Favorite Destination: Salar de Uyuni (2/2)

After a week of intense suspense, here's the continuation of the adventures in the salt desert: Uyuni II, the return!

Previously in the Salar: mocking llamas, enchanted marshlands, a ghost town, festive villagers, boiling mud, and multicolored lagoons!

After two days of traveling by 4X4, we reach our destination and arrive at the edge of the world's largest salt desert: the Salar de Uyuni.

The next day begins at dawn, with a magnificent sunrise and a festooned llama crossing the road looking dazed after a night of wild festivities.

Our first stop of the day, when leaving Laguna Colorada: the Arbol de Piedra. The result of erosion on a volcanic stone, this stone tree is one of our most beautiful souvenir photos from the tour. The colors and pastel tones remind me of the Dali Desert, crossed the day before.

We are about to leave, but we're missing someone... we find our (crazy) guide perched up high, playing acrobat.

As we ascend the Andes mountain range, we admire lagoons and dozens of volcanoes, all higher than the last, some reaching over 22,000 feet!

The landscape changes and we face frozen waves caught in motion. These are lava flows from the active Ollagüe volcano. We observe small white clouds regularly escaping from its summit... on the Chilean side, as our Bolivian guide points out. Indeed, this volcano is located on the Chile-Bolivia border. These slight clouds hovering above the summit remind me of Indian smoke signals...

This site of petrified waves has a surreal quality and radiates a very particular atmosphere. Bones have also been discovered on this site, probably those of a whale, but no excavation has been conducted. Bolivia does not take care of its history and lacks a budget to study the remnants that abound. So this is how Bolivians do it. Knowing that its neighbor, Peru, possesses such a wealth of cultural and historical significance, it's tragic for humanity's history to see these traces of our past neglected... But Bolivia, a country ranking among the poorest on the planet, has many other pressing issues...

Despite everything, I can't help but think that attention to historical remnants, education, and tourism could only bring a positive boost to this country, considered very beautiful for its varied landscapes but lacking great archaeological interest.

It is nonetheless in one of its small museums, in Cochabamba, that we observed one of the oldest animal fossils on Earth. And as another example, during this Uyuni tour, our guide took us down to a spot where there seemed to be nothing... But with a bit of attention, one could discern holes in the mountainside. These holes are actually caves carved and built by humans. They have never been subject to archaeological excavations, so it's impossible to date them accurately.

But I digress from the salty subject at hand, carried away by the waves...

We get back on the road and make a stop in a small village. The streets are deserted... But where did they all go?

The mystery is quickly solved, thanks to a major clue: the sound of drums rhythmically accompanying local festivities. Of course: it's the last day of carnival. Moreover, we hear it from the local vendor, stuck alone watching his shop, it's also the village's festival day! In short, everyone is dancing, and especially, everyone is drinking!

Our carnival float, aka our SUV, will set off decorated and blessed with beer poured on its tires in honor of Pacha Mama (Mother Earth).

Finally, we arrive at the frontier of this unusual desert, entirely made of salt.

How does salt find itself in the middle of the Andean plateaus? Its formation, dating back about 40,000 years, likely comes from a giant prehistoric lake, Lake Minchin. Covering 12,000 km², the Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt desert in the world, far exceeding Salt Lake City (4,000 km²) and the Atacama Desert (3,000 km²).

That night, we don't stay in a gingerbread house, but rather in a salt house: the walls, tables and chairs, beds... everything is made of salt! Hansel and Gretel would be envious!

We exchange a few words with the hostess, completely drunk during this never-ending carnival season: she talks to us about the construction of this hotel, what it has cost her, the life she leads here, her position as a woman... A liberated conversation that perhaps would have never taken this turn without the few beers consumed.

As usual, the cook who accompanies us prepares a revitalizing meal: a mani soup (welcome to Bolivia!) and pasta. One detail, the Canadian had made it clear that she was allergic to wheat.

... A question that apparently had never crossed our cook's mind!

Woken up early after a short night, given the state of excitement we were all in knowing we were so close to the goal, we entered the Salar to observe the sunrise.

The spectacle enchants us: after a cold wait, the shades begin to vary, and from a deep black, orange tips gradually emerge. As we witness the splendid sight of the rising star, a strange calm envelops the group, which had been so excited just hours before.

We then progress onto this salt ground, intrigued yet somewhat anxious: not a drop of rain has fallen in recent days, the salar is clean and dry as in the middle of summer.

It finally rained last night, for the first time in weeks, but will it be enough?...

Several islands populate the Salar, like stranded in this white ocean, such as Incahuasi island, also called Isla del Pescado or mistakenly Isla de los Pescadores. Of coral origin, this islet is teeming with cacti. The oldest one still alive is over 900 years old, and the oldest one, still visible but dead since December 2007, is over 1,200 years old!

Finally, we reach a wet area of the desert: the spectacle we eagerly awaited then unfolds before our astonished eyes.

We step out and stroll around the vehicle, not straying too far, as if we might get swept away in this limitless landscape and lose our bearings. The illusion of walking on the sky is exhilarating, and we spend a few moments capturing the magic of the moment on film.

Our guide has one more surprise for us: fishing for salt crystals. Like precious stones, these small crystals display different colors, depending on the geological layers they come from.

Last stop at the Salar: the little museum... made of salt (again!), where we learn, flag in hand, that not all Andean people identify as LGBTQ+.

Our tour of the Salar comes to an end as we arrive in the town of Uyuni, bustling with tourists coming from or heading to the desert. The only curiosity of this expensive little town, with artificial airs and little interest, is the train graveyard.

Let's just say this part of the tour is more than unnecessary, unless you wish to witness the charred carcasses of trains in a garbage dump, all crowded with tourists.

Departure from the tour from Tupiza, with Alexandra Tours: cheaper than many other agencies we visited, with friendly and competent staff as well as a good vehicle: I recommend it! But tours to Uyuni are organized from several cities: Oruro, La Paz,... Uyuni!

The best time to go is towards the end of the rainy season. In summer, you won't have water to create this illusion of being between two skies; and at the height of the rainy season, which extends from January to March, you risk having too much!

Of all our travels around the world, of all the landscapes we have been fortunate to admire, those of the Salar de Uyuni remain among my favorites!

One day we might return...