After camping on an island in the Uyuni Salt Flats for two nights, we decided to take a 3-day tour that went beyond the salt flats. The salt flats and tours beyond are about the only reason the town of Uyuni exists.
We parked YOLO in the side yard of the tour operator's sister-in-law for the three days we'd be gone. It was secured behind a locked gate behind the van.
Before we left the town, we visited the train cemetery. Across from it was this metal art display full of figures some guy has made from scrap metal. Pretty cool.
Transformers were some of the art sculptures.
A metal dragon. Our tour operator had a metal pig table he used as a piggy bank.
A Star Wars creature and a Pegasus. I think the guy is pretty talented.
Then we ventured into the train cemetery, which is just a few kilometers out of town on a rutted dirt road.
The trains were used in the 1940's but were retired here in the desert when they were no longer used.
Some of the trains in better shape have been restored and put into a train museum in town. These will just sit out here and deteriorate.
They've been out here a long time already!
Tourist climb all over them out here.
Jason as conductor in one of the engines.
Someone outlined many of the parts on this one in white paint. Interesting...
This one now looks like the code to some ancient language.
Karen on one of the train cars.
Our Toyota Land Cruiser that would ferry us through the three days in SW Bolivia. It was already 22 years old.
Cartoon characters in an auto parade as we left town.
The first stop on the Uyuni Salt Flats is the place where the water still bubbles up to the surface. Lots of minerals coming up in this water.
A couple of poos where the water is coming up to the surface. It travels underground and surfaces here in the edge of the Salar de Uyuni.
Seems unreal that vehicles can drive on the salt so close to these areas.
Our driver Didon. He didn't talk much and gave us almost no info along the way.
Next stop is the monument to the Dakar race leg that was held in Bolivia for the first and only time in 2015. It was a big deal then, and still draws the tourists out here on the flats. Made entirely of salt.
Inside the Salt Hotel where we had our first lunch on the tour. Jason mimics a statue made of salt. The yellow roof gives the shots their color.
Some of our fellow travelers waiting for lunch to be served. Even the tables and stools are made of salt.
A homemade contraption of a go kart with a dinosaur structure you can sit on to drive it around.
Blocks of salt stacked behind the hotel. For repairs? Making new furniture?
I almost licked the wall of salt, but no.....
This is the inside of one of the hotel rooms in the Salt Hotel. We wondered what they put on the beds to make the soft enough to sleep on.
Jason sitting on a ledge outside the Salt Hotel waiting for the group to be ready to continue on.
Jason getting a close up of the little pressure ridges between the plates of salt. Like a dried up mud lake, but made of salt.
Jason and Karen being terrorized by a giant dinosaur on the salt flats.
Oh no, don't eat us!
Hey there, little man! Karen holding Jason in the palm of her hand.
Jason about to blow Karen away!
Our driver couldn't catch us in mid-air jumps so we just hammed it up for a photo.
Even the cactus looks salty white on top.
A labyrinth made of salt out in the middle of nowhere. We stopped and a few folks paid to walk through the maze.
The letters are made of salt blocks as well.
You can see here how they cut the blocks to build things.
A wiggly pressure ridge forming in the salty water that remains after they cut out the bricks.
This old man was building letters from the salt bricks. H measured the distance between letters with his hand span, smoothed the salt with a homemade tool, put down some loose salt as mortar with his shovel and then made the letters with as many blocks as it took. Old fashioned method.
A reflection on a salt water pond near where they are building a new road out from a village on the far side of the flats.
Sunset on the salt flats.
Waiting for dinner, these are the newlyweds in our group, Donna and Carolina. A nice couple from Buenos Aires. They did a lot of translating for us and pushed to get more info about the things we were seeing.
Our hotel room, all made of salt as usual. Very comfy.
The letters are made of cactus cores.
Jason playing with the dinosaur prop.
Didon repacking all our luggage into the tarp to keep the dust off of it. As if that were possible.
Abandoned railroad tracks in the outer reaches of Bolivia. They used to send minerals to Chile . They are from the mining days and now the disputes over minerals and borders and such have curtailed their use.
Jason poking his head under the hood to see how they are going to get our Land Cruiser running again when it stopped at the military checkpoint and wouldn't start.
A mud brick kiln for making more bricks.
We stopped to look at the weird rock formations along the way, too. Wind has carved these fantastical shapes in the soft rock.
This green mossy growth on some of the rocks supposedly has some fabulous medicinal uses for cancers and such, but there isn't enough of it to make it feasible to harvest. Scientists are trying to figure out how to 'farm' it to get enough to make medicines. It only grows on volcanic rocks in this very specific climate, so it's not an easy task to reproduce it.
