Salar de Uyuni

Along the tourist trail in Bolivia one of the most visited places is the Salar de Uyuni, or the Salt Flats as its known in English. It is the worlds largest salt flat at 10,582 km squared. We visited it from Uyuni (hence the name) which is the town most people access it by. The town seems to exist solely for the purposes of tourism, and its a cold, dry deserted place which I would advise anybody to only spend a minimal amount of time in. Altough most people take a 3 day tour, we were advised ny a few people that one day is really enough to get out to the middle of the flats, experience it and get back before you get stranded out in the night cold! We left (realtively) early in the day and drove out of Uyuni about an hour, along the abandoned train tracks to get to the salt flats. We stopped on the outer fringes of the flats for half an hour so the locals could tempt us to buy their merchandise of al paca clothing and souvenirs fashioned out of salf. On we drove then into the heart of the flats stopping along the way to get out of our 4x4 and really experience the vastness of it all.

At one point I walked away from the group for about 10 minutes in no particular direction, just towards nothing. After a while I was completely alone in the middle of the desert and the rest of my group and the car were but speckles on the horizon a few hundread meters back. It was one of the most eerily quiet yet serene settings Ive ever found myself. If I was into meditation, I´d imagine it would have been a perfect place to do it.

Towards the end of the day our guide brought us to isla de pescado; a strange cactus filled "island" in the middle of the salar. Here you can climb for 10 minutes to get to the peak (avoiding the huge cacti) where you find an amzing panoramic view of the whole area. Driving home in the jeep with the sun setting on the salt flats and some nice tunes on the radio was a memorable experience. (see some photos above)