Uyuni Salt Desert

The trip into Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni in April 2004 was one of the highlights my travels in Latin America and an absolute "must see" if you are visiting Bolivia.

The tour is actually much more than just a trip to the salt desert; in four days we went from Uyuni to the Chile border and back. Salar de Uyuni is located at 3653m over sea level and originates from a dried up prehistoric salt lake. It is the world's largest salt flat covering an area of about 12.000m2.

Before we entered the desert we had a stop at the Train Cemetery; a weird place with a bunch of stranded steam locomotives. The salt desert is a beautiful sight with "endless" plains of white salt with octagon patterns. We visited a place where salt was extracted into small pyramids, had lunch by a hotel made of salt and walked around on the amazing Isla Pescadores, a coral island dotted with large cactuses (the largest was 12m high and 1200 years old!).

The second day we stopped at a nice view point by Volcan Ollague, saw the "5 lakes" with lots of flamingoes and by some strange green rocks we saw a colony of Vizcachas (a long-tailed rodent related to the chinchillas). The desert landscape changed all the time and by the road we could see herds of vicuñas (wild llama relative), spectacular mountains and strange geological shapes, including a large "stone tree". The night by Lake Colorado was freezing cold with sub zero temperatures.

It was still dark when we got up and went to Sol de Mañana, a geyser at staggering 4870m. It was amazing, but extremely cold. Had breakfast with the sunrise reflecting in a lake steaming from hot springs as backdrop and was visited by a curios and hungry fox. Passed by a field with strange rock named Desierto de Salvador Dali, before I got to warm up my frozen body in Termas de Polques (hot springs). Laguna Verde was another beautiful lake with the 5930m Volcan Licancabur rising majestic in the background. Went to the Chile border to drop of most of the group (3 day trip) and changed the car. When we came back to Laguna Verde it had changed color to a lighter blue. Laguna Colorado had also changed color to red and we saw lots of flamingos.

The rest of the trip was mostly a transport route back to Uyuni, but we stopped in several nice little villages and at another amazing collection of strange rock formations at Valle de Rocas.

www.helgeroe.com

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Uyuni
• Salt
• Desert
• Bolivia
• cactus
• flamingo
• travel
• south
• america
• helge
• apocalyptica

[octeuron]

jeep tour from uyuni to san pedro?

[helgeroe]

Jeep tour from Uyuni to Chile Border back to Uyuni. Amazing trip!

[Henrymejia]

awesome video but dont you think the music is like more for war or something more Xtreme ?

[godkingRoss]

lol, random kids moshin out and random corpse at the end

[kantutita87]

Bolivia es Hermosa! xD

[metroplexcity]

amazaing landscapes!

[AlexRoxUrSox]

uhh?

[yanman1586]

Neat!