Day 67 - A salty time

Villa Candelaria to Uyuni

This is the final day of our trip from Chile to Bolivia and we had to be ready to go by 4.30am to see the sun rise over the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flat).  K felt she could easily live without seeing the sunrise but she was out voted (of course).

Photographer's shadow!

We were driven for about half an hour over the salt flats towards the Isla de Incahuasi, not an island in the traditional sense though, as it is surrounded by salt rather than water. You are immediately struck by how massive the salt flat is, at over 10000 square kilometres it's the world's largest. The sunrise was beautiful and we could easily see our long shadows grow shorter as the sun rose.

At the place where we watched the sun rise there were only a couple of other cars in the distance, but as we walked around the corner of the island to meet our driver for breakfast we found that we were just one of the many 4WDs with a horde of people just like us, all eating pretty much the same breakfast, and taking photos doing weird things with perspective on the salt.

After breakfast we took a long walk on the salt plain until we were collected by our car and continued driving across the seemingly endless salt flats. The famous Dakar car rally that used to be held in the Sudan has now been moved to here and you can see why, a great place for driving.

An island with no water

After being picked up, we were driven a little further to another spot where more photos were taken, then on to see the first ever salt hotel (now a dining room and mini museum), and finally to the small town of Colchani right on the edge of the salt flats where there was a long strip of souvenir stalls. We were given a bit of time to peruse the shops, before having lunch in one of the small restaurants.

Get your llama products here ....

After lunch we moved to our final stop, the railway cemetery in Uyuni, full of rust old trains (and backpackers posing for silly photographs). Then it was into town to drop the boys off at the bus station to continue to Potosi. We were staying Uyuni for a night, while Pan had a night bus to La Paz, so we were dropped off at our hostel by Rudolfo.

K was in need of a physio, but we weren't sure how to find one. Rudolfo had given us the address of a medical clinic to try, but had no luck there, though they directed us to another clinic on the other side of town. Incredibly when we walked in to the other clinic on the outskirts of this tiny Bolivian town we found there was a physio, and K could be seen immediately.

It turned out to be one of the best treatments K had ever had, and as a bonus the hour long appointment cost us less than $10! K booked another appointment for the next morning, and we walked back to our hotel.

Appetising, no?

Dinner for M was llama steak .....  salty and a little tough, but still quite edible. Our hostel was up a few fights of stairs which is really tough going in the altitude but it was comforting to see the young hotel staff were puffing as much as we were!