Home » Bolivia » Plains of Salt, Mountains of Silver and Meals of Bacteria

So we have finished our luxurious stage of our South American journey (Chile and Argentina) and now are heading into Bolivia. The plan - a three day trip across the volcanic landscape and largest salt flat in the world in South West Bolivia. After leaving the paved road behind in Chile we drove in 4 X 4 jeeps up to 4600 m to the Bolivian immigration control. After a dubious breakfast of bread, cheese and jam we continued with Juan our driver a couple from Belgium, a girl from Switzerland and another from Canada.

Plains of Salt, Mountains of Silver and Meals of Bacteria

James and Anne Walkington
2006-08-08 16:59:49

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night followed helped with a few bottles of wine with the Belgium's and a couple from Switzerland. Also another night with James defending the NHS - they had better offer him a job when he gets back.

Anne and I got up early and walked down to the salt flat to watch sunrise. It was further than we had thought but we eventually got there. Prior to leaving for South America we had pretty much only one instruction from back home. This was that we weren't to wander onto the salt
flats by ourselves. Here we were at 7am doing exactly this - however as we were only 30 metres onto it we didn't feel that it counted.

Leaving in the jeep we drove onto the salt flat - 12000 km square and fills with water in the wet season. Juan cranked up the speed on the near perfect flat surface. The salt is about 8 metres deep and in places mined. The blinding white surface is such an amazing contrast to the blue sky. The plain is interspersed with the occasional island. We stopped at one of these which just happened to be covered by hundreds of cactus. These grow at around 1cm a year some are supposed to be 1200 years old. No one knows how the cactus got here but James thinks that it was birds which dropped the seeds - mystery solved.

Lunch was served on salt tables which included some meat. At first we weren't sure what the hell it was but were worried it might be llama. Later found out that it was beef - didn't taste like any beef I have ever had though. Further driving across the enormous salt plain - had a quick visit to a salt mine and then finally reached the other side and drove into Uyuni via a train cemetery. We had planned on staying a few days in Uyuni but with its 12000 population and absolutely nothing to do here we rapidly decided only to spend one night in a freezing cold hotel.

An early start to get to the bus station for our transport to Potosi a mining town and the highest town of its size (pop 110000) in ...