Uyani Salt Flats
I meet up with my tour group that afternoon. There are six of us packing into an old Toyota Landcruiser.
We start out into the desert. The first think we come to is a locomotive graveyard. Uyani was at one time a railroad center, now it is dependent almost totally on tourism. The trains once used in the city have now all been laid to rest in the desert.
Next we visit a small town that processes the salt by hand for sale in Northern Bolivia. It looks like awful dry work.
Walking around on the salt flats is a very strange experience. It feels like you are walking on very deep snow. In some areas you sink an inch into the ground. Every so often you see small pools of red water bubbling up out of the earth. Unfortunately our guides don´t speak much English so I am not really sure what causes these pools. I think I caught the word oxygenation.
Later in the day we come to a small mountain named Isla Pesca. Again, because of the language barrier, I´m not really sure why it is called fish island. It does resemble an island in a very white ocean. The entire mountain is covered in impressive twenty foot cacti.
The views from the top are amazing. Nothing but white stretching 100´s of miles to high mountains in the distance.
After about 6 hours of driving we reach the far side of the salt flats. The speedometer on the truck is broken, but I think we were traveling in the 70´s for most of the trip.
On the edge of the flats we get to our hotel for the night. It is a building made completely out of salt blocks. The salt block beds are a bit hard but the building is very cozy, despite the very low temps. They get to nearly 0 that night.
I meet up with my tour group that afternoon. There are six of us packing into an old Toyota Landcruiser.
We start out into the desert. The first think we come to is a locomotive graveyard. Uyani was at one time a railroad center, now it is dependent almost totally on tourism. The trains once used in the city have now all been laid to rest in the desert.
Next we visit a small town that processes the salt by hand for sale in Northern Bolivia. It looks like awful dry work.
Walking around on the salt flats is a very strange experience. It feels like you are walking on very deep snow. In some areas you sink an inch into the ground. Every so often you see small pools of red water bubbling up out of the earth. Unfortunately our guides don´t speak much English so I am not really sure what causes these pools. I think I caught the word oxygenation.
Later in the day we come to a small mountain named Isla Pesca. Again, because of the language barrier, I´m not really sure why it is called fish island. It does resemble an island in a very white ocean. The entire mountain is covered in impressive twenty foot cacti.
The views from the top are amazing. Nothing but white stretching 100´s of miles to high mountains in the distance.
After about 6 hours of driving we reach the far side of the salt flats. The speedometer on the truck is broken, but I think we were traveling in the 70´s for most of the trip.
On the edge of the flats we get to our hotel for the night. It is a building made completely out of salt blocks. The salt block beds are a bit hard but the building is very cozy, despite the very low temps. They get to nearly 0 that night.
posted by Terrell at 10:01 AM
3 Comments:
You slept on a block of salt???
For folks who are interested, I found this link that shows pictures of Terrell's current and next location:
http://www.tamboviejo.com/travel/Misti.html
And if you click on the link to Colca Canyon, you can see where he plans to go next!
I doubt this is the tour group with which he is travelling, but I bet the details are similar.
Bed of salt? That's good eating.
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