Salar de Uyuni: Surreal, otherworldly beauty

Recently I had the opportunity to take a tour of the southern Altiplano, a high plateau stretching 800km to the Chilean and Argentine borders, including the Salar de Uyuni, the world´s biggest salt lake. It was an incredible trip, taking us through the most extreme and surreal of landscapes. It highlighted the huge diversity of the landscapes of Bolivia. Most impressively, the landscapes we were driving through changed significantly every hour, if not more! We hired a guide, Javier, and a jeep with the agency “Landscape Ecological” and he drove 6 of us for hundreds and hundreds of miles, over the 3 day trip.

The salt flats were only the start of the trip, a dazzling expanse of white, perfectly flat plains, stretching endlessly as far as the eye could see. 

The salt surface has such an intense whiteness it almost appears to be ice. The Salar de Uyuni was once the deepest part of a huge lake, lago Tauca, until 12 000 years ago. The Salar was formed when the lake waters evaporated, leaving behind salt deposits which had leached into the lake from the surrounding mountains. Apparently, in places, the salt extends to depths of up to 120m! Coming upon an island filled with giant cacti was a bizarre sight to see in the middle of this expanse of bright white salt.   

The first night we stayed in a hotel made from salt - everything including the beds, tables and chairs, to the wall decorations and light shades were salt! Javier served us up delicious cooked lunches and dinners throughout the trip, including a bottle of wine of the second night!

Over the next 2 days we drove for hours and hours, through vast high-altitude desert plains, home to llamas and vicunas surrounded by towering snowcapped volcanic mountain peaks, through red mars-like deserts, over mountain passes, past Bolivia´s only active volcano (Ollague) and by brightly coloured, glacial salt lakes (yellow, blue, emerald green and even red waters stained by microorganisms or mineral deposits) filled with flamingos. 

On the second night we stayed in a hostel inside the entrance of a huge national park, La Reserva de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, spanning 7147 square kilometres, ranging between 4000m and 6000m in altitude. We woke at 4.30am ready to drive away into the sunrise. The red sun rays rising over the mountains cast the most unearthly red light over the summits of all the mountains and slowly bathed the whole plain in a warm glow, breaking through the morning mist.

We drove on through moonscapes filled with geysers, their steam glowing through the bright morning sunlight at 5000m altitude. The smell was intensely sulphurous but getting up close to the jets of hot air shooting up through the ground was exhilarating! Despite the hot air being exhaled dramatically from the earth, we were at some 5000m altitude and the fresh morning air was freezing enough that my toes were numb after wandering round the geysers for half an hour!

We would never have believed it if someone had told us that some 20 minutes later we would be shedding off all of our layers in order to jump in to some thermal springs, still at around 5000m altitude, and only at 7.30am!! An incredible November swim, the warmest of the year and definitely the most breath-taking!