Traversing Southwest Bolivia: Salar de Uyuni to the Chilean Border (and Back)

Date of trip: 30 October – 2 November 2009

The southwest part of Bolivia is one of the most remote corners of the country, almost exclusively popularized through tours of the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats). Without these tours, I doubt that the majority of tourists passing through Bolivia would ever make it down there. We took the opportunity to visit one of Bolivia’s top attractions over the long weekend of Todos Santos (All Saints). You need three days and two nights to do the standard tour of the Southwest and that’s exactly what we had, if we made two overnight bus journeys there and back.

We left on Friday evening on what was to be a 12-hour journey to Uyuni on a cama (sleeper) bus with bathroom and heating on board. They were right about the bathroom. However, the heating consisted of a woolen blanket awaiting each passenger on his/her seat. Gotta love people’s exaggerations here sometimes. All in all, it was not bad however. The blanket came in very handy, as it got pretty cold during the second half of the trip. Highlights from the bus ride included: 1) The driver forgetting to shut the bus door. There was no way to communicate with him and make him aware of this fact since he was sitting in a separate compartment with a separate outside entrance and no access from the passenger portion of the bus. So, I had to call the ticket office in La Paz, to get them to call the driver, to tell him to shut the door. This happened twice. (The second time, Milos tried to signal to him by waving his arm out the door while the bus was moving slowly. The bus driver was not looking in his rearview mirrors. Oh well.)

2) The bumpy ride during the last six hours of the trip. An hour or so outside the town of Oruro (approximately six hours into the trip), the nice paved road is replaced by uneven gravel. (Actually sometimes it feels like the bus is simply driving over no road in the desert.) In addition to the constant vibrations and shaking, we also had to put up with the dust/sand that was constantly coming in through the bus windows that kept sliding open because of the vibrations. A thin layer of dust settled over everything, including my face. But it was all part of the adventure.

3) Being “propelled” out of your seat if you shifted positions. The reclining seats were great (and there was plenty of leg room). Only problem was that they didn’t really “click” into their reclined position. Thus, every time you shifted a little bit in your seat, the seat back would “unrecline” and seat your upright pretty fast. This was repeated numerous times during the course of the night.

Twelve hours later, we arrived in Uyuni. First impressions: dust everywhere and most buildings don’t have a second floor. We wandered around to find the agency with which we had booked our tour. That wasn’t hard. The center is approximately three by three blocks. Once we dropped off our stuff and changed, we went to have breakfast. At 10:30 our tour would start.

We were curious to find out who our travel companions would be – six tourists + a driver usually travel together in one Toyota Land Cruiser on these tours. We weren’t disappointed. We were joined by two American girls, one Australian girl, and one Croatian guy (yes, can you believe it! How did three people from the Balkans end up in one jeep in Southwest Bolivia?!?!) All great company. The driver, Cornelio, was super nice (and as we would later learn, also a very good driver and maintenance keeper of our vehicle). Uyuni thrives on these Salar + Southwest Bolivia (or Sud Lipez, as the area is known) tours. There are probably more than 50 companies in Uyuni that offer these tours – again, some better than others. Things to watch out for when booking are the condition of their vehicles, the type of food they plan to serve, whether they plan to fit 6 or 7 (very uncomfortable) tourists in your jeep, and how responsible the drivers are. (We had heard stories of drivers getting drunk or driving like maniacs, sometimes resulting in fatal accidents.) Also, it is good to ask whether the jeep has a connection for an iPod or other MP3 player. The drives can get pretty long and monotonous at times (especially on the last day driving back to Uyuni from the Chilean border).

We were off! Our first stop was the train cemetery just outside Uyuni. Steam locomotives and their compositions had been left to decay here after rising coal prices made their use prohibitive, and Bolivia switched to diesel locomotives. Cornelio told us that all the trains were German or British makes, and had been used until the 1930s. The cemetery had a sad feel to it. With a little bit of signage and more history retold somehow, it could turn into a pretty nice museum. After all, it is a unique place. Currently though, it did give more the impression of piles of metal simply rusting away, while plastic bags littered the surrounding area.

Next up, we stopped at an artisans’ market where salt figurines of animals and alpaca wool products were sold. Nothing too interesting or worth buying though. Plus, we were eager to get to the actual Salar.

You enter the Salar and you feel like you are in an alternate universe. An expanse of white as far as the eye can see. (Well, I guess this whiteness gets broken every once in a while by the jeeps that traverse it.) The Salar was formed through the transformation of several prehistoric lakes. Underneath the surface salt crust is a pool of brine consisting of salt, lithium chloride and magnesium chloride in water. The depth of this brine can vary from several centimeters at the edges of the Salar to several meters in the center. It is 10,500 sq kms in area (4,000 sq miles) – the biggest salt flat in the world. Supposedly, it also holds 50 to 70% of the world’s lithium reserves, which have still not been exploited. (Although we recently heard that the Bolivian government will give the rights for exploitation to the Russians – ah, if only they knew that they can be bigger capitalists than the Americans, but alas. Sadly, the benefits of this deal will probably not trickle down to the ordinary Bolivian people.)

