Activity Summary
Tuesday 24th October - Day 385 (continued)
Bus to Uyuni
Dinner at Llama Cafe
Wednesday 25th October - Day 386
Uyuni Salt Flats tour: day 1
Train cemetery
Colchani village / salt mining talk
Lunch at salt hotel
Uyuni salt flats photoshoot
Incahuasi Island / Cactus Island
Salt flats sunset
Thursday 26th October - Day 387
Uyuni Salt Flats tour: day 2
Nicola very unwell with altitude sickness
Train line volcano spot
Mirador Volcán Ollagüe
Lake Cañapa & flamingos
Lake Hedionda & flamingos
Lunch with a view
Rocas de las Vizcachas
Rock Tree
Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa
Laguna Colorada / red lagoon
Sol de Mañana
Turned down the hot springs
Friday 27th October - Day 388
Uyuni salt flats tour: day 3
Salvador Dalí Desert
Laguna Verde & Laguna Blanca
Bolivian customs & border control
Summary
Uyuni
Small desert town with not much in it bar the salt flats tour. Food options weren’t great but apparently there is an excellent tasting menu place.
Uyuni Salt Flats
A really fun tour, if not a bit long because of the savage amount of driving. The different views along the trip however are great and so varied. Because of this it made all the expensive tours from San Pedro de Atacama seem unnecessary.
Transport
Uyuni
Scraped the direct night bus approach - messes Nicola up too much
Bus from Sucre to Potosi
Taxi from new terminal to old terminal
Bus from Potosi to Uyuni
Walk to hotel
Accommodation
Uyuni - Onkel Inn
Number of nights - 1
Price per night per person - £13
Positives:
Close and convenient
Private bathroom
Large bed
Warm shower
Decent breakfast
Negatives:
Very warm during the day and super cold at night - but this is just Uyuni
A bit pricey
Recommend?
Yes
Salt flats tour - 2 nights
First night was pretty good. Private room (although the room with 4 beds was a bit unnecessary), bathroom, warm showers and had power. Not much else to be desired as part of a tour.
Second night was supposed to be less luxurious but somehow we lucked out with a private room. There were no functioning showers though but it was only for a day.
Diary
Tuesday 24th October - Day 385 (continued)
Uyuni is pretty tiny so the walk to our hotel was short but maybe not so simple. Our hotel was in the train station and it took a bit of asking around to make sure we were correct. The trains themselves run once every half a day so we never experienced any problems but it was pretty strange.
After dumping our stuff we went out to Llama Cafe for food. Could have done with doubling the portion sizes but it was safe and well reviewed.
Wednesday 25th October - Day 386
Breakfast at the hotel was surprisingly decent. Pancakes, a variety of fruit and coffee made Luke pretty happy. Naturally Nicola’s attempt at eating made her feel worse and spent the next 2 hours barely able to function.
After paying for our Uyuni tour (word of advice, never pay a deposit or advance for this just in case something goes wrong - there are so many tours that can be sorted on the morning of) Nicola went back to recover and Luke hit up the bank and get some water.
At 10am we were in the World White Travels office and then met our guide, Ivan, and the rest of our 12 person tour group for the Uyuni Salt flats. In our car was Elena, Joel, Yun & Min.
First stop of the tour was the desert train graveyard, essentially a dumping ground for old trains used in the area that were surplus to requirement.
It made for an entertaining 30 minute walk around and jumping in and on trains.
Highlight of course was the dickhead with a guitar singing throughout and getting filmed. Love a twat with a public guitar performance.
A short drive away was Colchani village where a B10 payment gave us entrance to a rather short and uninteresting salt mining talk. The salt rock was probably the highlight of the talk.
Cue tourist trap time. We had an age to walk around the salt shop as the other car suffered a puncture on the way to the village. Didn’t give us much confidence for the rest of the trip given this was technically the easy part of the driving.
After standing around for what felt like an age we were on our way to the first hotel made entirely out of the salt flats rock. An homage to the Dakar race in Bolivia was the stop off point.
We were both hungry (Nicola absolutely raging with famine) so rather than dawdle around the salt flats we made straight for the hotel. The flag island next to the hotel was pretty cool mind.
Comfortably past 2pm, we all sat down for lunch and an array of meat, rice and veg. Went down pretty well but at this point anything would have done.
The next stop was the iconic salt flats part of the experience. In the very middle of the salt flats, we pulled over and had both a group and individual photoshoot.
