Salar De Uyuni!
24.04.2007 - 27.04.2007
I am so on a roll tonight, its because no one is online to talk to and im all on me lonesome!
Right, the Salar de Uyuni and the Lagunas. Eirian and I had an very interesting bus journey to Uyuni (a small town in the middle of the desert of Bolivia). It was totally normal to begin with and towards the middle we thought we were really lucky as you hear all sorts of stories about Bolivian buses (they have a VERY bad rep!). About 4 hours from Uyuni our bus stopped. This isnt too unusual, but when around 20 people get on your bus you have to question how normal the situation is. Anyway, the rest of the bus journey we sat, cramped because all these people were just standing up in the aisle. To make matters worse the man next to us smelt a bit and was almost lying on top of Eirian the whole time. Every so often i had to lean across and ask if he could still breath. This man lying across Eirian also kept touching and stroking my hair when i was just nodding off to sleep! It was not too brilliant.
Anywho, we managed to get to Uyuni in one piece, if a little battered. We wanted to book the Salt Flats tour and luckily were able to go that very day on a three day tour. We went to have some brekkie and then got into a 4x4 to start our tour. On our particular one we had two Belguims Jim and Sophie, an Israeli called Itai and another welsh girl called Cerys. Together we embarked on a very interesting, if a little strange, trip to the middle of no where.
Basically some 40,000 years ago, the area was part of Lake Minchin, a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind two modern lakes, Poopó and Uru Uru, and two major salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and the larger Uyuni. Uyuni is roughly 25 times the size of the better-known Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States. (thank you Wikipedia!!!) Yeah, so tonnes and tonnes of salt was left and that is what you can see in the photos. We visited the Salt Hotel and the island of the fish, which is meant to look like a fish, but i didnt really see it. Our "guide" was more of a driver and couldnt speak a work of english so we realied on the Belguims to translate for us. It was very beautiful!
We spent our first night just outside the salt flats, in a hostel which was very basic. One our second day we visited LOADS of Lagunas, dont ask me to name then all i think there were 10 in total. But most of these lagunas had flamingos. I took lots of pictures, firstly because of Lina and secondly because they are very cool! This night we stayed in another really basic hostel, no showers at all, and it was so cold, that none of us could sleep.
The last day we were woken up at 4 so that we could see the geyzers (think thats how to spell it) at dawn. They stank but were amazing and really noisy. After seeing them we went to more hot springs, which i didnt even attempt to go in as for me it was just too cold! We had breakfast and then started the long car journey back to Uyuni.
We got back to Uyuni at about 5.30. Cerys had a bus at 8 but my train to Villazon wasnt until the next evening at 10, so i had to hang around till then. I thought i would have to do that on my own, but luckily Itai (the Israelian guy) didnt have a bus till the next day either. I said bye to Cerys (after we ate a yummy street burger and chips) and Itai and I tried to find a bar.
The next day i think Itai and I must have spent 4 hours in the internet cafe as there is literally nothing to do in Uyuni town! We had dinner and then he got his bus and i had to wait another two hours for the train, so i went to the internet cafe! Surprise surprise!
Anywho, i think thats about it for Bolivia! Short but sweet! Talk to you all soon! xxxxxx
Posted by emmyoung 02.04.2007 18:04 Archived in Bolivia Comments (3)
