I arrived late into Uyuni after a boring, uncomfortable 6 hour drive. I had a 2.5 hour break in Potosi where I experience probably the most dismal weather I have to date, completely dark and rainy all afternoon. Here I changed buses and met some eccentric Brazilians that were good company although communication was difficult. Upon arrival after midnight in Uyuni the Brazilians and and I quickly found a place to stay and I picked up a stray Malaysian that seemed lost and told her to join us, being the only other English speaker on the bus.
The next day I awoke to find Brazilians everywhere, they were taking over the hostel. Over the next 3 days on the Salt Flats I mainly met Brazilians, flocks of tattoo clad, loud mouthed Brazilians. They Malaysian girl and I awoke early and immediately arranged a 3 day Salt Flats tour for the same day, so I was in and out of Uyuni in under 12 hours, which was nice, no need to kick around another ghost town and watch the tumbleweed roll by, and get harassed by every local offering Salt Flats tours in pathetic English. I left with all my stuff planning on carrying directly on to San Pedro de Atacama, just on the other side of the Chilean border, wedged in the desert, surviving solely on tourism or else it to would dry up and fall apart like everything else in the Driest dessert in the world. Anyway we embarked that morning at around 11, we were a group of 6 people, 1 Spanish, 1 Malaysian, 1 English-Chinaman born in France, Myself!, and of course, a couple (Brazilian). We were in an all wheel drive toyota jeep that held 8 people. The other 2 being the driver/guide, and another Bolivian who, I am not quite sure what he was there for, I never saw him do anything and he hardly talked, he only stayed for the first day.
We set out to the Salt Flats about a 15 minute drive west of town. on the edges of the flats were where we stopped first and saw a lot of the salt refining going on. Large trucks sat all over the area with mounds of salt dotting the ground for several hundreds of meters. The salt on the ground, being actually quite brown, would be scraped up into mounds. From here water, mainly from rainfall, would land on top and sift through the mounds, acting kind of like a purification method. The salt in these mounds are sizeable crystals that have a veery strong flavour.I was dissapointed to see how dirty the floor of the flats were, I thought it was supposed to be white! everywhere! what is this? We continued on after photos, had a few more stops... more photos, then started driving, directly out into the middle of the flats, on a salt path, hardened and packed down from the weight of numerous vehicles driving over the same path for immense lengths of time.
This is when it began to get interesting...
Driving out into the middle of this flat expanse. The salt around us began to get whiter and clean. As we put the salt mounds behind us and drove straight into the middle of this enormous plain it was clear just how massive it was. Now purely white, the salt went on forever touching the distant mountains and hills on the horizon, dozens of kilometers away, hours in the jeep. We stopped and had lunch at the Hotel de Sal, a small building and restaurant completely made of salt bricks. Here many jeeps had stopped to take a break and people were everywhere, running around, taking photos. After lunch we embarked again, the dark clouds behind us.Hoping it was not going to break out in rain and ruin the trip we sped, racing the clouds. When there is rain (which there is more of December through February), the rain sits on top of the salt flats hopefully acting as mirror, although the right amount of water is key, a bit too much, and the jeeps cannot continue and shorten the trip. Luckily we had no rain today, yet also luckily, we had rain the day before, the whole day in Potosi... As we kept driving looking out to the sides, dry salt under us, in distant areas water could be seen and parts of nearby volcanoes were shown on the ground. As we got further in the reflections on the left and right slowly grew larger and stronger, then all of a sudden I look forward and there is a lake of water, as far as the eye can see. The entire horizon and view in front is shining of the floor. and we are heading straight for it. The sky cleared up and it was beautiful blue sky with fluffy white clouds. As we got further in, now surrounded by inch deep water, the view was mind blowing, all the people in the vehicle had their faces pressed to the windows, necks craned to see what they could see, whispering and muttering profanities out of astonishment, only swear words seemed to express the level of amazement in our hearts... Cameras flying left and right trying to catch it all. Not long in,we stopped where 2 other jeeps had already parked, on long strip of salt that rose slightly above the water, like an island. Here both the other jeeps were broken, one with engine problems, the other a flat tire, us we were scott-free.Stepping off, out into this expanse was impressive. looking around and feeling as if you are standing on water, on a lake, it does not feel like ground. Off in the distance there is only sky, the ground has become a complete and perfect mirror of the sky, to every detail, without flaws. As I began to walk out into the space, for it was space, neither negative or positive, there is nothing for the mind to logical connect to the physical world. You are simply walking out into space, an unchanging picture, a symmetrical picture lying unperturbed by your presence. One could walk forever, wanting only to continue walking through space to reach out and touch the picture that is surreally displayed before him. Small salt islands rose up above the thin layer of water, dotting certain places and creating minor patches in the space, holes of white. I stood starring out for many minutes, not feeling alive, or dead, not feeling conscious, but simply being, here, in this dream state, for what else could it be, I am walking on nothing, on the clouds, in the sky, surrounded by the sky. Feeling almost high from the feeling, the only thing that would bring me back down was looking down. Through the shimmering water the salt could be seen again, the ground found, octagonal and pentagonal shapes made up the salt floor, dividing it into a puzzle or even a membrane. Looking back at the trucks and the people silently walking around,taking it in,quietly talking to each other, not wanting to disturb the peaceful silence of the flats. From this distance the keeps and people were full reflected on the ground, their bodies and mirrored bodies moving in unison, much like a shadow but with more detail.
