Cars & Girls - Prefab Sprout

We´ve just arrived in Uyuni, Bolivia after a fantastic 3-day crossing of the desert and salt flats in Toyota Landcruisers. It was desert and mountains for the first two days, interspersed with mineral-laden lakes filled with flamingos, boiling geysers and a whole lot of brown sand. We were steadily climbing to a maximum altitude of 4000m, where even tying your shoelaces leaves you short of breath. Quite a few of our group suffered from altitude sickness, with migraines and vomiting being the most common complaints. I was one of the lucky few who escaped any symptoms. We´d been told to expect temperatures as low as minus 10 at night, but in fact it was nowhere near as cold as that, and the two places we stopped at were pretty comfortable, albeit showerless, so we didn´t smell too sweet by Day 3!

But the highlight was definitely the salt flat at Salar de Uyuni on Day 3. It´s the world´s largest salt flat at over 10,000 square kilometres and is the remains of a giant prehistoric lake, Lake Minchin, which existed here about 40,000 years ago. Driving across the middle of it where all you can see is white ground and blue sky was a fantastic experience. And our cooks and drivers were brilliant - the food and service was better than most of what I´ve had in South America to date.

Uyuni itself is a fairly humdrum town, and the difference in affluence between Chile and Bolivia was immediately obvious. And with Carnival coming up in a week or so, the local kids took great delight in pelting the gringos with water balloons as we walked down the main street. I think we´re going to have to arm ourselves. It´s a dog eat dog world out there.

written by

phileasdogg on February 13, 2009 from Uyuni, Bolivia

from the travel blog: Planes, Trains & Taxiwallahs

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Hey I was wondering what company you used to do the salt flat tour. I'll be heading that way soon and I've heard an read some less than enticing reports about some of them...

written by

Koala Bear on April 23, 2010

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