The amazing Salt Flats of Bolivia!!

13th - 15th August 2012

We had booked our place on the Salar de Uyuni or the Salt Flats tour to leave San Pedro de Atacama, Chile on Monday 13th August and arriving in Uyuni, Bolivia on Wednesday 15th. This is the largest salt flat in the world at 11,000 square km. It was formed by prehistoric lakes and has a crust of a few metres deep of salt. It is exceptionally flat and white!

We were collected by our tour company Cordillera Traveller, on Monday morning at 7.30am. Then we went to their office to sign in, exchange our last few US dollars to Bolivian currency and buy 6litres of water each! They wouldn't take euro so we had to use up our dollars and we got totally screwed on the exchange rate but had to take the hit as we needed cash to pay into the national parks and for toilets along the way! The 6 litres of water were necessary as we were going to be at such high altitude that we needed to drink at least 2 litres each per day.

It was in this office that a beautiful friendship was born when we met sisters Kate and Alice from New Zealand! We were going to be spending a lot of time together over the coming weeks but we didn't know it at the time! There was another person on our trip also - Damien from Belgium. Usually there are 6 people on the tour so we were delighted with 5 as it meant more space in the jeep which was important as this is where we would be spending most of the next 3 days!

The 5 of us (and our driver) bonded instantly as within 10 minutes of being on the road we were all dancing and singing away to the BeeGees Staying Alive!!

After meeting our group we got a bus out of San Pedro and did the whole immigration thing to leave Chile. Then we drove for an hour before hitting the Bolivian border. It was the only border crossing we have been through where both immigration offices were not within two minutes of each other and we were in No Man's Land for an hour. After a bumpy ride we finally reached the Bolivia immigration office and here it is!!!

Bolivian immigration office - literally the middle of nowhere!

We couldn't believe it either. No wonder things can be smuggled across the border! Next it was time to have breakfast at the border. The bus driver grabbed a table out of somewhere and pulled out a picnic basket to lay this spread on for us!

We met some nice guys on their way back from doing the same trip who gave us a bottle of wine they had left over so that was a really nice start! At the border we transferred from the bus into the jeep and we were off!

Me, Ronan, Alice & Kate

The real adventure was starting now! The first day of the tour was mostly about visiting various lagoons and the geysers. We started at Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde before visiting the hot springs. I wasn't sure if I was gonna swim as it was so cold outside (probably 3/4 degrees air temperature) but when we got there it was so inviting we all decided to go for it. The water temperature was 40 degrees and it was divine. It was funny taking photos of us in bikinis while people were in full ski wear behind us!

The whole gang!

Note the ski jackets in the background and the bubbling water we are in!

Ronan acting the mick as usual!

After swimming it was time to visit the geysers. We had to go up an active volcano up to the dizzying heights of 5,500m ( 5.5km above sea level) so our guide gave us coca leaves to chew to counteract any sickness. They were absolutely disgusting and nearly made me sick never mind the altitude sickness.

Before planning this trip I was never really aware of the dangers of altitude sickness or Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) which I believe is the technical term. But altitude sickness can have a range of symptoms such as shortness of breath, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches to more serious things leading to death. It is the reason people die while climbing Mount Everest. So while it can be very serious, symptoms can be alleviated by chewing coca leaves, taking anti-AMS tablets or simply going to a lower altitude when you start to feel ill.
By the way although coca leaves are what cocaine is derived from it has no drug properties in this form and does not send you high! It is also completely legal!

So back to the geysers, again there is no health and safety here and we were able to wander about where we pleased feeling the ground bubbling underneath us. Apart from very slight headaches we were all feeling remarkably okay considering. After this we descended to go to our home for the night to have lunch (lunch was amazing mashed potatoes and sausages yum yum). Thank god as it was 3pm and we were all starved but the snacks had come in handy. You need to eat little and often at high altitude so we were eating something every two hours to avoid feeling ill! The lodgings were very basic with no shower facilities, no heating (fun that night when temperatures dropped below freezing) and the only electricity was lights so no charging for an electrical devices. After lunch we went back out in the jeep to visit Laguna Colorada which was excellent and we saw loads of flamingos.

