Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia - June 14-16

The Salar de Uyuni in southwest Bolivia is one of those places where a landscape photographer would think they have died and gone to heaven.  It is the largest salt flat in the world (4,086 sq mi) and is at 11,995 ft above sea level.  The Salar was formed as a result of the drying of prehistoric lakes. It is about 60 km from the town of Uyuni (20K population) which seems to exist solely for tourism.

A few more interesting facts...  The crust is a source of salt and covers a pool of brine which is very rich in lithium.  It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, which is in the process of being extracted. The large area, clear skies and exceptional flatness apparently make the Salar an ideal object for calibrating the altimeters of the Earth observation satellites.  We heard various reports on how deep the salt flat is - anywhere from 12 meters to 20 layers of 12 meters....

We decided on a 2 day tour.  There were 6 of us tourists and a driver/cook/guide.

Various groups that live around the Salar are given rights to process salt.

We saw groups of people making these piles of salt with a shovel.  Then it is loaded - by shovel! - into a truck.

Server-yourself lunch off the back of the truck.

Some tourist acting like...

There are various islands in the Salar.  Incahuasi has a forest of giant cactus.  Many of these cacti are several hundred years old and they can reach 30 feet.

No, that is not cloud cover out there, that is the white of the salt!

We stayed overnight in a small pueblo at the foot of the volcano, Tunupa, on the "shores" of the Salar.  It was comical that the hostal where our tour company normally took tourists was not in operation because the town was having a festival.  We overheard our guide explaining to his boss back in Uyuni that the staff where drunk and could not attend to us.

We ended up staying in a "Salt Hotel" - very basic, but cool.  A composting toilet, no shower, no running water (they were saving it up for the festival), no electricity.

Salt bricks which make up the walls.

All six of us tourists shared a room.  It was super COLD that night - I don't know the numbers.  But they have some seriously heavy blankets that do a great job of keeping warm!

Tea time before dinner.  Duane was the only guy -- two girls were from Japan and two from Spain.

A gorgeous sunset that evening with the reflections of the sky on the salt flat.

 

Just enough water on the edge of the Salar to attract some flamingos.

These llamas must have belonged to the place we stayed.  This baby llama was so adorable -- and not too sure about being photographed.

The next morning, after breakfast, the six of us headed up the mountain.  We made it to that red ridge which is directly in front of the peak -- somewhere around 5,000 meters.   

Duane and the Japanese girls.  The Spanish girls had already stopped hiking.

Awesome view out over the Salar going up and down!

I liked taking pictures of the cactus as much as the views...

The six of us ...  While our driver had stopped to help another driver with some sort of mechanical problem.