The Long and Winding Road (To Uyuni)

So we made our way from La Paz (see previous post), to Uyuni, home of the largest salt flat in the world. Our method of travel, as is typical in South America, was via bus. And because we are high rollers, we upgraded to the comfortable bus, chartered by Todo Tourismo. The buses here really are amazing. Full reclinability, with a leg rest that folds up for use as well. They play music videos to pass the time while serving up meals that are on par with any elementary school cafeteria in California. And once the meal is complete, it´s movie time! So far, we´ve been lucky to view such movies as: ¨What a Girl Wants¨, ¨Torque¨, and ¨Evan Almighty.¨ Haven´t heard of them? There´s probably a reason for that.

On this particular trip, we were naive enough to believe that in a country in which only 4% of the roads are paved, we would have a smooth enough trip to sleep through, and therefore we took the overnight bus. After 1 hour of smooth, paved roads we encountered 7 hours of speed bump ridden gravel. I would have had a much easier time sleeping if I used a metallic vibrating foot massager (like the ones they have at the mid-state fair) for a pillow. But amazingly we made it to Uyuni in time for our tour of the incredible Salt Flats: Salar de Uyuni.


(Salt Mounds, piled up to dry as part of the mining process)

Salt flats, like the one we just witnessed, are appropriately named. However, like most things in this world, the name doesn't quite do it justice. You can´t possibly imagine just how flat, or how salty this world is. The vastness of the salt is such that your eyes begin to play tricks on you. The ¨islands¨as they are called (land masses that rise from the sea of salt) appear to be floating in the distance. I´m not quite sure what causes this phenomenon, perhaps it´s the same effect of blurriness that you see as you look at the heat coming off of the asphalt road? And as far as the salt, it´s the size and flavor of kosher salt. That´s right, I tried it, and it was delicious.

(The Illusion - a Mirage?)

Much to our surprise, the salt flats were only a small portion of our tour. In fact, by 4 o´clock on the first day, we said goodbye to the salt flats and hello to our first nights accomodation: a salt hotel (made out of blocks of salt, not to be confused with the ice hotel in Sweden). The floor of this hotel was garnished with the very salt found in the salt flats. We enjoyed dinner and drinks, and the company of our tour group.

Flamencos (Flamingos) dominated the rest of the tour, as we found ourselves driving great distances to see colorful lagoons populated by everyone´s favorite pink bird. I´ll let the pictures do the talking on these ones...


Our second night (began at 2pm), and was much like a standard Thursday night in college: numerous beer runs, card games intended to demean the participants, and a pasta dinner. Of course, we didn´t consider the ramifications or a night like this prior to a 4 o´clock wake up call...but it was too cold to complain about anything else. Luckily we found our way through the geysers and were in a giant hot tub by 6:30am...which served to warm us up a bit in time for breakfast.


(Lauren came up with this idea)


(The Hot Tub)

We made a few more stops, and by 11am we were on a bus destined for Chile. We arrived at the border by noon, did the imagracion dance, and we were enjoying San Pedro de Ottocoma in no time. Because we hadn´t had enough driving at this point, we decided the best thing to do was to jump on a 24 hour bus to Santiago. What´s the point of traveling if you´re not moving?