As cheesy as it all was, the photos are quality.
With the 5,000m mountains in the background and the hexagon shaped dried salt crystals stretching on for miles it was all super surreal. At this point Luke had an oopsy and realised his calves had gotten cooked.
The penultimate stop was equally amazing. Again somewhere in the heart of the salt flats was Incahuasi Island, a nutrient rich oasis that is home to a ton of giant furry like cacti.
The walk around gave a great high vantage point overlooking the island and the salt flats all around.
The mountains in the background also were epic.
All in all this was a surprisingly interesting place. Even had some lovely yellow coloured birds floating around Luke could gas over.
Last stop was to watch the sun drop behind an isolated mountain range.
Insert last cheesy photo moment of the day.
On the drive back the colours of the sunset, mixing with the clouds in the desert gave some phenomenal aurora borealis rainbow vibes, although this wasn’t so well captured on camera. It was a stunning drive to our accomodation for the night near Colcha K.
On arrival we weren’t greeted with the comfortable location we expected. A recent fire had ripped through part of the kitchen, killing the electricity and halting all food prep. The smell was pretty strong and people were standing around flapping outside so we both decided to sit and wait it out for a bit in the car. Westlife never does Luke wrong.
It wasn’t all that long before we were directed to our private room and about 15 minutes later the four locals playing around with a load of wires in the box managed to get the power back on. They didn’t look like they had a clue what they were doing but somehow it worked without anyone dying.
Dinner therefore wasn’t until 9pm, the soup being pretty good but the salchipapas (essentially loaded chips with an array of meat on top) was a savagely small portion and everyone in the group was disappointed. But nearing 10pm no one had the energy to complain.
For once, a lack of cold water ended up being a problem in our room and the scorched Earth shower was an interesting problem to navigate. Eventually someone came to turn the cold water on but by this point it was too late.
Thursday 26th October - Day 387
It seems that the altitude (being somewhere around 3,600m) had knocked Nicola for six. At about 3am she stopped being able to sleep, her heart racing and to top it off throwing up at around 6.30am. Luke ran around getting her hot drinks, boxed breakfast and a claimed better plant than coca leaf to help. The only downside was that it wasn't particularly tasty and therefore Nicola couldn’t drink much of it at all.
By the time we were in the bus and on our way at 7.10am Nicola was still in a bad way.
Everyone else however was in good spirits and the first stop at San Juan village offered a short talk about quinoa and then 40 minutes of pottering around so the spare tyre could be fixed. Luke got chatting to some of the other car and the time flew nice and quickly.
The drive down towards the Chilean border was pretty cool. The landscape was arid with more sand and dirt than salt this time with a large array of dead and semi active volcanoes lining the plane.
Our stop at the train tracks across the plane gave some information about the Nazca and South American tectonic plates that formed these volcanoes.
Of course there was another coordinated cheesy photo before we moved on.
It was a bit of a longer drive from this point and the landscape gave proper tongariro Mt Doom vibes. The array of mountains around were covered in the same red rust gradients and were stunning. The small bush foliage pock marked the ground.
We got an opportunity to get out and admire the largest volcano in the vicinity. Volcán Ollagüe is actually on the Chilean side of the border but its little puffs gave indication of life.
Great colours on Ollagüe.
From the mirador the drive took us off the main roads and into more dusty desert and bumpy terrain. Yun and Kim were absolute hero’s, sitting in the back the entire time and allowed Nicola to have the comfort of the front seat the entire day. Super nice of them.
From this back road we hit lake Cañapa. Jorge, our driver, made everyone close their eyes on approach and the universal wow was good fun when we had views over a blue lake dotted with a ton of flamingos.
At the lake side we decamped and got our first introduction to the sulphur filled air. Pretty smelly.
The flamingos in the lake with the mountains in the background was stunning. This was the first time Luke got to experience the colourful animals up close and naturally was super gassed.
We had a short 10 minute walk around the lake before getting into the cars again. It was a great spot for Luke to get out the binos and we got our first viewing of wil pequenas.
Second on the lake list was Laguna Hedionda and the flamingos were even closer.
The same sulphur smell lingered but the water this time was more turquoise blue. Not as beautiful in Luke’s opinion but the close ups of the flamingos were cracking.
By the lunch hut was where we got the closest viewing. The flock initially got a bit shaky when people approached but after 2 seconds realised they were fine and carried on feeding.
