December 30, 2005Salar de UyuniThe main reason for making the 5 hour bus trip from Potosi to Uyuni was to see the Salar - a huge field of salt. 12,000 square km of salt, salt and more salt. And it really is salt - we licked it to verify. As we started on our tour (two of us, an Austrian backpacker and the
driver, who was also the cook), we went parallel to the salar for a
while watching the islands in the salar floating in the air. Since
dry salar salt is white (or brownish), the blueness in which the
islands reflect isn't the salt but appears to be fake water caused by
some kind of a mirage. Later in the salar we saw a the same double
horizon, but the effect was less pronounced. Click on the first picture in the set above to see vicuñas that our driver pointed out to us at one point. The vicuña is one of South America's two wild camelids. They are supposed to produce the finest wool in the world, which is hard to get since they produce very little of it and cannot be domesticated. At the moment, sheering the vicuñas is prohibited and there is a 8 year prison term for killing one in Bolivia. Vicuñas are fairly rare, and this was the only time we saw them during our trip. We eventually got to Colchani - a small (and seemingly very poor) village that makes its living by packaging the salt of the salar. The locals also make all sorts of souvenirs from salt and sell them to tourists. We then stopped at one of the two hotels constructed of salt. The salar itself was big and white. Really big and really white. We were glad we brought sunglasses, and despite that the sun was sufficiently bright that we seemed to have gotten half of our photos tilted. We stopped at an island in the middle of the salar which was full of huge cacti, some of them with flowers. Filed under: Bolivia and Peru in 2005 , Uyuni December 30, 2005A Bus from Potosi to UyuniAfter an afternoon, a cold evening and a morning to Potosi we hopped on a bus to Uyuni. Lonely Planet described the road as "rugged" and "spectacular". It did in fact turn out to be both rough and scenic. We saw plenty of llamas and even more pigs. The landscape changed quite frequently, which kept us entertained on this 5 hour trip. We passed through rocky desert, a dusty desert, red mountains, green mountains, etc. I attempted taking some pictures from the bus window, but unfortunately, few came up given the bumpiness of an unpaged road. After getting to Uyuni we got a bus for La Paz for the following night and then went looking for a tour of the Salar. We heard from other travelers in Sucre that there was now an office that had rankings of the companies based on traveler feedback, so we went there and got a few names. After that we got some dinner - the book advised us that Uyuni has many dining options, all of which involve pizza, and that seemed largely true. It was a good pizza though. Uyuni in the morning: Filed under: Bolivia and Peru in 2005 , Uyuni Please leave your comments. The comments are moderated against link spam and may not appear on the site immediately. Comentários em português são bem-vindos. Puede escribir en castellano también, pero puedo responder solamente en Portuñol. Mozhno po-russki, no v nastoyaschii moment tol'ko v translite. You can also email me at yuri{at}freewisdom.org. |
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Please leave your comments. The comments are moderated against link spam and may not appear on the site immediately. Comentários em português são bem-vindos. Puede escribir en castellano también, pero puedo responder solamente en Portuñol. Mozhno po-russki, no v nastoyaschii moment tol'ko v translite. You can also email me at yuri{at}freewisdom.org.