Day 97 (June 19) - Uyuni

Day 97 (June 19) - Uyuni

Yup one day in Uyuni (well we got in the night before but were leaving on the 8pm bus out of town). The town itself doesn't even deserve that much. Its really just a few dusty streets and very suspect restaurants and such. After a cold (we were assured they had hot water but...) shower and decent night's sleep, we did a day tour of the Salar de Uyuni (salt flats).

Our jeep came in the morning to take us out to the flats. We had the five of us plus two Argetinian girls. The first stop was the train graveyard just outside of town. It was just a bunch of rusted old engines and cars, but was fairly cool to look at and take a few photos.

After that we drove up to a small pueblo, Colchani, to see how raw salt is processed, visit some shops and see a few things. The pueblo really doesn't exist for ay other reason. We did see some small herds of alpacas (or llamas) on the drive over.

Then it was out into the flats. we stopped after a short ways at the "mountains of salt". That is were raw salt is scraped into mounds to dry before it is loaded into a truck and taken into Colchani.

We set off driving again towards the original salt hotel. It is a hostel built completely from salt blocks and has been used as a stopover on the multi-day flat tours. They have built a new one so this one isn't used now.

We stopped again after a bit to take some crazy photos. With the background, you can create optical illusions and have some crazy shots. Ours weren't the best but it was fun. The whole backdrop and scenery is crazy. Its pretty much white for as far as you can see with some faint mountains in the background. Some times its hard to tell where the salt and the clouds stop and start, but there weren't many clouds out that day anyway. I should know - I got way too much sun.

Eventually we made it out to Isla Incahuasi. It is an island that is covered in giant cacti that was an old hangout of the Inca. to be honest I know the Inca used it, but not 100% sure what for as our driver only spoke Spanish and sometimes it was really hard to get an idea of what he was talking about... After walking up the hill, we had lunch and a couple of beers in the sun. Unfortunately we had to set off for town as it was a few hours drive away.

We got back to town, got our things and found our bus to La Paz. It was an overnight bus (sixth one) but even with heating and a blanket it was really cold!