Argitaratu: 04.10.2018
From La Paz, we took the night bus to Uyuni in the south of Bolivia. Uyuni is a dusty and unexciting town in the desert. But from here, the tours to the Salar de Uyuni, a huge salt flat, start. I had decided to do a 3-day tour with Salty Desert to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile:
Day 1: At 10 o'clock, we set off with our Spanish-speaking guide Marcello and our funny group of 6 in a big jeep. After visiting the train cemetery, the souvenir stands in the town of Colchani, the Dakar monument, etc., we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the Salar de Uyuni. As my travel guide fittingly states: the salt flat looks like a white extension of the unimaginable nothingness. White salt and blue sky as far as the eye can see, you can't do without sunglasses here. The perfect place to take funny photos...
In the heart of the Salar lies Isla Incahuasi. The island is covered with towering cacti up to 13 meters high and surrounded by a white nothingness. From the viewpoint, you have a great view of the Salar. After enjoying the beautiful sunset in the middle of the Salar, we checked into our salt hotel. Walls, floor, table, and chairs are almost entirely made of salt. Fortunately, it wasn't as cold at night as expected.
Day 2: The next day, we had a long and bumpy off-road drive through the desert (about 300 km) with many stops at different-colored lagoons with hundreds of flamingos, interesting rock formations, a geyser field, volcanoes, etc.
Day 3: On the last day, there were still a few lagoons and volcanoes on the way to the Chilean border. The funny bus driver had scared us about the border control in advance, so I actually declared the one orange that flew into my backpack. In the end, the backpacks were only superficially searched and the customs officer just smiled at my orange declaration (@Cat: I have a déjà vu from Canada 😅).
Exhausted from the tour and completely covered in dust, we finally arrived in the warm San Pedro de Atacama.