Day One – Salt, salt, and more salt as far
as the eye can see

Waiting for the tour of the Salt Flats to begin, I stood outside the tour agency and a young Englishman introduced himself and asked if I was on the tour. This is how
I met Tom, who was finishing his Central to South American 5 month adventure and was returned to London in a week to start his internship as a corporate lawyer. It’s hard not to hold that choice of career against someone, but I soon found out he was as disgusted as we all were for working for an Evil Lawyer Corporation however he was only using it as a jumping point to going into journalism.

Tom also had the most curious case of some who loses thing I’ve ever encountered in my life. He told me about how he just somehow loses everything, which you kind of just laugh off at first, until you see it first hand when a person can just magically lose their alarm clock, bottle of Coke, camera and eventually his hat. Quite amazing and baffling really. And just a little worrying.

Also on the tour were four girls. Three of them were Irish – Roxie who had a boyfriend waiting back in New Zealand, Marie and the gorgeous redhead Michelle. With them was Laura, as Aussie from Melbourne that had been living in Canada. They all had been travelling with each other for some time and this was their last trip together as a group.

The first stop on the tour was just on the outskirts of Uyuni, a place called the Train Cemetery. No guesses as to why it’s called that, it’s a small area that has the rusting corpses of old trains. You can just tell from looking around this would be a pretty cool place to sit around and drink at night, and there’s even a wire bust with a cigarette hanging out her mouth looking vigettely over the grounds to make sure everyone is behaving accordingly.

Moving on we entered into the Salt Flats. I really don’t think the photos do this stunningly bizarre landscape justice, you absolutely have to witness it yourself to truly appreciate it. There is salt and more salt as far as the horizon. Flat, hard and salt. It’s blinding white and at this altitude the sky is perfectly clear blue. A hundred or so million years ago most of Bolivia was a giant lake, and when it eventually dried up this is the legacy it left.

Out here we stopped at the Salt Hotel (one of many salt hotels actually) and just about everyone was trying to do a force perspective photo against the endless sheer white background. I had no idea this was a “thing”, but Tom explained to me that every photo he’d seen, particularly from his English friends, was people doing these stupid photos where it looked like they were eating giant apples, or jumping out of Pringle cans, or whatever. We waited around a good hour as the girls tried photographing themselves with the various props they had brought
with them. Finally the driver decided we’d stayed long enough and we were soon
back on our way.

One of the biggest complains about the Salt Flat tours is the food. I had read on the Lonely Planet forums a few threads regarding the hit and miss nature of these tours and am happy to report our driver, Gustav, was an excellent chef. The first day for lunch we had a fine selection of chicken and salad, and the ubiquitous bottle of Coke. The hotel we stayed at that night has steak, and while the dinner was pretty good we were denied anything to drink. These places have no running water, so were even limited to one thermos of hot water for coffee or tea. They even charged Michelle 5Bs for a roll of toilet paper, which really push the boundaries into the realm of ridiculous.

 Day
Two – Desert, Lakes and Flamingos

The salt flats soon merged into desert as we continued the tour south. As the white salt crystals vanished they were replaced with sand and we found ourselves at the feet of volcanoes. I find something quite beautiful about volcanic rock, the strange warped and curved remnants of super heated lava creates a surreal landscape that is something to admire and be in awe of.

After wandering off and looking into the distance of the still active volcano, smoke bellowing from its peak, I was the last to return to the 4×4. Tom had said back in the Salt Flats he has this irresistible urge to just continue walking into the great endless white, and I had the same feeling here. I could have spent a good hour or two just walking around the formations and prodding the strange green cactus like fungi that had grown on the rock.

We were all pretty determined to see flamingos. The salt lakes were well known for their flamingo populations and when we arrived at a lake there we two flamingos chilling out in the water. We all got out of the jeep and took photos, not realising that 20 minutes away was a bigger lake with dozens of flamingos.

The salt lakes have three species of flamingos calling the area home; the Chilean, Andean and James. The large lake sat partially dried up with stunning mountains
picturesquely in the background. We walked around the lake and marvelled at these birds and made our way to where the 4×4 sat patiently where Gustav had made a lunch of chicken milanese. It was getting colder as we travelled further south, and Gustav has wisely parked the jeep in front of the table, acting as a wind break from the chilling breeze.

