Would you like salt with that?
Uyuni is where we met up with friends to take a 3 day tour visiting Salar de Uyuni. The salt flats, 1,000,000s of years ago, were under the ocean, oddly explaining the presence of a coral mound in the centre of it all, nowadays covered in cacti. Even harder to believe when I learned they are at 4000 meters, but offer some of the most unusual landscapes I´ve seen, more similar to space than earth.
6 of us piled in a 4x4 with props galore to get creative on the optically deluding miles of flat salt, where it´s as if depth doesn´t exist. Trying to exploit the cunning vista, we balanced in strange positions to compose visual fallacy.
Away from the salt flats we drove across a smooth road less landscape of mountains, volcanoes, unusual rock formations, lagoons all in varying colours.
Climbing up to 5000 meters, the highest I´m likely to ever get, on land. Flamingos litter the algae infested lagoons, but it´s the algae that changes the water from turquoise to shades of green and red. Beautiful and surreal.
Our last day started at 4a.m. to witness the geysers that threateningly release steam from what look like small craters. A pressure cooker effect in an early morning freezing atmosphere. Then to wake up properly we soaked in natural hot water springs. Water like a bath, evaporated into the chilled air, giving a charming and sublime effect.
At breakfast we had bread and boiled eggs, but the whites were still runny, and asked our tour guides to boil then a little longer. No problem. We waited and waited and asked if they were ready. Soon, apparently! Then it was time to go, and still no eggs. Asking again, what had happened, they had supposedly fallen out the window! That was the best they could come up with. I can´t help but think a 7 year old could come up with something better than that! 6 hours later we arrived back into civilisation.
posted by happytrails @ 4:50 AM
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