Uyuni, Bolivia

ihana.com - big trip - diary - bolivia - april 2003

Dawn breaks over our camp

The surface is...

...more or less hexagonal

Saturday 26 April

The best time for pics on the flats is in the dawn light, the surface patterns are much better defined than in the afternoon. After breakfast of avocado sandwiches we zoomed westwards in search of supplies towards Uyuni, the largest settlement in the area. On the way we passed a hole in the surface, the crust is about a metre thick and the water is super salty, letting you know about every little cut in your skin after you stick your arm into it! It smells a bit minging too and leaves a white deposit everywhere - humm.

No style marks

Salt hotel...

...nice inside

Bus

Lorry

Sheep

Near the exit road to town is a hotel made completely out of salt, we cruised up to find the ubiquitous Toyotas encircling the salt brick structure. Its quite cool, probably worth staying there overnight if you dont have a handy landy to camp out on the flats in. The exit road leads past a salt mine then 20 terribly corrugated kilometres along the shore to Uyuni.

Traditional dress

Street market

Trendy dorises

Electricity freely available...

...as is llama for tea

Main street

We changed some US dollars for Bolivianos in one of the many cambio shops, there is no bank, then treated ourselves to a slap up meal of llama steaks - very tasty. There are many internet shops here too although the connections are snails pace we got some mails done before having a snoop about town, our first look at local life on the Bolivian Altiplano.

Uyuni is fairly minging so we decided to head back along the terrible road and camp in the salt again.

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