Flamingos

Then we were back in our lodgings for the night. It was up to us to amuse ourselves so from 5pm we had a very bad karaoke session where we brought out Ronan's xoom (Motorola version of the iPad) and sang every Number 1 from 1995 to 2005 - thanks to Cian who gave us all this music last summer!! So that passed most of the evening along with the bottle of red wine we got from the boys earlier in the day, and we were all so wrecked that we retired to bed at the ungodly hour of 9pm!  It was lucky that we were all getting on so well as it was dorm-style accommodation only so the 5 of us were sharing a room! It was so cold I wore a tshirt, thermal top, thermal outdoor jumper, leggings, thermal pants and two pairs of socks along with the layers of blankets provided. It was literally the coldest I have ever had to sleep at in my life! Brrrr....

Next day was Tuesday and we were up at 7am for breakfast before leaving in the jeep at 8am. We had slept at 4,500m which was super high (consider the highest we trekked in Nepal was 3,200m and we slept lower than that) and myself and Ronan were definitely feeling the effects. He was worse than me with a terrible headache, sinuses and nausea. Of course neither of us had brought AMS tablets but thankfully Kate, who is a nurse, sorted us out with half a tablet each! It worked a dream and we were both feeling fine within 15mins.

This day was more about covering the distance and we drove through some really rough terrain. We saw more lagoons, more flamingos than we could imagine, the famous UNESCO protected rock tree (I had never heard if it before either!), volcanos and loads of desert!

At the rock tree Ronan, Damien and our driver Luiz decided it would be a great idea to rock climb about 3 stories high (with no equipment) to wave a Bolivian flag we found on the road a few miles back - needless to say I was shitting it seeing Ronan climb up and jump from one rock to another!!  The tablets had obviously worked wonders considering he could hardly stand upright a couple hours previous!!

Ronan, Damien and Luiz are the tiny dots up the top with the Bolivian flag

Getting back down - Ronan is in the blue jacket

Lunch was an interesting affair prepared by our driver in the back of the jeep and eaten by us standing in the windy, sandy desert, with mice waiting on the sidelines for our scraps! Our lodgings for the night were finally reached around 5pm and this was a hotel made from salt. Everything from the walls to the floors to the table and chairs were made of salt! This was our luxury night as we had our own room (shared bathroom though), could shower and had facilities to charge electronic devices until the generator switched off at 10pm. We were promised it would be warmer but it definitely wasn't, if anything it was colder! There was another group staying here so we felt we couldn't inflict our singing on them so had to be civilised and pass the evening chatting. We were all in bed for 10pm as the electricity went off and the fire was almost dead. It was another freezing cold night so I was just clinging to the fact that we would be in a warm bed tomorrow night!

Wednesday was the day we had all being waiting for, what the whole tour had been leading up to! We finally reached the salt flats! First stop was Cactus Island where we climbed on what can only be described as a huge mound of rocks in the middle of nowhere but boasted amazing views of the salt flats and we saw more cacti than anyone would ever want to see!

The next stop was the actual Salt Flats!! The middle of nowhere. You can see the blue sky meet the white plains of the salt flats with literally nothing else obstructing the view. It's as if we could see the curve of the Earth. As expected we took some time here to do the cheesy, typical photos but it was amazing. I was looking around in awe and couldn't believe we were actually here! It was amazing and definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far!

Me!

Ronan!

Ronan holding me (ignore water bottle)

Kate holding me and Alice

The rest of the day was basically lunch in another salt hotel and just taking in the view from the awe-inspiring salt flats before arriving to the Bolivian town of Uyuni at 2.30pm.

We were glad to have made it out safely especially as the driver told us horror stories of fatal crashes on the route in the past few weeks - not surprising really when we saw the driving styles of other tours so our good research definitely paid off!