiung out) we stayed up and chatted for a little bit play cards (with this weird deck of cards which are evidently called Italian-styled playing cards that go from 1-9 and then three face cards but not Jack, Queen, King).

The Green Lagoon

Desert Mountains

Dali Desert

Hot Springs...Great View!

Steam from the Mud Geysers

NEXT IS A COLLECION OF BUBBLING MUD SHOTS THAT I TOOK...

Red Lagoon with dozens of Flamingos in the background

Flamingo!

Emily doing her best Flamingo impression

Sunset at the Red Lagoon

The next morning we all worke up feeling a bit better from the alitutude sickness we had the night before. We ate breakfast (which would have included frozen bread if it wasn´t for my camping stove) and headed back in to the desert. Our first stop was to a small area that had several rock formations. The famous one was called, the Stone Tree. To help protect it they had put up a fence, which unfortunatley ruins a chance of a good picture. Besides the Stone Tree there were other large stone formations that we had fun climbing and checking out the landscape. We then had a long drive through the desert passing by several lagoons until we reached another lagoon filled with flamingos. This time the flamingos were much closer to land so we were able to stalk them and get pretty close until Emily spoofed one of them and he went flying away. From the lagoon we began another long drive to a small village for lunch again seeing amazing rock formations including one which looked like an eagle. After lunch (which once again included quinoa soap) we made our way through a rocky road going through a valley filled with hundreds of llamas (every time we passed by a llama he gave us the classic llama stare) and donkeys just grazing away and field after field of quinoa growing along the mountain sides. Eventually after a few hours in this valley (and me chasing some llamas hoping to get a picture with one of them) we finally hit our second refugio. The refugio was right on the border of the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats, which is the largest Salt Flat in the world at a size of over 10,000 dquared km). From the edge of the Salt Flats it just seemed like the white went on for ever and ever. After dinner and a bottle of wine we headed off to sleep because we had an early wake up call the next morning. Although the second day was not as action packed as the first, just driving through the deserts and seeing the small villages and natural beauty of the desert was amazing (it might have me changing my views of the desert, which I have pretty much hated since having to go through basic training there).

Rock Formations

Random Views in the Desert

More Flamingos on the Second Day! These aren´t the ones Emily scared off

Eagle Rock Formationm I don´t understand how it is like that

Brett chasing llamas!

The llama on the bottom right is giving the damn llama look, it´s creepy!

Great views in the desert

MORE LLAMA CHASING!

The third and final day of the tour was spent almost all day on the Salt Flats. We woke up mad early (around 5am) and ate breakfast and were out driving on the Salt Flats a little after 6am. Driving on the Salt Flats in the dark was an experience. For the most part the salt flats is all flat but that still doesn´t make it difficult in the dark. Our driver pretty much got lost just driving so we stopped at a random spot just to watch the sun rise. Chilling on the salt flats was pretty amazing all around it just seemed like I was on a huge iced over lake. The area like the desert was pretty cold in the morning but we still got out and took tons of pictures during sunrise. The thing to do on the salt flats is wacky perspective pictures, where one person stands well behind another person or an object and by angling the camera correctly you can make funny pictures (see our pics below). After watching the sunrise we headed over to one of the 18 ´islands´ in the Salt Flats, Incahuasi Island. The island is covered in cacti and there is a nice 45 minute loop that we walked that gave us great views of not only the ´island´ but also the immediate area of the salt flat. From the island we continued to drive through the slat flat, which really seemed like just driving on a frozen lake (that happens to be 100km x 100km). Our next stop was to the old Salt Hotel, it is an old hotel (there is now 5 new ones that although similar are actually not on the salt flats but on the edges). The hotel is completely made out of salt, including the walls, tables, chairs, bed frames, etc, (everything except the matresses and windows). The building was pretty cool, it is now used as a small museum that has several salt sculptures. The hotel was evidently closed a few years back because septic system in the hotel broke and made the entire immediate area smell pretty bad (who ever thought that salt would preserve something). After the hotel we passed by a large mounds of salt that were being collected to be processed and used for table salt (evidently the salt has some natural chemicals in it so it needs to be processed pretty heavily). Our driver said that even with the salt mining, the salt flat actually grows every year because during the rainy season in January and February more salt from the surronding areas settles in salt flat. After passing by the salt mining we headed in to the town of Uyuni (the end of our trip). We took care of a few things in town (like Emily needing to get her Bolivian Visa) and then headed to the final stop, just outside town, which is an abandoned train yard, with dozens of rusted out train engines. Basically, I was in heaven! At this point we drove back in to town and our trip ended. It was a great trip and we could not have asked for much more from our driver. We heard horror stories about drivers (driving drunk, erratic driving, just plain rude, etc.) but Gregory was excellent. He explained (in Spanish) everything to us and was pretty accomadating when we wanted to wake up early to go see the sunrise.

The Following is a collection of fun photos from the Salt Flats