Salt flats, red and green lakes, volcanoes and flamingoes

Bolivia has the largest salt flats in the world. The huge, prehistoric salt lake dried up but left behind an awful lot of salt. We decided to take a four day tour of the salt flats and surrounding areas of natural beauty. 

Before hitting the salt lake, we went to a little village that had geared itself up for tourism with a couple of museums and lots of salt ash trays etc. We were amongst the few people to pay to enter the museum and an enthusiastic local guide showed us around the mini-models of llamas, alpacas, and blonde barbie-style tourists enjoying their time on the salt lake. 

  

We spent the first two days on and around the huge salt lake. It's an incredible environment to be in and a lot of the time it's hard to believe that the surface isn't snow or water. The lake, the sky and mountains merge as one and the horizon becomes difficult to make out as the salt captures the reflections in its blinding surface.

With our lovely cook, Claudina and her father, our driver and guide, Benitno. They were with us for our first couple of days before we joined up with another jeep and group to head south to lagoons, volcanoes and flamingoes.

We rode around in a jeep with fellow tourist couple, Adam from Hungary and Annike from Trinidad, our guide and a cook. There are no roads on the salt flats so drivers can go wherever they want, although we were warned that if the clouds close in, you become enveloped in a white world and inexperienced drivers have got lost for hours with tour groups. Fortunately, this didn't happen to us.

There were rumours that on the day we set off, there was due to be a rock concert somewhere on the salt lake, organised by Brazilians. We didn't see or hear anything and didn't fancy setting off on the salt, which freezes at night, to try and find it. However, there were coaches and lots of jeeps heading onto the salt at the same time of us. A bizarre spectacle. Apparently, they weren't rock stars but journalists on a press trip to promote the many minerals thought to be in/under the lake, including lithium, which may be used to power cars in the future. Environmentalists are concerned that the lake will be plundered.

Coachloads of press and tourists and salt piles. Locals extract salt from the edges of the lake, drain water from it in this way, before treating it for use in Bolivia and exporting it to Brazil. Lots of tourists were unhelpfully standing on the piles to have their photos taken (as well as stripping to their pants and running around - people went to fairly extreme measures to get their perfect salt photo).

Fortunately, we soon left the crowds behind as we had opted to do a slightly different tour. We spent our first night in a hotel made of salt, which was surprisingly warm and cosy given that it looked like ice, on the edge of the salt lake next to a volcano. We had a peaceful evening wander along the salt 'shoreline' spotting llamas, a great eagle, viscachas (like rabbits, a photo of one on our Machu Picchu entry) and mysteriously, a pile of human bones and skulls arranged next to a rock. According to local legend, the moon only ever shone by the lake, the sun didn't come out. When one day it did for the first time, the people who lived here thousands of years ago in the caves all died.   The sunset reflected in the water at the edge of the lake and in the salt

The next day after walking part way up the volcano for some great views over the lake, we went to 'Fish Island', named so because of its shape, in the middle of the Salt Lake. It was covered with enormous cacti, some of them over 1000 years old. It was here that we were to meet our second group and jeep who were to be our companions for the next few days of the tour. They turned up pretty late and we thought we had been abandoned but happily not. They had booked a better tour than us and fortunately we had been slotted in with them to make up the numbers. It's all made of salt. Apart from the cactus wood.

We spent our second night in a fairly luxurious salt hotel and were treated to some dancing from local children who turned up at the hotel all dressed up. It verged on begging but we got stuck in. 

Caves near to the hotel have been turned into a museum, with pre-hispanic mummies, their pots and hunting spears and a few armadillos hanging from the roof. Apparently, there are still quite of few of them living in the area but we didn't spot any.

As we headed south from the Salt Lake the scenery was equally spectacular. The whole of the flat land in this region at one time was under water. The photo above is Simon standing on coral rock. It was hard to believe that this was once under water - it felt quite apocalyptic to imagine that all this water could just disappear.

More caves - this time filled with petrified algae. 

The six of us and our guide covered a lot of ground bouncing around in our jeep over a couple of days. The landscape was quite otherworldly with no people around, very few plants, but a fair amount of llamas and flamingoes. We were at an altitude of 3,500-5000 metres. 

Flamingoes in flight over a red lake

On our fourth and final day, we were up at 4.30am and in the jeep by 5, off to see geysers (sulphurous steam shooting out of the ground) on a volcano which are most active around sunrise.  

The geysers emitted a strong sulphurous whiff and the steam was hot, there were also a lot of bubbling cauldrons of mud. It was an incredible place to be at sunrise. After this, we dropped down to a thermal spa and although also a bit whiffy and crammed with tourists, it was amazing. I didn't get out until my feet had turned utterly pink.

Our lovely group split up at the Chilean border as Ralph and Maren, a German couple, went south, and the rest of us, William from the UK and Nico from Colombia, returned, dusty and tired, but awed by what we had seen, to Uyuni.