Holes in the rock always attract me.
Flamingoes!!! There were thousands of them in these high altitude salty lakes.
You can see the salty shore behind the birds.
There are three species of flamingoes here, one of them quite rare, and we saw them all.
Pink with backwards leg joints, these birds are an oddity in nature.
We watched them from several vantage points.
We don't think of flamingoes at such high, cold altitudes. We think of them in Florida climes.
These lakes are shallow enough for the flamingoes to be quite far from shore.
The pink plumage is so striking on some of them.
Calm water near shore reflected these birds.
There were so many of them out here!!
The pink head on this one was so pretty.
They would stir up the mucky bottom with their feet and then put their heads in to eat what came out.
Recycled bottles make a stick planter look interesting at our lunch stop.
Karen and Jason at a lake shaped like a heart.
The mountains in the distance showed some pretty colors and designs.
Dust as a medium for writing.
Vizcachas are like long-tailed rabbits that hop around on the rocky ledges. They have long tufted ears and are related to chinchillas.
Vizcachas were just hanging out on these pancake red rocks. They're obviously used to tourists stopping and taking their pictures.
Jason and I thought this rock formation looked like a snail. Maybe you had to be there.....
This is the Rock Tree, aka Arbol de Piedra. It's a major tourist attraction out here in the Bolivian desert and a stop for all the tours like ours.
The rock tree from a different angle. Lots of cool rock formations here.
Yet another view of the Rock Tree. Changes a lot depending on which side you are on.
Jason walking among the rock formations.
Nice split in the rock.
All these are in the same area, so we could see them in a few minutes.
Our first glimpse of the Red Lagoon, Laguna Colorada.
We had to pay an entrance fee here to carry on with the tour.
The red is caused by an algae in the water. It changes color depending on the angle of the sun when you look at it.
All the tiny dots in the water are hundreds of more flamingoes.
It was very windy and cold when we were here. The wind agitates the algae and makes it turn more red.
Another tour group getting a flag photo in front of the Laguna Colorada.
The red, white and blue reminded me of our flag.
Jason relaxing in the dining area of our next hotel. We were so covered in dust by now that it was a joke.
Very early the next morning, we left to come see these geysers.
Jason hugging a geyser.
Jason and Karen at the geyser. The steam was warm and felt good, but the cold breeze when we moved away made our hands feel like they were freezing.
People disappeared in the steam from the geysers and mud pools.
You can tell it's very early by the very long shadows. These mud pools were rimed in crystals.
Mud pools and geysers at high altitude. Amazing.
A boiling mud pool
Steam in the early morning.
More interesting colors and designs in the mountains as we drove past. I was the only one who seemed interested at all.
Awesome shapes and colors in the hillside scenery.
This Green Lagoon has toxic arsenic and borax so there are few flamingoes here. You can see the smoking volcano in the background.
Jason at Laguna Verde.
More colored mountain designs.
Red and white designs all along this range of hills.
Guanacos along the route.
Looks like melted ice cream here.
We passed by the wetlands on our way back. The water is a welcome contrast to the dust and sand we'd seen for the last few days.
An interesting rock at our last lunch stop.
The first and only American flag we saw in Bolivia. It would be illegal to fly a flag in this poor condition in America.
This Canyon was our last scenic stop in the tour. No other vehicles came here so we had the place to ourselves. It was quite windy but we all managed to make it out to the end of the rocky promontory in the middle of this picture. We were several hundred feet above the canyon floor below.
Steps carved into a rock make it easier to climb out onto the rocky promontory.
Looking down as I edged out towards the end of the promontory. It was a scary trip out to the end as it was a long ways down and the wind was really howling. Hard to hold onto my hat, glasses and the phone to take photos when I really just wanted to drop to my knees and crawl.
Out on the edge, Josue had no fears of getting out there and sitting on the edge.
That thin green line is the river on the canyon floor.
Even Jason had a hard time in the wind on this rocky ledge. I put my hat down my shirt to keep it from blowing away.
The backwards hat worked for a few minutes. This place was like a mini Grand Canyon you could still climb around on. There was another rock that stuck out into he middle of nowhere, but it was so windy nobody ventured over to it.
The sand and gravel at our feet was blowing across the surface of the rock, making it even harder to get good footing.
Alpaca getting drinks in the wetlands as we headed back to Uyuni.
We found a truck wash just outside of town and had them wash the exterior and undersides of YOLO. Clean for a day.
We had clean van (at least on the outside) to head away from Uyuni.
