Now that I used up an entire chapstick, lost a layer of my lips, a layer of my skin, and my lungs are free...i can officially say that I am out of altitude! Phew.
We spent 3 days on an excursion through the salt flats of Bolivia, known the Salares de Uyuni. It was pretty incredible. The first day we loaded up our land cruiser with food, bags, and lots of water and sunscreen. We headed out of Uyuni and into the salt flat desert terrain. Our first stop was a train cemetery which was creepy but kind of cool. Old trains have been sitting there for over 80 years and it is used as a tourist attraction. You can climb into the trains but they are all old, rotting, metal so there is not too much left. After that, we headed to the Hotel De Salt which is essentially a hotel made of salt! As we drove up to this hotel, all you can see for days is salt. Salt flats, salt hotel, salt gifts...salt salt salt!
The salt flats allowed for some cool camera tricks to happen. Between the salt flats and your camera there is no depth perception so we were able to take some cool pictures! For example, Kevin is sitting on top of a beer can and he looks soo small compared to it! It reminded me of ¨Honey I shrunk the Kids¨. We took some cool pictures with a play dinosaur, ritz crackers, and shoes! I think there is even one of kevin holding me up on 2 fingers! Salt flats are an incredible type of landscape and 300 meters below the salt flats there is supposedly fresh water! Some scientists think that there is life down there but I am not sure how true that could really be. We drove across the salt flats and we stopped in the middle of nowhere to dig for crystal! There were holes in the flats and we stuck our hands in the salt water, which tasted gross, and pulled out some pink salt crystals. The pink indicated that it was mineral rich of iron. Bolivia is so rich in resources it is unbelievable, but its just too expensive for them to dig into the mountains so the country remains very poor.
In the middle of the salt flats, there is an island named Fish Island because it is shaped like a fish. It was bizarre because when the salt flats used to be a body of water, this island sat there with hundreds of cacti. One cactus had died in 2007 after 1,203 years! Another one was about 900 years old. When you stood on top of this island, it is as though you should be looking at an ocean but instead you are looking at land made of salt.
After the island we watched the sunset over the flats, and then drove to our hotel, which was made of salt. We played some games, drank some tea to stay warm, and ate some damn good food. There is no heat in hotels made of salt because everything is salt-bed frames, dresser, bench, floor, ceiling, wall, you get the point. I had about 6 layers on!
The next morning we were up and out by 7 am and headed on to the second part of our journey-lagoons, the highest desert in the world, volcanoes, and el arbol de piedra (rock that looks like a tree, naturally). We went to Laguna Canape and saw hundreds of flamingos! Then we drove up to about 4, 870 meters and we were officially in the highest desert in the world that is set between mountains and volcanoes. In the desert there were expansive natural rock sediments just sitting in the sand. The infamous one is el arbol de Piedra, which is essentially a rock but over a million years, it has somehow shaped itself into a tree. Pretty peculiar. We continued through the desert until we hit the National Park that contains Laguna Colorada. It is a HUGE lagoon that appears red! When the sun hits the lagoon, the borax islands (a natural chemical i think) and the mineral algae float to the top to give the lagoon its famous red color. We spent the night on the park grounds in a very basic house, drank some wine, and talked politics. We talked to our guide about Bolivia and how there are so many minerals and resources to take advantage of. However, he explained to us that it is not easy for them because there is no money, they have a corrupt government, and they are landlocked. Being landlocked in South America is very difficult for a country because they have to pay richer countries such as Peru and Chile to import goods. Currently, the Chilean and Bolivian governments are in talks about giving Bolivia access to the Pacific Ocean--our guide did not think it would happen any time soon unfortunately. But, on a bright note of all this, Bolivians have what they NEED, they can afford what they NEED, so they NEED very little.
On the 3rd day, we woke up at 4:30 am and headed over a 5,000 meter peak (to put this in perspective, the Mount Everest Base camp is 6000 meters) and watched the sun rise over the mountains. It was spectacular. While we were watching the sun rise, we suddenly found ourselves in the Geysers Basin. The Geysers basin is primarily mud pockets in the earth that spit up sulfuric steam. There was steam everywhere just blowing out of holes in the ground. The craziest of all were the pockets of hot, sulfuric, magma. Over 500 years ago, a volcanoe erupted there and now it is bubbling magma that lets off steam (and smells awful).
At about 6:30am we found ourselves at the end of our expedition...the hot springs! So even though it was about 30 degrees out, we stripped down to our bathing suits and enjoyed the natural warmth of the spring with a great view of flamingos not too far from us. After warming up, we drove to the Chilean border, but not without getting a glance of Laguna Verde (green lagoon) and Laguna Blanco (white lagoon). The green lagoon gets it color from the toxic arsenic that sits in the water... definitely no flamingos here!
After the 3 day expedition, I have concluded that Yes, you do need to see this amazing landscape, but after seeing it, I could not do it again. It was a really rough ride in the 4wd landcruisers, because obviously there are no roads, and it is very tiring and difficult to be so high up in altitude. Good thing I had some coca leaves to chew on because when you get to 5000 meters (about 15,000 feet) you can definitely tell that the air is not easy to breathe. But, no worries because we entered San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Of course we were only at 2400 meters, but we found ourselves in the driest desert in the world!
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