Salar de Uyuni - Day 1

Tuesday 22nd April

Arrived in Uyuni at 0730. The trip from La Paz wasn´t too bad, I slept pretty well, and even Andrew manager some sleep! The whole point of comino to this one horse town was to go on a 2-day tour of the famous Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats of Uyuni).

We wandered around the various tour agencies trying to find a 2-day tour, but most don´t do them. We eventually found a couple of private tours and chose to go with Andes SALT Expeditions for US$200. So basically it was just us and our spanish-only speaking guide – Evid for 2 days.

We left Uyuni at 1030 and stopped just out of town at the train cemetry – basically just a whole lot of rusting locomotives that have had anything of value stripped off them, but a cool place to take photos none the less. Then it was off to Colchani, a salt processing village on the edge of the Salar. When the salt is harvested it is still damp, so they dry it out over a fire, and then grind it up, put it in bags and send it all over South America.

About 10 minutes from Colchani is the Salar itself, which is just amazing – white as far as the eye can see. Here there are people harvesting the salt. They mark out a square in the salt and then shovel a tic layer of salt into a pile in the middle where it is left for a few days for as much water as posible to drain out and then it is shovelled onto the back of a truck and taken to Colchani for processing.

The Salar used to be connected to the sea millions of years ago, and then was blocked off by tetonic plate activity. So all the water dried out, leaving all the salt behind in the soil. Each year during the rainy season (Dec – Feb) the whole Salar (2000 sq km) is covered in 20com of water, and this solubilises some of the salt and when the water dries out the salt is left behind on top of the soil.

From there we visited a Salt Hotel, where everything is made out of salt – even the tables and chairs, where we had lunch. Then we travelled to Atulcha where there is another (much nicer) Salt Hotel where we stayed. We also visite dan area call the Galaxias Caves, and Cactus Corales. Again, these areas were under water many millions of years ago, and algae formed beautiful stalagmites and stalagtites in the caves which then fossilised – the colours were pretty cool. There are also cactuses which have had coral grow on them and then fossilise. We also visited a cave where 90 Chullpa (local indigenous people) mummies where found buried and a museum displaying some of the mummies – a bit weird but very interesting.

I made a couple of new friends with a couple of the young boys at the hotel. I gave them colouring pencils and balloons, and they drew me pictures and wanted me to help them practice their maths. We also taught them how to make squealing sounds with the balloons, and how to rub the balloon on your hair to make it stick up – they thought it was pretty cool!