Southwest Bolivia is an area of preposterously desolate natural beauty. We took a three-day jeep tour from Chile into Bolivia through the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa to the crown jewel of otherworldly landscapes: the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni.
Six of us piled into a 4x4 led by local guide/driver Ricardo, with all of our gear bundled up in a tarp on top along with enough fuel and water for three days. We'd drive for hours across the rugged landscape, to the tune of loud Spanish pop and Bolivian folk music, stopping to take in the sites: icy lakes tinged every color of the rainbow by mineral deposits, rocks sculpted by the wind, mud geysers, hot springs, volcanoes, and salt flats.
We saw a surprising number of animals despite the extreme altitude (>4,000 meters), icy temperatures, aridity, arsenic and sulfer-laced water, and sparse vegetation. Three species of flamingos, vicuñas and llamas, rheas (large flightless birds), and other birds.
As we got closer to Salar de Uyuni, we started passing small towns, and everything revolved around salt. Harvesting salt, taking tourists to see salt, selling salt to tourists, and even using blocks of salt as a building material- we stayed in a refugio made of salt (except for the bathrooms), with floors of loose salt and tables and chairs made of salt!
Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt lake: 10,000 square kilometers covered by a blindingly white crust of almost perfectly flat salt. The crust is meters thick and the best driving surface we've encountered. For a few months each (southern hemisphere) summer, seasonal rains cover the lake in a thin layer of water, which resurfaces the salt.
More facts! The lake is the remnant of a dried-up prehistoric sea, and is the outletless drainage basin for this area of the Altiplano. The lake is so large, flat and reflective that it's used to calibrate the instruments on satellites. The lake holds the majority of the world's known lithium reserves, which the Bolivian government is in the process of small-scale sustainable extraction.
We drove to the middle of the lake to the cactus-covered "island" Incahausi and climbed to the top for panoramic views of the salt flats ringed by mountains. Salar de Uyuni is hard to beat.
We've moved on quickly from Uyuni to Potosí and now to the lower altitude of Sucre, more posts incoming on Potosí.
-Peter
Priscilla's handstand is beautiful
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