I know I skipped over days 2 & 3, but it’s my blog, and I can do what I want to. I’ll try to go back later (yeah, right) to cover our other days in La Paz.  But Uyuni is truly thetwinsontour travel dream come true!  We have always, always, always wanted to come to Bolivia to visit the largest salt flats in the world– well, ever since we found out it existed.  It did not disappoint!  It was like all my dreams came true, and then some dreams I didn’t even know I had came true, too! 

So, let’s start from the beginning.  We left our hotel at 6 am (before breakfast of course!)  for our  7:40 flight. Finally a country where the tour guides think you only need an hour at the airport instead of 2-3 hours.  But it took us forever to get checked in because of slow people in front of us. It was mayhem!  There are separate lines for each destination, but people don’t read those. They were letting everyone for the 7:25 flight go ahead of us. Our flight was scheduled for 7:40. Mind you, it was now after 7:00! By the time we got checked in and through security (they let you take water bottles with no problem!), it was time to board, so I did not have time to pee. Luckily, it was only an hour long flight.   

So we got off the plane, and there is a sign in the first room at the airport that says baggage claim, but there is no baggage carousel, just people standing around, and a bathroom thank goodness!  So, you basically just stand there, and they bring the luggage in on a cart and set them in a row. I missed the actual process and chaos because I was in line for the much needed and aforementioned bathroom. So, as soon as I came out of the bathroom, there my suitcase was! Just waiting for me.  

Enough about that, we met our guide and set off on the real adventure.  However, we made her stop for a quick morning snack since we had missed our hotel breakfast.  We got a Bolivian specialty called a salteña from a street vendor cart.  The best way to describe this is an empanada with soup inside..   I’d definitley call it soup and not stew.  There was a lot of steamiing hot broth in there.   Obviously, I made a mess and got it all over my hands. Luckily, I did not get any on my shirt because they give it to you in a little plastic bag that conveniently catches most of the soup– even if it isn’t environmentally friendly.   It was quite yummy!  And only 6 Bolivianos, or a little less than a dollar.  There is an art to eating a salteña, and they say that if you can eat it without making a mess, that means that you are a good kisser. Oh well. 

Then we were back on our way.  Next stop the train graveyard!  The first trains brought to Bolivia were for the mines because they had been  making llamas carry all the silver to the ports to ship it to Europe.  Obviously, that’s not very efficient.  But the trains did not last long due to a decline in mining.  Silver lost its value as European countries started using more paper money instead of coins.  Our guide didn’t mention it, but I think the mines were depleted also.  Anyways, with the decline in mining, the people that knew how to maintain the trains left Bolivia. The indigenous people were never trained how to repair them, so as they broke down, they just put them all here together.  I think there’s over 100. They date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. The salt has not treated them well, but they are fun to climb on!

Directly across from the train cemetery there were some statues made out of recycled metal– we are talking Transformers (this country seems fixated on Transformers, which you would know if we had written about days 2 and 3. Oops!), Terminator, a giant giraffe, an alligator, and other assorted wonders. They built these during covid to try and earn extra money, and to combat boredom. A nice little 10 minute selfie photo stop. Who am I kidding? thetwinsontour take a bazillion photos. It was more like 15 or 20 minutes.

Our guide in La Paz had told us if we were lucky, we might see vicuña in Uyuni. And, he was right! Vicuña are part of the camelid family, but they have never been domesticated like Llama and alpaca. They have the softest fur, very thin and light. A human hair is equal to 4 vicuña hairs. And you only harvest like 250 grams from a vicuña per year–and don’t forget, these are wild animals! So they would have to catch them in order to harvest their fur.  That’s all the details I have because I was busy taking photos out the car window of my sweet vicuñas. But you knew that.  

But all of this greatness is nothing compared to what came next–the Uyuni Salt Flats!  There are no words to describe the vastness and amazingness of this place that has been at the top  of our wishlist for so many years.  It’s like a dream come true!  This is the largest salt flat in the world, and it seems to stretch on forever. It’s like being in another world, and at times you think it is snow, and other times it feels like you are on the moon.  Driving through here is mesmerizing. I don’t know how the driver doesn’t get lost.  There are no roads, but there are some visible paths where cars have gone the same way over and over, but those get washed away in the wet season.   The photographic opportunities are endless!  And amazing!  And well, I hope that you have all already given a love to the pictures we have posted on Facebook and Instagram because they are just amazing. See, I have already run out of adjectives to describe them!  Truly no words for this amazing experience 

