Hola todos! Been a while hasn’t it? I am currently in Termas de río Hondo making my way to Central Argentina. Have been moving fast since we left Sucré and as such playing catch up on the blog once again. For today’s installment I will run you through the detour to Uyuni and the tour of the famous Salar de Uyuni salt flats I did while I was here.
Firstly getting over to Uyuni was quite the slog as it was a 0530 start out of Sucré to get up to the station and get an 0700 bus to Potosí. Got to the bus station fine and reached Potosí about 1030, after a brief haggle to get a taxi to the other terminal in Potosí I was able to get on a bus at 11.15 going to Uyuni, I arrived in Uyuni about 1545 and checked into my hotel okay a good hour ahead of planned time. The evening there was pretty uneventful but the next day I did the Salt flats and train graveyard tour. I am planning to make a video on this place when I get round to it so just going to keep this one fairly brief.
Next day I am up and into the square for 10 am when I am picked up first and the land cruiser picks up the others, in total there were 6 of us plus our driver, it was me, a Peruvian girl, 2 German lads, a French and Italian lad. Quite an interesting mix, though these were the most cool Europeans I met on this entire trip, just generally a good group of sound lads.
First we stopped at the train graveyard, this is interesting as these are all British built steam trains that got retired in the 1940’s and 50’s after the mining industry here declined and now the trains are being left to rot. Interesting stuff.
Next we briefly stop at a town called Colchani where the German fellas end up having a beer and so do the rest of us during our 40 minute stop here. After this drive comes back and picks us up and we are out on the salt flats proper.
We drive for about 20 minutes across the salt flats. They are very bright in the midday sun and you deffo need shades out here. Drive gets the table out and we have the packed lunch that was picked up on the flats which was pretty good.
After this we drive to various locations on the flats including the museum where they have all these different flags. Interestingly it used to be a hotel and you can still go into the rooms inside it.
Another interesting place is the sculpture labyrinth, which was built to celebrate the Quechua culture and you can go inside the maze and get lost which we all did but get over to the other side and see the sculptures.
After this it was near sundown and so we are driven back to the spot where we had lunch and drive pulls out a bottle of vino, we all have a glass and watch the sunset which is beautiful by the way and turns the watery part of the salt flat into a perfect reflection giving this place it’s earned name “El espejo del mundo” – the mirror of the world.
After sunset we are taken back to town, despite it running over time it was an excellent trip and well worth the £60 spent on it. After this I go out for dinner then have an early one as it’s another early start in the mañana for the crossing into Argentina.
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