Welcome to Bolivia - the Uyuni Salt Flats

From Northern Argentina, I headed north across the border into Bolivia. I´d heard all sorts of dodgy things about the country (be really careful at the border crossing, the food is terrible, don´t agree to go anywhere with the police because it could be a kidnapping attempt), but my first few days were really good. I arrived in Tupiza in the morning, and was almost immediately able to get myself onto a four day tour of the Uyuni salt flats that was about to depart. The first three days of the tour covered extremely small and remote Bolivian villages, some ruins, and the lakes, and the last day was of the salt flats themselves. The trip included some of the most amazing sights I´ve seen, plus quite a lot of very plain desert...

Me, Laguna Colorado.

Llama, Laguna Colorado. Llamas are one of the few animals that can survive in the area, and are heavily relied on by the locals for their wool and meat.


Laguna Verde (I´m not sure which of us is pictured).

Nelly (Holland) at one of the other Lagos.

Flamingoes, at another of the lakes.

Flamingoes.

Nelly again... most of the region looks like this.

As a really unexpected bonus, we stopped at an outcrop of weird volcanic rock formations, and I managed to get in a spot of barefoot bouldering. Heaps of opportunities -- I really wished I´d had shoes and more time... climbers, bear that in mind if you ever get to make this trip...

More rocks.

The region features quite a few volcanoes, and also along the way was a field of thermal activity. The geysers, pools, and steaming cauldrons are really noisy - it´s quite a weird place to be. It reminded me of Rotorua a little, except smaller, and there´s no fence to stop you from jumping into the boiling mud if you chose...


Sunrise on the salt flats. The Uyuni Salt flats were formed by a sea that dried up thousands of years ago (and now raised by tectonic activity to over 4000m of elevation). There´s a featureless plain of dried salt stretching as far as the horizon, and then some. It´s a really unique place to see.

The elevation of places like Uyuni and La Paz (the capital) is comparable to those encountered by high altitude mountaineers - the whole of Uyuni is higher than Mount Cook, as is La Paz. This affects people in unpredictable ways - I suffered nothing more than a couple of bad morning headaches, possibly because travelling through Northern Argentina had given me a chance to slowly acclimitise to higher elevations. One of the travellers on our trip, though, spent a couple of nights running to the bathroom to throw up, which is also a common reaction.


Salt flats at dawn.

Isla del Pescado. The cactii here are among the oldest plants in the world - up to 1200 years old and 12m tall. You can also see coral, from when the island was underneath the sea. Weirdly, there is also animal life on the island - you can see strange possum-like creatures called Vischacha flitting around the island.


Isla del Pescado.