Beyond here lies nothing

We left Uyuni mid morning in a 4x4 driven by the very cheery Mario Luis, who was part of a trio of 4x4s which made up our Salt Flats tour group. I'm sure everyone says this, but our car was clearly the best.

First stop the train graveyard. I think it's fair to say that Luke was more excited about this experience than anyone else. A spot in the middle of a desert, with a disused railway line, and a large number of steam locomotives, which have been abandoned. I'm sure Luke would be able to tell you the variety of makes, models and era, needless to say – they were some impressive looking trains.

After picking up the cook (who sparked the "are her and Mario having an affair" discussion that lasted for at least some of the 30 hours we spent in that vehicle) we set off to the Salt Flats, the highlight of our time in Bolvia.

The salt flats are indisputably magnificent, and its difficult to put into words how beautiful and awe- inspiring the large, flat expanses of salt look. So I won't try, I will instead leave it to a small selection of the numerous pictures we took (none of which clearly do it justice) to demonstrate how magical and strange they truly are.

As the name suggests the salt flats are in fact a very flat desert of salt, and Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world, with over 12000 sq km of salt, its over 10 metres deep in the middle and is estimated (though by who I don't know) to contain over 10 billion tons of salt. "How", I hear you cry, "did this salt get here?" Well it was once an expanse of sea which dried up leaving only the salt, and a few impressively lonely cactus islands.


Anyone still looking for facts, will be interested to know that under the salt there is a huge amount of lithium to be extracted, actually, give or take, probably between 50-70% of the worlds lithium.  This has the potential to make Boliva very rich, at some point.

The final truly amazing fact about the salt flats, is that being very, very flat and very white, you can't see  perspective, which results in many fun, creative and down right silly photos like these:

We spent our first night of the tour in a salt hotel, a hotel just off the flats but made entirely out of salt. Which was a novelty. What was not such a novelty was leaving our wash bag (and therefore Luke's medication) in said salt hotel, and having to orchestrate it's return to us despite the lack of telephones, mobile phone reception or roads. How it got back to us, I'm not sure, but it did.

On our second day, we travelled (for some unknown reason at 4am) further south to an array of stunningly beautiful salt lakes, all of which are different colours and are home to thousands of flamencos.

After lunch we drove further towards the Argentine and Chilean borders where we climbed to a ridiculous 5000 metres above sea level to an active volcano and some Dali-esque rock formations. All of which were imposingly striking, made more so by the unbelievable remoteness of the location, and the impressive dessert like terrain, unlike anything I've ever seen before.

We finished off by swimming in the natural thermal baths, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by grazing vacunas. Only spoilt by the arrival of loud Brit saying, “oh the waters warm, I didn't expect that!”. Mmm.

Luke has pointed out that supposed to be mostly pictures blog, is far too long, so I won't bore anyone who wasn't there with the childishness antics of the six adults trapped in the back of a 4x4 for over 30hours with only a Nolan sisters tape and a crazy non-English speaking driver constantly chewing coca leaves for company.

Needless to say, Mario Luis was, despite crazy, the best guide we could have asked for, the nameless woman who was supposed to be our guide clearly wasn't. And Mario Luis and the cook were in fact married.

I'll leave it there.

Posted by Louise.