Surreal Salt Flats & Chile

_{La Paz • Sucre • Potosi • Uyuni Salt Flat • Chile – San Pedro de Atacama • Salta and Argentina – Buenos Aires • Brazil – Rio de Janeiro •}

Bolivia is known for its astonishing sights such as the Uyuni Salt Flats (Salt pan) and Lake Titicaca, quaint historic towns like Sucre and Potosí, and its impressive ethnic and linguistic diversity.

Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat located in southwest Bolivia. There are other salt flats that you should check out. It was an incredible experience! There is so much to see that it’s hard to share it all in one post, so I hope I have covered everything below.

Salt flats contain approximately 10 billion tonnes of salt. The land here is absolutely flat and featureless expects for the peaks of a few ancient volcanoes which form islands when the flats flood. It has been described as ‘haunting’, and is covered with more than 4,000 square miles of blindingly salt stretch to the horizon, different from the traditional sand you see in deserts.

When the beds are dry, people mine the salt to sell and use as a building material. Even taking 25,000 tonnes of salt each year, there is still enough to last 400,000 years!

Mirror – l highly recommend to check by the calendar, the best time to visit is during the wet season. The water becomes the most reflective surface on Earth, mirroring the sky perfectly to create an unreal experience. I would love to go there again since there are so many different angles and picturesque landscapes that it is hard to get bored.

Book the right tour – I have read that there have been many bad experiences when it comes to booking cheap tours online, which can be down to a lack of research, cheap packages, and no insurance. Gain better knowledge of these countries, talk to people and visit travel agencies so you can negotiate the price. This helped me to find out that we had a very safe driver booked, which was vital as we did spend a lot of time on the road. It makes your trip easier and the journey more pleasant.

Day 1  – We overnighted in Uyuni, the drive taking approximately four to five hours from Potosi. It is a small town in the middle of nowhere. There is an amazing pizzeria in the little town. I loved that the small town was paved with hard salt, although it was a long walk to the shops and restaurants. Hotels did offer taxis.

Day 2 –  It takes roughly four hours to get to Salar de Uyuni.  You can see the start of the journey, and how the salt flats pattern starts off rough before becoming harder.

Antique train cemetery – a stunning part of the world –  I’ve never seen anything like a train graveyard before, much less in the middle of a dry desert. This visit does not cost. It takes less than half an hour before we move on. You can climb up and pretend you are Harrison Ford or Shahrukh Khan, although maybe don’t jump on top of the trains!

The engineers were invited by British-sponsored Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway Companies. These trains were broken, rusted, ruined, and abandoned in 1892. My thought was to rest in peace! There are other train graveyards in other countries too.

Salt flats – Finally we carried on to the salt flats where we spent a couple of hours taking perspective pictures and admiring the sunset. Some drivers kindly stepped in and got involved with this part of the trip, suggesting ideas and playing the photographer. It’s so bright that you can struggle with a smartphone camera, so I was left wishing I had brought a professional camera. The sun seemed to go down very fast and with a tight schedule, we couldn’t spend as much time here as I would have liked!

Eco-lodge and a green hotel – A rural village surrounded by towering cacti and part of a small desert oasis. We spent the first night in an eco-lodge hotel entirely built from salt (no steaming hot showers and with eco-toilets), and with sweeping landscapes around.

I wished to stay a bit longer and to keep waking up to that amazing view. The rooms themselves are unique, full of little luxuries and stone details. The night can get chilly, but the hotel provided lots of blankets. The restaurant was a simple seating area made out of salt, with salt stools and yes you’ve guessed it, a carpet of salt! There is only electricity and heating for a couple of hours per night to stay eco-friendly.

Day 3 – Cactus Island, Lagoons, Flamingos, Mountains, Dali desert, and Geyser! We woke up before dawn, and it was so cold that I almost wished I had a hat and gloves. The drivers did an amazing job with the unmarked roads.

Isla Incahusai / Cactus Island –  You can buy tickets to hike between the cacti up and over the top of the hill, to see the scale of the salt flats. The climb is a bit rocky, so wear good footwear, and if you suffer from altitude sickness like I did, you should be OK. It took us half an hour to get to the top, where the air is thinner. Watch out for what you grab on the way up – there are lots of cacti around!

Google told me this was “Fish Island” but unfortunately this is a dried-out sea bed. Each of the cacti taking 1,200 years to grow up to 12m (40ft) tall. Some cacti are hundreds of years old. I sat next to a very soft llama, my first encounter up close!

San Pedro de Atacama is a small town in Northeastern Chile

Beautifully located in the driest desert in the world, San Pedro de Atacama is a small town in northern Chile made up of narrow streets lined with adobe clay buildings. I liked this description: “full of barren moonscapes, fiery red canyons, vast salt flats, unique rock formations, turquoise thermal lakes, and rising geysers”.

Laguna Verde – unlike the name would suggest in Spanish (‘Green Lake’), is not really green. It is a very toxic lake that no animals go near. It is very windy and cold in this area, so dress appropriately. NASA used this lake as part of their experiment for missions to Mars, as this is the only lake in the world with the highest content of lead, sulphur, arsenic, and calcium carbonates.

Laguna Colorada –There are lots of beautiful lagoons and this is one of the gems. I spent most of my time in Bolivia with my mouth wide open. A remarkable, unforgettable view thanks to the sun.

Life on the salt flats – When the rains come, the lake floods, and the salts dissolve. Flamingos flock to nest there, feeding on saltwater algae that grow in the water. A group of Flamingos is called Flamboyance!

Atacama – a desert in North Eastern Chile

Chile is home to the world’s largest dry desert: the Atacama desert. This desert plateau is nestled between the coastal mountains and the Andes mountains. There are about 3,000 volcanoes in Chile and about 36 of them are active volcanoes. Chile is often shaken by earthquakes.

Two nights in Chile

Chile is a long, narrow country that extends from the Andes Mountains to the Pacific Ocean in southwest South America. I love the small laid-back tourist town with its unique character, and El Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) (which you can catch a glimpse of). Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) is also not that far.

We were tired and skipped these as we only stayed there for two days. There was not much time to sample all the things to do in San Pedro De Atacama. You can walk up the sand dunes to enjoy the best views of the surrounding Andes. It feels like you are on the moon’s surface or Mars! It was recommended to relax at the Puritama Hot Springs. 

We stayed at Hostel Puritama in the middle of the center of San Pedro de Atacama. It is a small town, just at the end of the pedestrian street within a three min walk everywhere! The room was great, there was a really nice courtyard where you could hang out or take in the sun.

Chilean dogs – When I first came here I was surprised by the number of stray dogs, some of them circled us as strangers, it felt like it is a dog’s world! After I talked to the shopkeeper (via translation on a mobile phone), she explained they were abandoned by their owners and advised me not to stroke them as they were hungry and would come back for more once they knew your scent. They generally don’t bother anyone, and cats and dogs often wander in and out of restaurants, very casually.

One pack of around seven or eight feral dogs was hanging around and playing. I could see some of them were very hungry, baking in the sunshine. Lucky to have the locals who look after them in passing. Some dogs seemed to remember people well when they returned a few months later, which was amazing.

Tips:

1 – The most important thing is to pack lots of layers as it can vary between boiling hot and utterly freezing in just a few hours. 

2 – Wear sturdy walking boots.

3 – Make sure you bring a head torch with you as street lighting isn’t the best in San Pedro!

All the pictures were shot on my Samsung edge mobile.