A Sea of Salt!

We had travelled great distances during the past week: all the way from Cusco to Puno before a slightly comical trip over the Peru - Bolivia border to La Paz followed finally by an incredibly scenic route by train to reach Uyuni in Southern Bolivia. We were ready for a few days of minimal decision making so a guided tour of the Salt Flats couldn't have come at a better time. Someone else could take over our itinerary for a few days - fine by us!

From the train we jogged over to the first hotel we saw and were quite pleased with our £10/night find because it even had heating - a real necessity here. It was absolutely freezing. Walking around the next morning trying to find a trustworthy, open tour agency to take us away for three days, we realised that the guide book's description wasn't far wrong: this 'cold railway town... set on the bleak southern Antiplano... has little to recommend it'. The Lonely Planet wasn't quite so kind: Uyuni is a "'climatically challenged', otherworldly and isolated community" according to their write up. It's true that walking around neither of us could believe that this town used to be the main gateway into Bolivia from the outside world - train tracks ventured into Argentina and apparently the town was once a showcase of Bolivia's 'modernity and industrial progress'. This town now looked incredibly poor. Chris and I talked about how this could be when so many tourists pass through here: the only reason Uyuni hasn't become a ghost town, the Rough Guide explains, is because of the ever growing number of tourists who rush here to begin and end their tour of Bolivia's famous Salt Flats. We agreed that the money coming in from such gringos can't be being spread very evenly amongst the towns' folk but must be being channeled to a select few richies. A cycle really needs to begin here - if this town were a little nicer with a couple more spruced up buildings, a few gringo restaurants and perhaps a museum, people would perhaps stay a full day and extra night here before or after their trip, bringing even money into the town and helping the town prosper and improve further. However, what I've just suggested requires money in the first place - money that isn't coming in because firstly, money spent on tours must go straight to the fat cats and secondly, because people seem to want to want to hurry on out of dreary Uyuni as soon as their tour is over. It´s a real shame.

We became frustrated as we continued to find tour agencies either closed or without anyone sitting at the desk. This wouldn't be the last time in Bolivia that we would walk into a shop or tour agency to find no one there to greet customers, believe me. Chris becomes very mad when this happens. Our frustrations were heightened since both our guide books stress the importance of doing your research before embarking on a tour and choosing am agency you can really trust. Knowing that the tours left at 11am each day we should´ve had plenty of time in the morning to find a good company and ask around at a few to compare: we didn't want to stay an extra day in this town and started looking round at 8.30am. Under the circumstances however it proved almost impossible and we were forced really to go with whoever was open.

Luckily our guide proved his worth: while a man of very few words (he could hardly be called a guide in all honesty) he remained sober and calm throughout our trip. One of the worries heralded by the guide books is that some of the guides/drivers are inebriated for much of the time. Gosh. Luckily, ours wasn't: I'd much rather he be silent than drunk!

We'd decided on a two day tour in the end, most people signing up for a full three days which would include trips to some scenic lakes and volcanoes too, but we agreed the shorter version to be enough for us. Plus, it was only 35 pounds including all meals over the two days, transport, a guide and one night's accommodation in a salt hotel. The main reason we'd ventured to this dreary town was to see the world's largest salt flats. They are all that remains of the prehistoric salt lake, Lake Minchin, which apparently covered most of South West Bolivia until it dried up. First stop on our tour however was the 'train graveyard' which only really managed to enthuse Chris at this early stage of the trip. As he jumped from carriage to rusty carriage - Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible style - the rest of us complained about the huge number of groups who stop here at the same time. It remains a mystery to me why the tour companies don't mix things up a little - it was the same during our tour of the Sacred Valley in Cusco. Every single tour company takes exactly the same route to exactly the same places, arriving and leaving at exactly the same time as all the others. You'd have thought that some would have the sense to reverse or muddle the itinerary in some way. Funny that.

Also in our tour were two holidaying Bolivian women who were squashed in the back of the jeep along with the cook who we'd picked up from a village nearby. There were also Cissy (Sweden) and Yen (Vietnamese born Briton) who were originally travelling alone but had met up through a mutual friend in Cusco and had since decided to travel together for a while. Coincidently, we'd also briefly met Yen back in Cusco as we'd been staying in Southern Comfort Hostel together and she and I had gone to a yoga class one evening too. It turned out that she had also just finished Teach First, having started the same year as me and working in London as a Maths teacher! What a small world! I knew I'd recognised her from somewhere. We managed to bore Chris and Cissy senseless for the rest of the trip with our endless tales from our respective 'challenging' classrooms over the past two years!

