.....Hannis Blog.....: The Saltflat of Uyuni and National Park

Finally we were ready for the famous tour through the Salar de Uyuni and the National Park in the Southern Park of Bolivia. We started our tour with an american-indian couple and two girls from Great Britain. Funnily the american-indian guy worked in Germany for a year so Bernd could talk with him in German sometimes. Moreover I was made to the second tourguide as I was the only one who knew Spanish. But I didn´t had to translate too much, we had to worm most of the informations out of him. Besides that he was a good driver and showed us a lot of things.

First stop of every tour (also the ones for just a day or two) was at the train cemetery, a nice place with sixty years old trains (with Einsteins formulas on them) where you could climb around. Even more fascinating how many tours and tourists go started from Uyuni.

Then we already went on to the saltflat where the Bolivians get salt by drying out the outer, shallow parts. We stopped at a salt hotel as well, but this one was just a museum. An acutal hotel out of salt blocks and in the flat is horrible, just imagine what happens to the toilet with no connection to flowing water...

Franz, our driver also stopped at some of the wholes in the flat which could be dangerous while driving through the flat. As the water is freezingly cold the saltchristals are square formed and beautiful inside.

Then almost everyone met at the Isla de los Pescados in the middle of the flat to have lunch. While our driver/cook prepared our food we climbed the coral-moutains, visited the 900 year old cactus and made the obligatory pictures in the neverending white landscape of the flat. The salt was so hard to lie on! Even if he would tell us, he is the cook, the girls from the accomodation/agency prepare the food in the morning, but anyway it was really good for a tour. We had some lama, "flamingo" (I suppose fried chicken) and spaghetti bolognese.

In the evening we had a hostel right outside the saltflat. While it was starting to get very cold we decided on the no-showering-pact for the three days :P So we started early next morning to visit the lagoons of the area, including the "smelling" lagoon where we had lunch and the first encounter with the ecological toilet with signs for the liquid and solid parts ;) Moreover we saw the seven-coloured moutains and the active volcano where we could climb on some old lava landscape. While travelling we were always looking out of the window fascinated by the ever changing landscapes from sand dessert to snowy moutains from bushy areas to lavalike...

The most beautiful lagoon was the last one, the coloured lagoon. Here we at least encountered some flamingoes (they understandably went for warmer regions). After walking up the viewpoint the view was breathtaking, the lagoon really had different colors from blue to green to red (from the soil) to white (ice or salt or both).

And in the evening the girl from the agency was right, the temperature went down under zero - we were glad having rented some comfy sleeping bags. Our tourmembers suffered more than us, not expecting these temperatures and the basic dorms. The wine we got from our driver/cook was almost too cold to drink.

For the next day we had to wake up around five to visit the geysirs - what a view in the sunrise and what a smell of sulfur :D At that point we scratched at the altitude of 5000 meters. Having breakfast at the thermals we skipped the bathing (to cold if you go out) but enjoyed hot chocolate in the dining room.

Even if the green lagoon was not really green we enjoyed the view before acompaning the english girls to the chilean border. After that we started our long trip back to Uyuni. For the evening we indulged the warm shower and the best pizza since then.