Unboliviable Uyuni!

This is a photo series (+captions!) of my 3 day tour of Salar de Uyuni this weekend. We booked the trip with Red Planet, which I highly recommend. Our guides were super knowledgable funny guys and great photographers too! We saw salt flats, lagoons, deserts, and volcanos, making friends with tourists from around the world along the way.

Alison and I arrived in the town of Uyuni in the early morning after our 10 hour overnight bus. While we waited for the the Red Planet office to open, we enjoyed some coffee and yogurt at Noni's Cafe. We also hung out with our new friend Ved, a doctor for Trinidad, and explored a bit of the town.

We loaded into cars and headed to our first stop, Cemeterio de Trenes (Train Cemetery). This was my most creative pose.

Here I am on top of a broken down train. The trains were transporting minerals to the ports on the coast. The British engineers however, did not anticipate the high altitude which affects the boiling point of water. As a result, there were many train accidents and technical difficulties.

Here is my travel group in front of an "ojo de salar" or an eye of the salt flat, formed by rivers that flow underneath the salt. In time it will close due to the crystallization of salt. Each two cars had one English speaking guide and formed a travel group. Our guide was named Obed, he drove the other car. Our driver was named Edwin and he only spoke Spanish. My group consisted of a Belgian family, a Canadian couple, the doctor from Trinidad, two Swedish engineering students, and a German woman.

Flags from all over the world that tourists put up. Ved brought the Trinidad flag and added it.

Alison brought along her finger puppets from the market to try to take perspective photos. I was clearly oblivious to the giant turtle that was about to eat me.

We stopped in a salt mining town, Colchani, where there are houses and furniture made of salt bricks cut from the salt flats. This was some of the salt that would be cleaned and packaged for cooking.

The salt flats were so serene, expansive, and beautiful. I had never seen anything like it.

The salt flats are infamous for the creative perspective photos that can be taken since the flat white salt stretches on for what seems like forever. I volunteered to be the one crushing my fellow tourists. Alison is the tiny human right under my boot.

Just two roommates holding hands, nothing more.

In the rainy season, the salt flats turn into the worlds biggest mirror. What was wonderful was that since we were in between seasons, we got to experience both the dry and wet salt flats. The water was pretty darn chilly but it made for some awesome photos. You can spot me in my warriors shirt and Alison in her purple shirt.

The sun was starting to set while we were on the wet salt flats.

Alison and I throwing up our llamas.

Some sunset yoga on the salt flats.

The first night we stayed at a little hotel where we were given dinner and breakfast. This was taken outside of the hotel in the early morning. I call it rocks and a skull. We saw a lot of desert on day 2.

Testing out my photography skills with this old basketball hoop.

We stopped at a quinoa field and I liked the little caterpillars on this quinoa plant.  There are white, red and black quinoa, black being the most nutritious. Quinoa takes so much nutrients from the soil that the land has to rest for 2 years in order to become fertile again. Sadly, the recent interest in quinoa in Europe and North America has increased prices of the superfood significantly. So much so, many Bolivians can no longer afford it.

The Ollague volcano

This plant, called Yareta, looks like it would be soft and mossy but it is actually similar to texture of coral. Very dense and rough. Found in the middle of a desert, it covers itself with a sap to keep water in and stay bright green.

I think this was taken during one of the flat tires. The guides told us we could walk around the canyon while they fixed it, which never took long at all. They are incredibly fast at changing tires. I thought this rock looked a lot like the silhouette of a bears head: the ear, eye, nose and mouth. Do you see it too?

Our first lagoon of the day with tiny flamingos that probably can't be seen in this photo. It is a nice one of Alison and I though.

The next lagoon with even more flamingos! Here I am on one foot, trying to look like a flamingo but it turned out to be the tree pose. I was excited that I had worn a light pink shirt to match the birds, which was unplanned. Most of the flamingos migrate from the Amazon, spend 6 months in the lagoons of Uyuni to eat and breed and then return to the tropical environment.

Our breathtaking lunch spot was a huge lagoon with very clear water. My favorite part of lunch was the baked plantains, and of course the view.

A little wild fox that had clearly been given food from people in the past. He wasn't afraid to be in close proximity of the many tourists that had just arrived.

An appropriate use of the tree pose featuring Alison and the Salvador Dalí Stone Tree, or Árbol de Piedra in Spanish. It is named this because it resembles his surrealist paintings. We also drove through a Dalí desert which has similar formations.

The classic stacked rock picture that is weirdly satisfying to look at. The Stone Tree is also in the background on the left.

Here I am in front of the Laguna Colorada, aka Red Lagoon. It contains red algae and many flamingos. All of the dots in the water on the left are flamingos. Many were babies. We could tell since they were still grey colored.

Apparently we were inside a volcano at this point. There were boiling mud pots and active geysers, we had to be careful where we stepped.

The steam stunk because it contained sulfur, which smells like rotten eggs.

The sun and the steam made for some cool photos. Here is a silhouette photo of my travel group.

A quick selfie before we left the volcanic mud pools. Our messy hair is evidence of how strong the wind was in volcanic crater. This was our last stop before our accommodation.

The view outside our accommodation for the second and final night. This was taken in the morning, but the night before we got to relax in these hot springs while sipping wine and looking at the stars. We even had volcanic mud masks! Without light pollution, we were able to see the milky way and our guides pointed out various constellations with their powerful laser.

I requested that we use my selfie stick to get a photo of our travel group. We took this in front of Laguna Verde, which was not actually green because of the season. When it is more windy, copper and arsenic get into the water and causes it to look much more green--- at least thats how I understood it, I could be a bit off.

We got a photo with our driver, Edwin. Like I mentioned above, he did not speak English. I enjoyed my time in the front seat talking with him a little and trying to understand what he was saying on the radio to the other drivers. They were always making jokes with each other, commenting on road conditions, or indicating vicuña sightings (a type of animal- look it up!). At one point Edwin let me use the radio to say "Un coche más" when a car was approaching. I had fun sprinkling in an occasional Spanish song since I was DJing the whole time we were in the car. Edwin told me I had good music :)

In addition to the wild vicuñas, we saw some domesticated llamas grazing. They had colorful ribbons on their ears left over from a recent festival.

One of our last stops was a collection of complex rock formations. This perfect circular window was formed naturally.

Do you just see a big rock? Look again! I decided to climb a little and Alison captured the moment in a photo.

That concludes my photo series of Uyuni. We took the night bus back and got home early in the morning on Monday. Thanks for reading!