The whitest and saltiest place on earth, or is it another planet?

To explore the Salar de Uyuni, we decided to try first a 3-day jeep tour and if the salt flat was dry enough (we were after all just at the end of the rainy season), we would then take our motorcycles for a little spin on the salt. That morning, we met the group we would be with for the next few days. In addition to the driver and the cook, there were four other tourists: Sarah and Robyn, two American girls from the south of the US and Tomas and Julie, a German couple. We all introduced each other and climbed in the in the 4x4 to start the adventure we would share. The car was a 97 Land Rover which should be the perfect vehicle to cross a salt flat and a few deserts.

A white whiter than white (this is not a laundry detergent ad)
Before entering the Salar de Uyuni, we did a couple of cool stops at nearby attractions. We visited a train cemetery where all the old trains purchased in the US or Europe and used in Bolivia were rusting away. We also went to a small village that was extracting the salt from the Salar, with an explanation of how it was extracted, dried and then processed to be sold in markets. It was all fun stuff but we were getting eager to discover the real star of the day: finally we were driving towards the Salar de Uyuni. It used to be a big sea a long long time ago that had dried up and all that was left was a layer of salt, ranging from a few centimeters on the edges to 15 meters at the once deepest portion of the sea. The edges of the Salar were under a few inches of water, which was not a problem for our 4x4 but would definitively prevent us for riding on it with our bikes. We did not want to risk having the bikes rust completely before the end of the trip. So bummer for the motorcycle exploration but it looked like we were in for some good fun in a car.

We all had our sunglasses on and even so, it was hard to look through the tinted windows. There was endless white, so white your eyes would hurt when removing the sun glasses. No end to it, just salt with in the far away distance some mountains. It was like being on another planet and all of us where hypnotized by the strange beauty of the Salar. We were now getting closer to our first stop, the Isla Pescado, where we would have lunch after visiting the island. This was an odd place: it had been under water for centuries and as the water vanished, the underwater coral world became an island where huge cactus started growing. It was quite unexpected to see both on the island dead coral reefs and huge live cactus, with on top of top the incredible white of the Salar in the background. We ate our lunch at a salt table and after that, we had some fun making silly photos. The salt flat being all white and reflecting so much sun, you have little to no sense of depth and perspective so you can do all sorts of pictures tricking the eyes like Caroline jumping super high in the air or Chad about to be smashed by Caroline's foot. We were all in teams over the Salar, working on staging up the best photos.

We drove some more through the amazing whiteness and a were sad after a couple of hours to leave this unique place: it felt very ordinary after that to travel through the desert! No more walking on crunchy salt or wet areas that would reflect the sky and mountains. We reached our simple accommodation for the first night in the small town of San Juan. After a good dinner, we all went to bed as there was only 45 minutes of electricity left and had a good night's sleep. The second day of our tour was simply a firework of attractions one after the other in the dry and hot landscape of the desert. And it felt like a real organized tour as we had limited time in each location to admire, explore and take pictures of these attractions. We started with the active Volcano Ollagüe that was releasing fumes from the side and then a series of lakes allowed us to observe better the star bird of the area: the pink flamingo. They were just everywhere in the lakes that were reflecting the surrounding mountains and the most impressive ones were in the Lago Colorada, which water were colored in deep red due to a bacteria that was also making the famous birds even more pink than the others. We just loved this desert filled with treasures: colored lakes all so different, sand dunes with all the shades of an amazing sunset, stone formations that looked like petrified trees. You could not be bored for a second, even for the long stretches of jeep driving. There was always something to admire or look at.

Watching the sunrise in the desert from a natural hot tub

The third day of the tour was the most painful in the sense that we had to be ready to leave at 4:30am. We were not too excited about that but there was just not that much to do in the desert so after admiring the stars for a little while, we all went early to bed. Ready on time in the 4x4, and as it was still dark, we drove towards the natural and handmade geysers: we were now in geothermal world. We stopped and tried to take a few pictures by night but we knew that what we had waken up so early for was only a few miles away. And there it was, still in the dark: the Thermal waters and guess what, we were the first car on site. It did pay off to get up early... Three of the girls, without hesitation and despite the cold night, took off their clothes and put their bathing suit on. Chad was somehow surprised to see Caroline being the first one to jump in the nice pool of warm water at 28C (90F) degrees. All three girls were just enjoying the warm water, having the time of their lives as the sun started to rise above the natural hot tub. Meanwhile, the others cars had arrived and people were circling the pool and asking if the water was warm. Chad had already joined the girls by then and before other people were brave enough, we had a lot of time to enjoy the pool with very few people. It was well worth getting up so early to watch the sunrise illuminate the sky and nearby sand dunes.

The breakfast we had at about 7am after the hot bath was well deserved: we were ready to further explore the desert before going back to Uyuni. We crossed the Salvador Dali desert, rightfully called so as it looks just like a painting of the famous Spanish artist of the same name, only to continue to the Laguna Verde. This one was a little disappointing as the absence of winds was not activating the micro-organism to color the lake in bright green. We walked back to the car and drove a few hours to the small village of Villa Mar for our lunch. After that, we only had a few more places to visit before returning to Uyuni like the Valle de Rocas that had strange and diverse rock formations. The most famous one is supposed to remind you of the Homer Simpson, at least his profile. We enjoyed walking through the formation and imagining what they look like. We also took good pictures like the one with Chad appearing multiple times in the panoramic. Can you find him in the picture below?

The tour was coming to its end and we were all reflecting in the car upon all the amazing things we had seen. The south of Bolivia had all these treasures that we never suspected before exploring the country and even if we had not been able to see them from our motorcycles, it had been a blast. The group we were with were also all good people and as we returned to Uyuni, we decided to share dinner together before we would each go our separate ways. The German had left us earlier at the Chilean border so we had dinner with Sarah and Robyn. We enjoyed with them our last night in Uyuni, knowing that the next day we would be back on our bikes driving the 200 Kms of dirt road south to Tupiza. We would then be really close to the Argentinian border and ready to enter our next country.