Uyuni Salt Flats

With 3665m above sea level, the Uyuni Salt Flats on the Bolivian altiplano are not only the highest but also the biggest in the world. The white expanse seems to go on forever, but on the edges, white mounts indicate that salt is being mined, eventually enriched with iodine and sold to the Bolivian market for very little money.


Underneath the salt crust still lies some water but another resource has recently come to light: Lithium. A metal that no modern battery-powered equipment can do without. There were doubts whether mining would destroy the uniqueness of the natural wonder but there now seems to be a consensus that mining along the outer rim should not really pose too great an interference - maybe it will even become part of the tourist circuit alongside Isla Incahuasi - an island where thousands of huge cacti grow.



Tourists also love the salt flat for another reason. They get up to incredible photo sessions because of the white background and the clear atmosphere. They are able to create great distortions and special effects in distance and size. However, not every camera lends itself to this kind of image trickery. As the depth of field of digital or film based SLRs is too narrow, small digicams are at a definitive advantage. But one word of caution: many recent digicams that come without viewfinders are virtually useless because of the strong light rendering the viewscreens unusable.

One unmissable attraction on the Uyuni Salt Flats is the "Cemeterio de los trenes" - a place on the edge of the salt flats where old, unused trains have been abandoned. We got there early in the morning when the sun illuminated them very nicely.

Then in Chile. WHAT!!!???

After visiting the salt flats in Uyuni, the largest and highest salt flats in the world, we set off to Laguna Colorada in the deep south-west of Bolivia. You haven't missed the blog about Uyuni or Laguna Colorada yet, I still need to write them. Please be patient.

I do like Bolivia, don't get me wrong, but as someone brought up in Europe, there is one essential thing missing: paved roads. Almost all the way down from La Paz to Uyuni and then on to Laguna Colorada, there were NO bloody roads. Dirt tracks, some tracks left by other drivers and we did actually need a guide to direct us to the Laguna. I had a seat at the very back of the truck and it did my back in a bit. Although Renee, our tour leader, let us use the roof-top seats for a while so we could enjoy the stunning scenery a little more, I'm a city kid at heart and it took me half a bottle of shampoo to get the dirt out of my hair.

But why am I talking about Bolivia when the title of the blog is Chile? Well, what a bleeding nightmare that was. After negotiating the Bolivian border without any problems, we hit the "tarmacked" road (cheers throughout the truck) leading through "what we thought it to be and trucks used to get away with it" a 60-kilometre stretch of so called no-man's land to Paso Jama, the Argentinian border. Well, suffice it to say, we didn't get away with it. When the Argentinians saw that our passports had a Bolivian exit stamp, they refused to let us in because, officially, we had come through Chile. So we had to get back on the truck, turn it around, drive some three hours to San Pedro de Atacama where we were searched top to bottom and finally let in. After a quick dinner, we pitched our tents at midnight at the back of some hostel and left quite early in the morning for the road we had started to call our home. Around lunchtime we finally hit the Argentinian border again and now, in possession of a valid Chilean entry and exit stamp, they let us in without any problems.

Lots of stunning images on the way - especially the clouds.