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Reflection lake bolivia9/18/2023 ![]() We were driven to an open stretch of the Salinas de Uyuni ( salt flats of Uyuni) to take trick photographs and then to the west of the Salar to the Isla Inchahuasi, also known as Isla del Pescado or the “Fish Island”. (Hiking Tunupa was not part of our itinerary but I have read that you can climb it.) There is a village at the foot of the volcano which has a modest salt hotel. You can hike to (almost) the top of Tunupa, or just make a round trip from the cave of mummies located at about halfway from the top. Here is a picture of one of the colorful lake you would see.īut we will come to those minds boggling lakes later. Those lakes haven’t dried, yet, and make the most picturesque backdrops in salt plains of Bolivia. The plateau still has some other fresh and saltwater lakes, mostly in the south of the salt flats in the famous Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve near the border of Chile. When the lake dried, salt crystalized forming a solid salt crust over the surface(tens of centimeters to a few meters). Of course, the scientists insist that the entire Uyuni salar area w as submerged as it was part of a giant lake about 12,000 years ago. No doubt that the traditional name of the salt flats is Salar de Tunupa, and the locals insist that is how it should be called. When the volcanoes hid her child, Tunupa cried filling the plains with her white tears that created el Salar de Uyuni en Bolivia. ![]() The cemetery is about 3 km outside Uyuni in Bolivia and is always the first stop on Salar de Uyuni tours.Īs Juan drove further North in the Altiplano, we saw the dormant Volcán Tunupa towering over the salt planes.Īymara legends say that Tunupa was the goddess whose child’s fatherhood ownership was being contested by many gods. Now the most action these dead trains get is that visitors climb on top of them and pose. So practice your Spanish and don’t be shy to ask your guide a few questions on your Bolivia salt flat tour. Contrary to the popular belief that the local Aymara people destroyed the trains as they weren’t happy with the intrusion, the trains stopped in the 1940s because of excessive mining and mineral depletion.īut our guide didn’t tell us all of this even though most of us could understand Spanish perfectly. British built the trains in the late 19th century. Uyuni, that seems like a soulless sunny town, was once the distribution hub for the minerals (from the nearby Potosi mines) that were carried to Pacific ports. When we walked toward the rusty, but not forgotten, train engines and carriages lying useless in the desert, I understood what Juan meant by a train cemetery. Our Uyuni salt flats tour began with a visit to an antique train cemetery. I could hear my shoes scratching against the salt crystals. I was standing over the vast milky Uyuni salt flats that looked like a jigsaw puzzle of polygonal formations created by the crystallization of salt due to water evaporation. On the first day about half an hour into the tour, he brought the jeep to a screeching halt, and I jumped out of the vehicle.Īs soon as I stepped out, my reliable Merrell shoes cursed me for I had stuck them into salt already. Our driver-cum-guide Juan was driving a group of six ladies (my Canadian friend, a random Colombian group of four, and I) into the heart of the Bolivias salt flats. My itinerary for a 3 day Salar de Uyuni tour included visiting a train cemetery, trick photography on the salt, visiting the geothermal geysers, seeing colorful lagoons where flamingos colonize, hopping around boulders, and sleeping in salt hotels amongst other once-in-a-lifetime things. Walking on the Salar could be the closest we can get to walking on the moon.īut I didn’t know all this until I took a Bolivian Salt Flats Tour from Uyuni towards the end of my South America backpacking trip. The copper mountains with the mix of an occasional snowy volcano try their best to fringe the horizon. When you stand upright in these bizarre salt flats of Bolivia, you see a salt desert billowing into the infinity and beyond. On top of the vastness, the Salar del Uyuni is special because it is high up near the Andes at a height of 3,600 meters above sea level. The Uyuni Sala r are the world’s largest salt flat, extending over 9,000 square km. You must have seen the regular mountains, rivers, glaciers, deserts, but before the Salar de Uyuni, I had never seen salt flats, at least not as gigantic as the one in Uyuni. An Unforgettable Trip to the Salt Flats of Bolivia
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