15/03/2023 to 16/03/2023 - Uyuni & Salar de Uyuni / Bolivia

The overnight bus was supposed to drop us off in Uyuni at 5:30 am. However, a few locals had made themselves comfortable about 70 kilometers before our destination with a little fire on the road and didn't want to let anyone pass. So we arrived at the bus station in Uyuni at 7:30 am. Actually, it wasn't a bus station, but a dusty street. We ended up in the desert. After a short walk with full luggage, we arrived at Casa de Sal, a mix of a very nice hotel and a confusing construction site. We quickly took care of the most important things for the start of our 3-day tour tomorrow, ate a very delicious 5-course menu at the Hot Spot, and then went to bed.

The next morning we headed to our tour operator Andes Salt Expeditions. After a short briefing, we set off in a Toyota Range Rover. Our first destination, the train graveyard, is still in Uyuni. With these impressive steam locomotives, silver, minerals, and especially salt were transported from the southwest of Bolivia to the Pacific coast of Chile. The next stop was the last place before the big adventure. In the town of Colchani, we visited the first salt factory in town and had time to buy some souvenirs. Then it became saltier under the car tires. We had reached the largest salt flat in the world, the Salar de Uyuni. With a length of 140 kilometers and a width of 110 kilometers, the "lake" is more than 10,000 square kilometers in size and thus the largest salt flat on Earth. The salt crust was formed 10,000 years ago by the drying out of a lake. The pictures speak for themselves. There are even two islands in the middle of it. We visited Isla Incahuasi, covered with cacti. After a fantastic sunset, we went to sleep in a hotel originally built entirely of salt.