the deposit: Uyuni & the Salt Flats

From Sucre we took a bus to nearby Potosi, a small mining town around 3 hours away and spent the night there before continuing on to Uyuni. Potosi is one of the poorest places in Bolivia and has a very sad history with many people dying in the nearby mines (which have been exploited and over-mined for centuries) from accidents, dust inhalation and poisoning. If you have a few hours to kill it is definitely worth seeing the documentary "The Devil's Miner" which follows two young kids who work in the Potosi mines. Unfortunately the reality in Bolivia and other places in South America is that many children are put to work to ensure that there is food on the table for their families.

Anyways, on to the less depressing stuff!

When we arrived in Uyuni, we tracked down an agency and booked a 3 day 4WD tour of the salt flats and surrounds for the following day. We were pretty keen to get out of town as soon as possible as it looked like a bomb had hit it - definitely one of the ugliest towns in South America!

The first day of the tour started with a visit to a nearby 'train cemetery' for some happy snaps before continuing on to the largest salt flat in the world. When we arrived we were blown away by the blinding white flats as far as the eye could see. We were so surprised to hear that despite the salt that they keep on taking from the flats for Bolivian use and exportation, the flats are actually growing every single year. After lunch, we continued on to "Fish Island", a natural island in the middle of the salt flats that is famous for it's enormous cacti which grow as high as 12 metres tall (1cm every year). There was a cactus there that was more than 1,000 years old. The entire place looked like another planet!

After two flat tyres, we called it a day and arrived at our accommodation for the night - a hotel made entirely from salt - beds, tables, walls and all! It was quite a novelty but soooooo bloody cold with temperatures well below zero and no insulation or heating. We really froze our culos off!

The following day we headed further south through the desert to visit different lagoons and landscapes of the region. The landscapes were crazy - deserts close to 5000m above sea level with snow and unusual shapes carved out of rocks by the strong winds. The lagoons were of the most amazing and strange colours - reds, purples, greens and white due to the minerals in the earth. It was really like nowhere else on earth. The animals also were so unique and it was hard to believe that they survive in such extreme conditions - flamingos, foxes, chinchillas, llamas and vicunas.

That night was by far the coldest night of our lives with temps around -20 and once again no heating or insulation! We slept in our clothes for the following day to avoid having to get dressed in the freezing cold!

The next morning, we were up at around 5am to head to the nearby geysers to watch the sunrise but had a bit of a slow start due to the doors of our car being frozen shut. We refused to get out of the car to see much of the geysers as even our hands were numb with the cold inside ski gloves but eventually ventured out for our breakfast and to take a dip (and defrost) in the natural hot springs nearby.

All in all, the trip was amazingly beautiful but we were more than happy to escape to warmer temperatures!!