Being able to watch their feeding technique was so bizarre, using their beaks to filter up algae and then swallow. Super interesting and zero need for binoculars here.
Lunch was substantial and had great views over the lake.
One of the natural predators of the flamingos is the fox and we were lucky enough to drive past one who could not have given a toss about us.
From lunch it was a long ol drive to our next spot. The desert road was windy, bumpy and rocky which meant it was super slow going. So arid. Everyone but Luke took this opportunity (somehow) to have a nap.
There was a short stop at Rocas de las Vizcachas for some small animals that were a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel. They didn’t care much about people at all. The toilet here was pretty interesting, an actual designated bano spot in the rock that naturally was covered in human faeces and toilet paper. Delightful.
The next short stop on the long drive leg was Rock Tree. To quote Nicola ‘I know I sound like a dick, but it’s just a load of rocks’. Pretty much what it was, the highlight being the precariously balanced top heavy rock tree.
Finally after driving for an absolute age and Luke’s ass going negative again, we reached the entrance to the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. Here it was Bs150 each for entry and we were given an all important ticket we needed to hold on to at all costs for inspections through the NP.
It was only a short drive to the Laguna Colorada, aka the red lagoon even though the name doesn’t translate to this at all.
The colours were great. The significant white parts that looked like large salt deposits are actually borax, the red parts the famous algae that gives the flamingos their pink hue and surprisingly large areas of clear blue water that run in from the springs under the mountainsides. It does look like the flamingos had just eaten so much of the red algae that the water turned blue.
Luke had a nice scree’y walk down to the waterside to get a better look at the spring and flamingos.
Last stop of the incredibly long drive day was Sol de Mañana. We again had to stop on the way for fear the other car's engine was about to pack it in but fortunately it was all gravy(ish). The geothermally active vents were spewing a ton of gas and had the sound effects to go with it.
It was an interesting site but at 4,700m, no sun out and savagely windy, everyone lasted about 2 minutes before running back into the cars.
The last legs to the hostel got a bit spicy when our car was pulled over by a police jeep and 3 heavily armed officers got out and proceeded to interview the driver and then ask our nationalities. A bit of a heart in mouth moment getting grilled in the dark in the middle of a desert National park but so close to the border they clearly have problems with smuggling of some kind.
At about 7.30pm we were at the hostel and thankfully there were no fire problems. Ivan had told us we all would be in two 6 person dorms and to our surprise our group lucked out massively and were given private’s. Nicola more than everyone else was super relieved and could not writhe around in pain and vomit in peace, given Luke doesn’t matter.
Tea and biscuits preluded a spag bog dinner that actually filled everyone up. Nicola was wiped and at 9pm post a surprise bottle of Bolivian red wine given to the table Luke could also not be bothered to go to the Bs6 hot springs, instead getting a super early night.
Friday 27th October - Day 388
Nicola’s Uyuni salt flats tour morning routine continued much like the day before, although fared a whole lot better today. Wake up, cheeky vom and lie in bed waiting for Luke to service her with tea, takeaway breakfast and carry her bags to the car.
A single breakfast pancake each was particularly disappointing for Luke but thankfully other tables had more than enough and a minesweeping Elena provided ample sustenance for Luke and Joel.
A bit after 7am we were back on the road, taking off early in order to get to the Chilean border crossing at the south side of the NP early and to avoid queues that can build later in the day.
First stop of the day was a viewpoint in the Salvador Dalí Desert with views out over some of the mountains and large rocks deposited by historic volcanic eruptions. It was so windy we couldn’t hear what Ivan was saying and again everyone legged it back to the car after a few minutes.
One of the Mt Doom esq volcanoes behind the cars was nice. The white parts being sulphur, brown the copper and red being iron.
Last stop of the salt flats tour was Laguna Verde & Laguna Blanca. With the cold wind ripping around we stopped here for only a few minutes, Laguna Blanca the larger body at the forefront while the smaller green lagoon lurked at the back.
The land border crossing from Bolivia into Chile was more interesting than expected. First stop was Bolivian customs where a form had to be frantically filled out using the incredibly shit WIFI in the office. The form was less than clear but our guides helped with the answers and it was quick getting through the sole guy processing the forms. Fortunately we arrived at the head of the queue before a ton of people flooded in.
Next up was the Bolivia border control. It was a long cold queue, about 30 minutes waiting due to a large number of people coming into the country, to get stamped out and pay Bs15.
Once everyone was done we were loaded into a minivan and driven to the Chilean border.
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