As we continued on we passed the Coloured Mountains, a range mountains so called as they as though someone had poured multi-coloured sand over them. Once again, I don’t think the photo does the sight justice. Our final stop was the Red Lagoon, called because the algae in the lagoon gives the water a distinctive
maroon colour. It looks completely out of place in nature, almost to the point you look at it and see it more as an abomination of nature rather than a wonder. When you expect and appreciate beautiful blue lakes or lagoons, red really jars with your expectations and what you consider beautiful to behold.

Across from the lake we stayed a lodge. The temperature at this point was getting crazy cold and the group improvised to keep themselves warm. Michelle and Marie slept in the same bed, Roxie and Laura stole blankets from other rooms and Tom had hired a sleeping bag back in Uyuni. Myself, on the otherhand, being the only one from a sunny warm climate, had no problem with the cold. The blankets provided were heavy and warm. Bunch of babies!

We had arrived mid afternoon at the lodge and there wasn’t a lot to do. Next door was a football pitch and Tom and myself figured it would be a good idea to play some football to kill time and warm up. Sadly they had no ball to play with, so we all amused ourselves with word games instead. Finally the hours melted away as we continued to freeze and dinner was served. There were two other groups in the lodge and we were all served the same spaghetti with a tasteless tomato and onion sauce, accompanied with cheese that tasted disturbingly like industrial plastic. The one saving grace of the meal was the bottle of Conception Valley red wine, which we polished off quickly and graciously accepted another half a bottle from one of the other groups.

With the wine emptied we crashed out in our dorm room and readied ourselves for the 5am wake up call the next  morning.

Day Three – Fuck is it cold, snow and the
Bolivian-Chilean border

5am in the morning is a horrible awful time of the morning. It shouldn’t even exist as a time. Roxie announced it was 5am, but none of us were willing to get up until there was breakfast on the table and Gustav told us to get up. Around 5:30am Gustav knocked on the door, time to get up amigos!

We sat eating a breakfast of pancakes and yogurt, clutching hot cups of coffee and tea. We were the only group up at this time but we soon got ourselves into
motion and piled into the 4×4. The jeep was warm, it had heating after all, but as soon as we got out to view the scenery and take photos the horrifying cold made itself known. It was -16 degrees outside and thankfully there was no wind to drive that temperature home.

We stopped for half an hour at the hot springs, where incredibly people were bathing in. I can understand tourists wanting to sample and experience everything a tour has to offer, but getting into water, no matter how warm, when it’s -16 degrees outside is insanity. No of us were remotely willing to get into the water, and walking no more than a few metres past the spring the water turned to ice with wisps of steam rising up to the emerging early morning sun.

Back into the warmth of jeep we left the spring and arrived at the Green Lagoon. On arrival to the Green Lagoon it’s decidedly not green. In fact it’s blue. As we
were explained by Gustav, there’s a weird phenomenon where a certain wind blows through at a certain time in the morning that carries minerals that turns the lagoon green for a while. It’s unfortunate we didn’t get to see this in action as it would have brilliant to see just one more of the many strange and wonderful things nature has concocted in this region.

As I admired the lagoon and the amazing mountain towering over it, I also took a moment to take in one other thing I’d never seen before – snow. Michelle was a surprised at this revelation as was the rest of the group. Never seen snow before? Nope, no snow in Sydney or the Central Coast. I know my Uncle and Aunty lived in the Blue Mountains in NSW and we visited them on several occasions when I was a kid, but I don’t recall every seeing snow when we were there. I always promised myself I’d build a snowman when I finally reached a snow field, but sadly the snow layer was thin and kinda pathetic, so no snow man was possible. Alas next time!

The next stop, and final stop for me, was the Bolivian-Chilean border. It’s easily the most amazing border crossing I’ve ever crossed. A desolate wasteland of white snow and low mountains on the Bolivian side, and across the border you can see the snow vanish back into the Atacama desert which once belonged to Bolivia before the Pacific War.

Here it was I parted ways with my tour group friends, wished I’d kissed Michelle goodbye, and waited in the snow for my bus ride into Chile. Soon I was joined by Ferdanan from Brasil, an Aussie couple, a British couple and an American in a small mini van entering into Chile, and onward to San Pedro de Atacama.