It’s not all just salt. I mean, there’s a lot of salt, but there are other must sees here too.  Like the volcanic islands that are in the middle.  Millions of years ago, the Salt Flats were covered by the ocean, hence all the salt that was left behind.  So in addition to being made of volcanic rock, there are also fossilized corals on the island.  Pretty fascinating!   Oh, and did I mention the gajillions of giant catus that cover this island?  Well they are everywhere, kinda like Saguaro cactus of the Southwest (maybe they are the same?).  Appearantly, its more humid around the islands (think more just a little mountain, but it’s called an island) and the humidity is enough to keep all these cacti alive for hundreds of years.  Cacti grow about 1cm per year, so some of these could be over 600 or 700 years old. See, no words.  

There’s also underground rivers which obviously, you can’t see.  But there is a spot where it pops up, and also sometimes there are small holes called “ojos” or eyes in the salt.  I stuck my had down in one to break off a piece of salt crystal, and my hand came out completley covered in salt. If you are lucky, we may post a video of that later.  But only if you promise to give it a love on FB. Surely it deserves more than just a thumbs up.

What else did we do?  Well, we stayed in a Salt Hotel the first night.  It is literally made completely of bricks of salt harvested from the Salt Flats.  The walls are salt, the floor in the lobby is just chunks of salt, the bed frames are made of salt, the restaurant chairs/tables are made of salt.  Everything is salt.  It’s a lot of salt. (But I would not recommend trying to eat the walls.)

We also went out and did some stargazing.    There’s quite a few stars visible there even though we didn’t go that far away from the city lights, and the pretty big moon. This is the southern hemisphere, so no Big Dipper. We enjoyed taking night time Salt Flat star photos.  But it got super cold!  Good thing that I packed my winter coat with me.  It goes from intense daytime sun that requires sunscreen every two hours (or you end up with a sunburned neck and sunburned hands…) to downright cold at night.  The Salt Flats are still at altitude and per my Google search, even a higher altitude than La Paz. My phone said it was about 51 when we went out, but by the time we came back, it felt (to me) like it was in the 20s.  Crazy!

The next morning, we were off for more Salt Flat Fun.  We literally drove for over an hour to get to the other side where we stopped to see, are you ready for this?  Llamas and flamingos!!!!! A flamboyance of flamingos! All together in the same spot.  There is water on the edge of the flats where the flamingoes like to hang out.  There are 2 different species there too!  So that is cool!  We saw Chilean flamingos, which are ligher in color and have some black on their butts, and we saw James flamingoes, which are a vibrant pink and have some pink stripes on their backs.  Needless to say, we spent way too long here taking millions of photos.  But the thing is that we had to walk through a llama pasture to get to the flamingos.  So for us, this would be the equivalant of walking through a cow pasture at home, but with smaller poop. There were gigantic piles of Llama poop everywhere. They do use it as fertilizer, but there is more than enough to go around. Evidently, llamas just nibble the grass and don’t tear it out at the roots, so their grazing doesn’t destroy the landscape. I can’t speak for the poop though.

So, it would have been possible to climb the adjacent volcano if we were more physically fit– Note, walking on the treadmill for 2 hours a day does not prepare you for climbing at altitude. At all. Anyways, there was more to this volcano than llamas and flamingos. There were also chullpares, which are these little caves where they buried the dead. Except they used to bring them out once a year to celebrate Day of the Dead. And then put them back until the next year. Until the Spanish conquered them and told them they couldn’t be playing with mummified skeletons anymore. So they filled in the little caves. Our guide said the remains had been studied and then put back into the chullpares. We saw multiple skeletons in there. Quite the experience. After a quick panoramic photo stop, we headed back down the volcano for a picnic lunch. Let me tell you, Bolivia doesn’t mess around when it comes to picnics. We are talking tables. Plastic lawn chairs–the stackable, but non-foldable kind–that they put chair covers on–and wrap with fancy ribbon like you are at a wedding or something. The driver was always taking pictures of the table after he got it all set. I think this is so that he can show his boss that he did it, and not so that he can post it to his Instagram account. But wouldn’t that be neat if he did? An entire page of “picnic” tables in the Salt Flats that are fancy enough to double as a table at a wedding.

So that pretty much sums up the highlights of our time in Uyuni. It is everything i imagined and more. 10 stars. Highly recommend.

Love,

thetwinsontour