Around lunch time we arrived at Isla Incahuasi – one of several “islands” (more like oases) in the Salar. Supposedly, these were the tops of ancient volcanoes which were submerged in the prehistoric lakes, leaving behind a collection of coral-like rock formations and now also hundreds of giant cacti. The island is a complete contrast to the Salar – brown and covered in cacti. Then, came the time for the amusing pictures. Given that flatness and vastness of the Salar, one can really play with distance and perspective here. People standing on top of Coke bottles or Pringles cans; giant people stomping on miniature folks; one person holding another in the palm of their hand. These are only some of the ideas people have come up with. We, of course, came up with some of our own (pictured below). No Photoshop here. Only a matter of playing with distance and positioning.

We spent the first night in a “salt hotel” off of the Salar. (There actually used to be one on the Salar, but because of ground contamination, its operations were halted and it has now been turned into a museum.) Pretty basic accommodations, but good enough. All six of us shared one room. The beds and the furniture in the eating area were made of blocks of salt, and salt crystals lined the floor. Dinner was eagerly awaited. And it was pretty good. Although we still can’t quite get used to Bolivians’ love of carbohydrates. They like to eat pasta with rice, or potatoes with pasta, or any combination that allows you to eat as many carbohydrates as possible. It is quite amazing!

Second day – we got up around 6 am and were off by 7. The whole second day is an exploration of lagoons and volcanoes to the south of the Salar. First stop, a lookout point over to Volcano Ollague (5865m) in the distance. Gave us the chance to clamber up some interesting rock formations. Next stop, Laguna Cañapa and our first glimpse of the pink flamingoes we had heard so much about. Three species of flamingo frequent the lagoons of Southwest Bolivia, and they don’t seem to be disturbed by the frequently high sulfur content. I had been used to seeing flamingoes wading or standing around in nature videos/films. Well, these flamingoes spent all their time with their heads buried in the water. Apparently, they suck in several times per second in order to take in the algae and brine shrimp that they feed on and expel the water and silt. They also get their pink coloring from the high beta-carotene content of their diet – a fact I had not known until this point. After lunch at Laguna Hedionda (by far the most sulfuric one) and passing by several other lagoons, we entered a stretch of sand desert, broken only by strange rock formations along the way. We stopped at one such outcrop of rocks to look for viscachas (the Andean version of the rabbit, with long tails). After more than 30 minutes of trying to spot one, we were ready to give up, when someone suddenly pointed one out – sitting proudly on a rock. It’s amazing to see that any animals live in this landscape. But viscachas, vicuñas (something like a cross between a llama and an antelope), rheas (related to the ostrich), and flamingoes seem to do quite well in this climate. (Not to mention, the Andean cat and a couple of others that we didn’t spot.)

Just before dinner time, we arrived at Laguna Colorada (The Colored Lagoon) – named as such because of its stark brick reddish color (apparently because of similarly colored algae). Here we spent the night. Pretty basic accommodations once again, but given how tired we all were, I don’t think anyone cared. Dinner and a warm bed was all that was needed. The next morning we would be getting up at 4:30 am.

Third day – a bright and early start in order to see the geysers at Sol de Mañana at sunrise and make it to the hot springs in time for breakfast. The sulfuric fumes rising from the mud pots at Sol de Mañana while the sun slowly rose up from the horizon made for an eerie experience. In the midst of the fumes, you couldn’t see the person standing a few feet away from you. At the hot springs, we debated whether to take a dip. It was pretty chilly outside, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to be faced with that cold on the way out of the hot water. In the end, though, I decided I shouldn’t miss this experience and took the plunge. The water was heavenly. And it wasn’t so bad on the way out either.

After breakfast, we continued our way south, all the way to the Chilean border. The last highlights before the border were the Salvador Dali Desert (named as such because of the strangely shaped single boulders that dot the sandy landscape) and Laguna Verde (a turquoise colored lagoon, again frequented by flamingoes). At the border, some people transfer to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile instead of making the traverse back to Uyuni. We said goodbye to our Australian companion here. Then (around 9:45 am) we started the drive back to Uyuni, stopping only for lunch at the village of Mallcu Villa Mar. Desert after desert landscape changed before our eyes. In one part, we also drove through several green pastures and small rivers, with herds of llamas enjoying the lush grass. Once we got to the paved road, it was a fast and uneventful drive back to Uyuni, with only the occasional “Llama Crossing” sign signaling that we were still far from real civilization.

Uyuni, dinner, and another 12 hours on the bus – this time with no bathroom on board, despite what we had been told. We were so tired though, that we couldn’t care less. I slept most of the way back to La Paz (even through the bumpy stretch). Had time to take a quick shower before making my way to the office and back to the “civilized” way of life.

I missed the desert already.