Everybody knows the Uyuni salt flat, the largest in the world, famous for its pictures with white ground as far as the eye can see, where you can play with perspectives 🙂

However this is possible only during the dry season and I went there during the rain season, with a totally different landscape! But let’s first talk about the three days’ trip from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile that ended in Uyuni in Bolivia, where Heaven met Earth…

We started in San Pedro de Atacama, where a van came to get us at our hostels and brought us to the border with Bolivia. The Uyuni trip is a very famous one, and there were about 10 other mini-buses ahead of us and it took us around one hour to pass the immigration. Fortunately the surrounding landscapes where quite amazing, at more than 4000m high!

After crossing the border, we were grouped in 4×4 jeeps, 7 persons per car with a guide/driver. We started the trip by visiting the Laguna Blanca (White Lagoon) that is indeed quite white due to borax (some kind of mineral actually used for soap) 🙂 After another short drive, we went to the Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon) that is green due to copper minerals oxidised, in front of the Juriques and Licancabur volcanoes, at that point we started to feel the altitude with the wind and cold…

We then headed to the Dali Desert, called like that because the shapes and colors of the desert look a bit like Dali’s paintings (apparently…) before going to some hotsprings where we could bathe in natural pools, with amazing landscapes!

Still on the same day we went to visit the geysers Sol de Mañana, at more than 4800m high. The landscapes looked quite amazing, almost from another planet with yellow-green-red dirt, some bubbling pools and smoke coming out of the ground, and sulfur-like smells, it was really cool!

At the end of the day we eventually went to see the Laguna Colorada, a lagoon that is red due to some algaes, and because of that a lot of flamingos live there, around 30’000 of them! With the red-colored lagoon, the flamingos and the volcanos in the background, the landscapes were really amazing!

We spent the first night in a refuge at around 4300m, fortunately neither my friends nor I felt any altitude sickness 🙂

During the dry season, on the second day we head to the Uyuni salt flat but because of the rain it was totally covered with water and the 4×4 can’t take the risk to cross it, so we took an alternative path.

We headed first to see the Arbol de Piedra (Stone Tree), a volcanic stone ejected from a volcano a loooooong time ago and that got eroded at the base, shaping it like a tree (more or less). It’s really cool, you get to see a lot of these volcanic stones in the desert, with strange shapes 🙂

After that we drove for some time in the Altiplano, it’s quite strange because it’s a really flat area, surrounded by some mountains, coming across a few lamas and vicuñas. It doesn’t feel like you’re at more than 4000m high and actually surrounded by volcanos that go up to 6000m!

We went to watch a few lagoons among them the Laguna Hedionda (smelly lagoon…) called that way because of the strong sulfur smell, and later the Laguna Negra called like that due to the dark color of its water.

During the afternoon, we eventually came out of the Altiplano and visited a small village before heading to Uyuni. Close to Uyuni we went to visit the Train Cemetery, were you can find the remains of old trains. Although they were used in the past, nowadays they are only stored there for touristic purposes.

We ended the second day in Uyuni and spent the night there before waking up early in the following morning to go watch the sunrise on the salar.

The last day started at 5am as we headed to the salar to watch the sunrise. We knew that the salar was covered with water, but we thought it would be a thin layer, like 2cm. Nope! It was more like 10cm to 50cm at some places! It was actually more like a lake 🙂 Still the 4×4 were able to drive (carefully) through, and we reached a point were we could watch the sunrise.

It was truly amazing, the water was totally still and the sky was perfectly reflected in the water. That’s why it’s called Heaven on Earth, you can’t tell the difference between the sky and the earth 🙂 The islands are perfectly reflected as well, it looks like they are floating! The jeeps look like they are flying, it’s really surreal! Honestly, we could watch it upside down without being able to tell the difference 🙂

We would have loved to spend more time there, but since we didn’t have rain boots, we were with flip-flops and water up to our ankles, that was quite cold 🙂 We eventually finished the tour back in Uyuni.

But my friends wanted to enjoy it a bit more, and convinced me to go back watch the sunset the same day, but this time with rain boots! Probably one of the best idea we had 🙂 We booked a tour for the evening and went back to the salar.

Waiting for the actual sunset, we spent some time taking some touristy pictures (available later in the gallery :)), and then the sun started to set. That was simply magical! The colors of the sunset were mind-blowing! It actually looked like the sky and the water were set on fire! When the sun was about to cross the horizon it was actually being reflected in the water and it looked like there were two suns at the same time!

 

We watched the sun set, gazing in awe, speechless… I hope that with a few pictures I can share a bit of what it felt like to be there…