Salar de Uyuni, Day 1 (Dec 16th)

I arose at 7:30 the next morning, grabbed my Ipad, and went to sit it the small plaza just in front of the hostel to wait for James. It turned out that he had booked a room there for us for the night as well, thinking that we might not be able to get a tour that day. His bus didn't arrive until nearly 9am, so I sat, catching up on my blog and reading, and at some point, I reentered the hostel, grabbed a tray full of breakfast, and ate it in the square. When James finally arrived, I stifled the impulse to tackle him into a hug immediately, seeing as how he had just gotten off a very long bus ride.

We stored his things in the hostel, discussed our tour options, and settled on the same one Guy had chosen. We then made our final preparations and had breakfast, while he told me about his adventures in the jungle, which I sorely regretted having missed, and his less enjoyable struggles with a lingering bout of food poisoning. At last, we returned to the tour operator, dropped off all but our daypacks, met up with Guy, and began our journey.

Two jeeps carried our group, one holding our guide Juan, a driver, the cook, and five other people, and the second holding our driver Freddy, James, Guy, myself, and four others. Our first stop, 20 minutes outside of Uyuni, was the train graveyard, where stood the hulking remains of the now-defunct railroad through Uyuni.


We climbed and crawled around for half an hour so, with Juan informing us of the history of the place.


After another 45 minute's drive, we arrived at the start of the salt flats, where the local salt harvesters has formed cones to be picked up later, leaving drained water in ponds around them, which glistened in the strange, reflective way particular to the terrain.


We drove further out, into the middle of the plains to have lunch and take photos making use of the capabilities for optical illusions provided by the ivory-colored landscape.


Guy's hat proved a particularly useful prop.





And fortunately, I had stretched and done some yoga the previous night. ;)


After an hour or so, we headed off further into the salt flats, stopping in front of the mountains that surround them. Sadly, the wind prevented us from seeing the famous reflections of the mountains on the sand, but the stark beauty of the place still took my breath away.


And as though to compensate for having missed said reflections, we were treated to a ride through the rain-flooded portions farther south, which looked like pearl-colored oceans on which we miraculously coasted.





Afterward, we arrived at our accommodation for the night: a bare-bones hostel made entirely of salt, where James and I were lucky enough to procure one of only two double rooms, thanks to the kindness of Katarzyna and Ian, a couple on our tour. We then sat down to what was undoubtedly the most disgusting meal of my trip so far: under-cooked hot dogs and onions over french fries. It suffices to say, I stuck to bread and soup and thanked my lucky stars for the stash of Snickers bars James and I had brought.


Unfortunately, my night's sleep didn't prove much better, as James's stomach ache returned, and I had to wake several time in order to cough out some of the dust that had entered my lungs from traveling around rocky terrain with the windows down. Between my hacking and James's snoring, I figured the others were lucky we were isolated in our own room.

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Location:Uyuni, Bolivia