This was one of the most powerful feelings I have felt. A feeling that is thrust upon the body and mind, created not by any substance or catalyst forcing the change, but a change that is subtle and comes simply from doing something or seeing something that is unwordly, this is a powerful feeling. I felt it once on the Inca Trail and even there, though different, was similarly as memorable and fierce. I think many people look for this feeling in travelling, it is the desired outcome. People do different things to try to reach this point although some don´t know what to do when they get there. Often they just get trigger happy with the camera and look more through the lens than they do their eyes. This I have seen to much and it is disappointing just to watch, buzz-kill.
We continued on to La Isla de Pescado (fish island) named so for the look of the island from afar when there is a good reflection on the floor. This island made of volcanic rock set there for likely for the last god knows how long, is covered with enormous cacti stretching up to 12 meters in height. By this time we had driven out of the water covered area and back onto dry, white expanse. Walking around the island was nice, a strange feeling being on that type of island, literally sitting alone in the middle of the lifeless salt. The cacti were everywhere, standing like giant people motionless, their figures and silhouettes seen all over the island, a population, a reserve of life. Standing next to these beasts, I myself felt dwarfed, think about the Asian in the group who was naturally dwarfed by the world. ,yself and now even more so by these behemoths, some of them dating back thousands of years!
The rest of the salt experience was just hours of driving on and off of water patches, pooling up in seemingly random areas, enormous beads of water droplets slowly permeating through a white membrane to get to the other side. We arrived to our lodge in the late afternoon. The lodge was completely made of salt bricks, the tables and stools as well, I actually never asked how these bricks were made, although they were quite impressive and very effective insulation, inside was held at a perfect temperature, while the outdoors were quite brisk from the wind. The next morning we took off early, although after 45minutes had to turn back because of a forgotten Iphone. We returned and it was nowhere to be found, whether it disappeared or someone at the lodge saw an opportunity to move up in the world, nobody will ever know.
The next 2 days of the the trip were long and relatively uneventful in comparison. We visited mainly lagoons of different colours. The large yet, unbelieveable shallow waters were red or green from different minerals that lay therein. The depth of the waters was usually 50 centimeters only. Flocks of flamingos nonchalantly grazed around dipping and rising to fetch their mini prey out of the water. In these days the hours spent in the jeep were long and slow, the means of travel got tiresome by the end. The change in scenery as we got further south was impressive as we life became more and more scarce and we the earth began to dry up into dirt and sand as we neared the great Atacama dessert to the south. We stopped to visit gysers and natural hot springs which were very relaxing and refreshing. The highlight of the night before was the lodge, much less pretty than the one on the first night. This lodge had light for only a few hours, toilets that lacked water, and food that contained impressively long hair woven in and around the food in which it occupied. Luckily the fully Brazilian group got their food before us, so we got the heads up. We quickly put in a request that food without hair would be preferable. We ate spaghetti w/o hair and were gifted with a bottle of wine by our guide.
The transfer to San Pedro was relatively long-lasting and tedious, entry to Chile is slightly more strict than other countries in the continent. Although all said and done, I ended in San Pedro and carried on with Thomas, the English-chinaman born in France, we agreed that would stay here for Christmas, we also agreed that it would be better off if we could just skip the day and carry on, both knowing it would be a bit of a downer.
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