WOW! What an incredible four days. I went on a 4 day tour of Southwest Bolivia and I am just dumbfounded by all the natural beauty I saw. Utterly surreal! Salt flats, volcanoes with fresh snow, fresh snow, lakes of all colors - red, green and blue, flamingos and again just some wide open space.
The Salar de Uyuni (or the salt flats on the gringo trail) is the world's largest salt flat or dry lake at 4,086 square miles. It is at an elevation of 3,656 meters (11,995 feet). About 30 - 42,000 years ago, it was a lake and now it is a visual bed of a few meters deep of salt. The expansive views were incredible because the white salt and distant horizon seemed to reflect even a greater distance.
The salt museum - imagine a house, table and chairs made out of salt......
Playing soccer with the locals. It was a close game and luckily the locals won. I do not know if they could have faced their other 20 residents had they lost to a team of gringos comprised of half females!
Volcan Tunupa (5432m) - a beautiful hike, slow and steady but fairly easy!
Isla Incahuasi or as the tour agencies call it the Isla del Pescado. Incredible! An island in the middle of all the salt. I know it looks like clouds and being in an airplane. We all did double and triple takes as we were hiking and just admiring the views. We just had to rapidly shake our heads a few times and remind ourselves that yes we were actually standing on the ground and not up in the air. What made it even stranger was an island filled with Trichoreus cactus. Incahuasi.
Laguna Colorado. You can see the reddish tint to the water. It's because the water is only 80 cm deep I guess when there is not fresh snowfall (you know I am not complaining!), the water has even more of a redder tint. But hey, fresh snow, lakes at 4278m, flamingos - ahhhh this world is amazing!
5 bottles of Singani (a local grape brandy which is as strong as grain alcohol and tastes similarly) for 5 people. But hey when in Rome.... It is Bolivia's national liquor. Luckily we all loved playing cards! Cards helps the liquor go down. I could not have asked for a better group of people to explore the Salar de Uyuni with. Thanks Clem, Johnny, Audrey, Hylton and Rachel who joined us for the last 2 days!
Our last morning, we went and visited the Sol de Manana Geyser Basin. Geysers and some natural hot springs. These springs, the Termas de Polques, were warmer than the hot springs we visited out of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. A nice treat, especially after the chilly nights.
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