Round the world in 150 days (mas o menos..)

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The Unreal world of the Salar de Uyuni...

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Gotta start writing about the surreal landscape of the Salar, San Pedro de Atacama desert, and other lagoons we visited during the last week, before it all fade into some distant memeory.

Salar de Uyuni is a huge salt lake at southern border of Bolivia. It is the highlight of any Bolivian trip for most backpackers, and I´m no exception. When you tell Bolivians that you´re going to the Salar, their first reaction is usually "MUY FRIO...!!!" ie. very cold! Everyone I spoke to also agreed, so I bought a very warm jacket, an extra pair of gloves, and some socks in Sucre just for this trip.

From Sucre to Uyuni, I stopped at Potosi. And there I met some very friendly Israelies at my hostel who were also going to Uyuni. In the Uyuni tourist information office I bumped into an Irish guy who I met a couple of times in various places in Bolivia.. and all of us decided to do a tour together, that is we all went with Reli Tour. (The tourist information centre ranks the agencies using tourist feedbacks, and it can change on a day to day basis. Reli was one of the good ones).

Our first stop was the Train Cemetory..where old trains were abandoned. My limited spanish means that I understand less than 50% of what´s said, but that was ok.. as the trip was all about scenery. All six of us, plus our tour guide/driver, and our cook, were squashed into one average sized jeep. I also carried a huge daypack into the jeep (in case the weather turns cold!).. it is squashed up to my legs, and I could not move at all.

Luckily the Israelie guys all brought music, and took care of that for the whole journey. There was one couple, and also one guy and one girl. We all got along fairly well...

About two hours into the trip we reached the beginning of the Salar (salt lakes). Like expected, it was a huge expense of whiteness that resembled snow. In the beginning there were small piles of the salt on the lake, like little dunnes. It´s somewhat strange to be in a place that you have seen so many pictures about beforehand. The typical postcard shot is of the salt lake during the raining season, when the water on the surface of the salt creates a reflection effect.. which makes it look even more surreal. In the dry season, the effect is lost somewhat, but it was still quite amazing.

We quickly got out of the car at the first opportunity, eager to take some silly shots that we have seen from other people. Because the whiteness of the salar extends as far as the eye can see, there was no evidence of perspective or distance, and you could have one person standing at a distance while another stands close to the camera, and from the camera it would seem they are right next to each other, hence you could create strange scenarios with one person half the size of the other, etc..

Then off to see a salt musuem, and salt hotel.. where the interiors were all contructed using salt.

We stopped at the Fish Island for lunch. It is called a fish island because the shape of the island looks like a fish. And it didn´t feel like an island cause we drove there in a car. The island was amazing, with giant cactuses growing all over it.

The lunch was delicious, totally unlike what we´d expected (after hearing so many negative reports from other people and from guidebooks). And the afternoon was spent driving through more of the salar. It was huge. We took some more silly photos, and were the last to arrive at our hotel for the night.

The next day we drove through more of the salt lakes, and visited one lagoon after another.. Each one was more spectacular than the previous. It was also my first time to see flamingos, and of course I couldn´t stop taking pictures of these beautiful birds. We watched sunset at the last lagoon, where there were literally hundreds of flamingos in the distance.. and the lake was in various shades of red and purple due to the algaes..

That night was freezing, but I had been warned by many beforehand, so I wore 4 layers of socks, many layers of thermals and clothing, plus a hat and a pair of gloves to bed. That was in addition to many layers of blankets and a thick sleeping bag. I feel like I was going skiing in my sleeping bag. Half way through the night I woke up feeling too hot, so removed one layer of socks!

The third morning was our last day on the trip and we had an early start (5am) to catch the sunrise. There were about 10 tour groups staying in the same hostel, but we were the last group to leave. As we drove on and on, we could see the sky changing colour outside the car window... it was too late for a proper sunrise, but we got out of the car upon arriving at the geysers, and saw the huge swells of steam filling up the whole landscape. Further on, we stopped at a hotspring for breakfast, and a few of us (including me!) got into the thermal pool despite the subzero temperature outside :) The water was lovely and warm, but it was freezing outside. When my friend laid his swimmers to dry in the sun afterwards, he noticed the water on his pants had turned to ice and the pants were stiff like ice...

We made a trip to the final lagoon (Lagoon Verde?) and the tour concluded at the border of Chile and Bolivia. From there we waited for a connecting bus taking us to the San Pedro de Atacama desert. The first bus was full, and the next one didn´t arrive until a couple of hours later.. San Pedro was also fantastic.. but that´s another story...

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