En route to Salar de Uyuni (lakes, flamingoes, ventifacts.. this post has it all)

Heh, so, as mentioned in the last post, I’d had an evil night before this trip and was feeling quite ill in the morning. Fortunately though, the hostel staff took very good care of me and found some decent pro-biotics to help fix the system. Our other two fellow adventurers on this trip (Cam and Sophie – both from Christchurch!!) also had stomach issues! While a bad thing, in the sense that it’s not nice having stomach issues, it was good in the sense that we could all relate to each other, tell war stories etc. ;)

Anyway, the first day was quite a long, covering a lot of distance. Fortunately there were enough and frequent stop for all necessities ;)

We were to see more of the llamas (a few different species?) llama & vicuña(smaller). Our excellent guide, Elvis, told us that llamas are the most polite animals because they all toilet in the same areas. It was quite hard to know what was fact from fiction with Elvis, however, you can see the quite distinct areas where the animals do seem to toilet.

Then it was time for lunch. I forgot to take a picture of what I ate. The food was excellent, however, I was just eating rice this first day. Maaike had her own back from when I was eating all the delicious food at Aldea Luna and she was the one having plain rice ;)

Breakdowns on the trip were not infrequent on the first day. Not our car to be fair, one of the others. Elvis explained that while in town all the companies compete for the business, out in the desert they’re one big family (for security purposes). Still, I wonder if there are sharp words when back in town for the more lackadaisical operators… I wonder.

Next up was the “Ghost town” of San Antonio. According to Elvis it was the top three “richest towns” in the world, back in its heyday. I can’t find any sources to back up that statement though. That said, it was a major centre of the Spanish colonial extraction of gold & silver, so, I’m sure a lot of wealth was extracted from here anyway. Had a population of 2,000 odd.

Then a little more driving to reach the hostel for the evening. We were all a little knackered by the time we got in, sometime around 8pm ish. A long day, but a good day.

The next morning up early and off to see some llamas. Photogenic creatures to be sure.

They also tell jokes to each other, as you can see in these before & after photos.

Then a quick drive to one of the first (smaller) salt flats. They’re mined for various salts, lithium, regular sodium chloride and borax – which is used in detergents. We did see some flamingoes here, which made us very excited. You can see in the first (green) picture below here, a quite fragile habitat, complete with signs telling you not to walk on it. It was disappointing to see some French tourists running across the mounds. They did get off once told… still..

This entire area is littered with volcanoes, and we passed some boulders which had been ejected in one of the eruptions.

We arrived at our first major lake.. which I think was Laguna Verde. Here we saw a cycle tourist.. I didn’t manage to talk to him, but, I hear, he was having a pretty hard time of it. It’d be very very difficult going, what with the endless miles of gravel, dust, salt, and very little water you can drink. I believe he’d started at Alaska 8 or so months before. Solid effort.

Next up was a soak in the hot springs followed by lunch. A lunch I ate, a milestone if ever there was one.

After lunch it was on to a thermal area. Not particularly (ok, at all) roped off. I was actually quite surprised to hear that there had only been 1 death in the last few years (a Chilean jumping up for a selfie beside a bubbling mud pool…). Nasty way to go. Someone did burn their legs extremely badly a month ago, though I don’t think they lost them. Respect the boiling mud folks.

Next up was Laguna Colorada, the red lake. We were extremely lucky to have some flamingoes very close to the shore were we could easily photograph them… I did try to cull the photos down, but hey, there were just too many I liked ;). The red color is caused by sediments and a certain type of algae in the water.

The next day started off with visiting Árbol de piedra (stone tree) and other formations around it. They’re ventifacts (what an awesome name that is). Sandstone in this case.

Ventifacts are rocks that have been abraded, pitted, etched, grooved, or polished by wind-driven sand or ice crystals

We also saw lots of fossilised? coral dating back to when the entire area was one massive lake. I think Elvis was suggesting that it was all at sea level once upon a time (before the Andean uplift), but again, I can’t see any evidence to support that, and 3500m would be an awful lot of uplift from sea level. More lakes, more flamingoes at close up.

We had lunch at Laguna Negra, one of the few (if not only) freshwater lakes in the area. I think the rocks were volcanic silicia ventifacts ;) The moss grows at 1mm / year.

After lunch we had a quick stop at an area of exposed old lava flow. Where the rock has been exposed it has eroded less quickly than the surrounds, being harder volcanic rock. You can also see the unfortunate state of not having toileting facilities, and people not even attempting to bury their deposits. It’s a shame really. I guess the cost of putting in and maintaining toilets would be fairly prohibitive, but still. Also pictured is Elvis (with shades) and Fernando (our driver)

Next up – the salt flats themselves – next post :)