Hey, this Gage writing in! Surprise! I will be talking about our time in the Uyuni salt flats AKA Salar de Uyuni, in Bolivia. When we finally arrived in Uyuni from Salta, Argentina, we promptly fell asleep. My mom wrote about this insane travel day we had in a different post. We woke up to the sunlight, annoyingly intruding into the big windows. We slowly got up, and had our big breakfast in our hostel. Subsequently, we were picked up by our tour company. We quickly drove to our first destination, and the cemetery of trains. There were behemoth sized trains, long dead with people climbing around, about, up, and down.
Soon, we grew tired of climbing the rusted giants and started back towards the car. We got back in and drove to the last trace of shopping for souvenirs we would see in a while. We bought 2 small toy llamas at a shop. I named mine Fluffernutter and Celia named hers Besito.
And we were off! We drove off to the salt flats. A barren expanse of nothing but white salt on the ground, with beautiful honeycomb lattice patterns. Truly desolate. So beautiful and like nothing I have ever seen.
We took a ton of pictures quickly got on to an “island” in the middle of the desert. This island was filled with cacti which seemed surreal given the surroundings. We went on a short hike and enjoyed the amazing view. The sign said "No tocar", but Celia and I didn't heed the warning and OUCH, those are sharp cacti!
We got back in the car and drove until we were at a salt “beach” where we saw a beautiful sunset.
Then our driver drove us to a hotel that was literally made of salt. We got to see the locals making the bricks made of salt and then firing them.
We slept there and then the next day we woke up and saw places where people were sacrificed in little caves. Soon we saw geysers that were burning hot, bubbling and frothing like they were boiling. Which they were! The site of the geysers was high on a mountain at 16,000 feet! Crazy landscapes in Bolivia!
The second night we stayed in a hostel in the mountains. It was very rustic and a bit chilly but there were hot springs and my mom and Celia took a dip after dark and saw the most amazing stars. The milky way was almost white and there was a meteor shower starting with the most twinkling sky ever. The last day we hiked through a rocky valley which was filled with chinchillas, they look like mix between a rabbit and a raccoon. We saw a 2 lakes, the roja and verde, which were nice but we were spent after all the driving so it was hard to take it all in. Lots of flamingos which were pretty!