Our trip to the graveyard complete we piled back into the jeep and followed all the rest to a tiny village on the edge of the salt flats where we got out for a few minutes to look at the touristy nick-nacks and listen to a few locals explain the salt making/gathering process. Eventually, the tyres on our jeep hit the hard salt and we began a crazy journey into the white. It really was amazing to see nothing ahead of us but pure white merging into the clear blue sky. The salt flats cover a massive 12,106 square km and luckily the thick crust easily supports a car because underneath lies water. During the wet season, the flats are completely covered by a layer of water. Weñve seen photos and it gives this crazy mirror image impression. It would be a great time to visit, I think, though a lot of the driving accidents happen during this time apparently.

Isla Incahuasi

Next stop on the tour was the Isla Incahuasi, an island that is covered in cacti that have been growing for centuries. Walking round the island was cool and Chris was very excited by the Trichoreus cacti. Yet again we were breathless from merely walking the short distance to the top of the island - the salt flats are 3653m above sea level so we're still low on oxygen in these parts! It was an incredibly sunny day yet crisp and cool still: we were beginning to wonder how cool it might get at night.

All the jeeps parked up at the island and the cooks from each got to work on lunch (of course, pretty much the same menu for each tour group) while tables made from salt were set.

Chris: Here was home to more salt than even thinkable. What was once a sea now resembles a salty planet. Bolivia's other white powder is harvested but regenerative and in some parts goes down as far as 10 meters deep! Today's underground lakes make the salt layer in some parts like the ice on a frozen-over lake.

Steph: Can a chemist please explain to us why the salt has formed into large hexagon shapes? I'm sure it has to do with it's bio-chem make-up but explain please. Thanks.

We stopped for a few photos on the way from lunch before heading to our promised salt hotel. Though the heating and hot water we were promised were lacking (as was running water of any kind - the toilets didn't even have a flush and a bucket of water was used instead), salt did abound.

Chris: It's no secret that I have a small addiction to salt, Sel de Guerende being my favorite topping for steaks, vegetables and almost everything edible. I´m always in trouble with Steph for adding ´WAY too much salt, Chris´. My obsession went a step further that night when we stayed in a salt hotel. The bricks were salt, the mortar, and everything right down to the floor including tables, chairs and beds. In fact only the windows, doors and roof were of cactus wood and metal.

Chris: Cactus Carvings - the locals use the tree trunks from the cactus to make doors and even rubbish bins. I loved this and even asked the farmer who owned the salt hotel if I could buy one. The man obliged with a look of bewilderment and amusement on his face. He later explained that they craft the wood by drying it in the sun for six months before carving.

Disappinted by the lack of showering to be had, our group's thoughts turned to the more pressing matter at hand. The temperature. As soon as that sun went down, it had become severely cold. We all prepared to sleep fully clothed and use as many blankets as we could find. After our dinner of soup and spaghetti bolognese, Chris and I headed to bed and huddled up underneath no less than nine of the thick blankets you find everywhere in Bolivia and Peru with our hats and gloves on too. The blankets were so heavy on top of us we couldn't even move. To add to this discomfort, we had huge problems with static sparks that lit up everything in the pitch dark! Ever since we've had our fleeces washed (or maybe since I got a new shampoo, we're not sure) we've had huge problems with static; the blankets I think added to this and let's just say that sparks were flying but not in the way you'd imagine. We were continually awakened by static sparks and shocks in this freezing room made of salt!

Chris: Now, we had been warned. This place was cold! The soup and coca tea really defrostred our bodies before bed and a hot toddy even had us warm (inside at least) and sleepy for bed at only 8:30pm! Cissy here shows how well we wrapped up.

Day Two: the next morning we awoke fully clothed and ate a hasty breakfast before being driven up the hill to see some petrified bodies. Try as I may to research further anything out about these online, I cannot. It's weird: I've exhausted all google searches I can think of but found nothing but a few tourists' pictures. All we managed to get from our silent guide was that these petrified mummies (which is a contradiction in itself, right? Either they're petrified, or they're mummified, surely?) died around 1500 years ago. We think that the people were living in the cave when the volcano erupted (Mount Tunupa) and, in the same way as the poor souls in Pompei, were petrified. Whatever their story, these bodies are remarkably well preserved and it's easy to see finger and toe nails and hair. We hiked up to a viewpoint just below said volcano for the rest of the morning.

Chris: At the top of our volcano trek we reached the mirador which was also a site for animal sacrificies. The surrounding hills were filled with delicately stacked stone walls built by the Quechua people.

Our tour ended with a nice lunch out on the salt flats and the obligatory perspective photo-taking. We had a lot of fun with the few props we had with us!