Uyuni, Bolivia

We had quite a short and scenic drive from Potosi to Uyuni arriving in time for an afternoon of relaxation before a full day touring the salt flats the following day. Another must do of Bolivia, I was looking forward to getting out for the day but I couldn't help but think all we were going to see was a lot of white salt!

We left Uyuni in a convoy of 4 land cruisers and our first stop was a visit to a train graveyard. It was pretty cool to climb all over the rusted engines and you could of spent ages taking photos but sadly it was just a brief stop. Next we visited and area where the salt is locally processed by drying and crushing before being bagged for selling within Bolivia. The Uyuni salt flats are the biggest in the world and are larger than Lake Titicaca. The flats were once saline lakes, 90m deep in places. 12,000 years ago a volcano erupted and lava poured into the lakes and evaporated the water leaving behind salt deposits up to 27m thick in places. Our first stop was to an area on the edge of the flats where they are digging up the salt and putting it in 1000kg piles ready for collection. The salt was only thin in this area and there was a lot of water around, making for very pretty photos!

To get a sense of the size of the flats we drove for an hour of so to an island where huge cactus' are growing. After lunch on the way back to Uyuni we stopped so that some silly photos could be taken. A camera is able to focus on objects in the foreground and background as landscape is so white, what is close and far away can't be registered. This means that you can have a perfectly in focus shot of someone sitting in someone elses hands or emerging from a wine glass. Watching people trying to take these photos was funnier than actually being in the photo yourself! We finished the day by watching the sun set and the moon emerge which gave us another photo opportunity to try and hold the moon. I tried to be more original and went in for kicking the moon. Overall is was a much better day than I expected but ultimately what we saw was just a lot of salt!!