Salt flats, red lakes and southern Bolivia

Salt island with flags (no british though!)



Salt flats from coral island

 I booked a 3 day tour to go and see the salt flats and lakes in southern Bolivia for the day after i arrived in Uyuni. I had seen desert in Chile and Salt flats in Argentina, but i really wanted to see the salt flats in Bolivia as they were are the largest in the world.

The first day a group of 6 of us headed to the salt flats about 2 hours drive away. On the way we stopped in a  small village for half an hour, and had a lot of fun playing football with a young lad in the street.
We drove onto the salt flats, and headed across them for about an hour, following the tracks of other vehicles. It was a spectacular drive, salt all around disappearing over the horizon in nearly all directions, broken only by distant mountain ranges.

We stopped first at a salt hotel, then eventualy arrived at an island in the middle of nowhere, that had toilets and a restaurant. We had lunch there and took a walk around. It was made of coral, as the salt flats were once a fairly deep lake. It looked bizarre looking out across the flats from the island, it was as if the the colours of the sea and sky had inverted leaving a dark blue sky and white sea. 

We then drove for a further couple of hours, eventualy reaching land again and made our way to a small village and to our hostal. The Hostal was made completely of salt, apart from a corrugated iron roof. It had salt beds, walls and  salt carpet but no heating or hot water! That night was pretty cold, but i slept fairly well. The owners had a hyperactive son who spent all the time throwing things around (called brian! doesn´t sound quechua to me.....!) which wore us all out. 

Distant mountains form the chile border

The next day we visited several lakes of various colours, the most spectacular was near the end of the day which was bright red and full of flamingos. It was bitterly cold, with an icey wind preventing us spending too much time taking photos outside the 4x4!
That evening we arrived at our hostal, and it was freezing cold! The only heating was a small wood burning stove in the social area, and none in the bedroom. We spent the evening around that and having very quick showers, and the electricity went off at 9pm so we all had an early night. I have never slept anywhere so cold. I had 3 layers of clothes on, and 4 heavy blankets. In the morning our guide told us it had dropped to  -20C outside!

Inside the salt hostal with devil child Brian

Day 3 we headed very early up to 5000m where we saw Geysers (not as spectacular as san pedro), stopped at some hot springs and a couple more lakes. The landscapes were very unusual, red desert with rocks scattered around that looked like Mars. We stopped at a Green Lake (dead, full of Lead and Arsenic) that had a volcano behind it that NASA had used to test the mars probes because the conditions were so similar - very little oxygen because of the altitude, very cold and similar landscapes.



Red Lake coloured with Algae



This was probably my favourite trip so far, because the landscape was so unusual and beautiful and the group i was with had a great sense of humour - 2 aussie guys, a bolivian girl who acted as translator as the guide couldn´t speak English, and a swiss and german girl. Also its not often you get to sleep at -20C......

Green lake and NASA testing area