
Miles and Miles and Piles of Salt – Uyuni, Bolivia
Miles and Miles and Piles of Salt
Uyuni, Bolivia
Our first sighting of Uyuni was as we descended from the hills on the way from Potosi. It is a small town situated on a flat desert plain, a town literally in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around but sand. Originally a staging post between the mines and the coast, It is now the Bolivian equivalent of Alice Springs and these days exists mostly for the tourists who, like us, come here for the salt flats.
We have entrusted ourselves to a local operator for a three-day tour of the flats and the Southern Altiplano, a tour that will take us to the Chilean border. Today’s itinerary is the salt, a vast desert of a thousand square kilometres. Oh, the pristine whiteness for miles and miles!
I was expecting a uniform white plain stretching away into the distance under a blue sky and reflecting the harsh glare of the sun so that it would hurt to look. The odd thing was that up close, the salt seemed to be formed of slabs like hexagonal paving stones, not an even pattern though, more like the markings of a giraffe. These were sometimes white, sometimes red and sometimes grey, but the raised edges were white. Looking into the distance, the salt did indeed look flat and white like a winter wonderland, an effect accentuated by the tourists in warm coats, hats and scarves.
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| Piles of Salt on the Salar |
Then they go to the Salt Hotel, a now closed hotel in the middle of the flat made entirely from blocks of salt. It’s quite a groovy idea really. The tables are made of salt and so are the chairs and the beds. At first glance, it all looks a bit like stone, but up close you can see than the bricks are salt and so is the mortar.
A tour like this really is the only way to see this unusual landscape although there were a couple of brave souls on mountain bikes. The disadvantage though is that all the operators have the same itinerary and you end up arriving everywhere at the same time as seven other Toyota Landcruisers full of tourists. So much for the peaceful majesty of a place like this.
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| Isola de Pescado |
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