The Salar de Uyuni

Last week we went on a three-day tour of the Salar de Uyuni and the surrounding desert. The Salar is possibly the most unique landscape I have ever seen in my life. It is over 10,000 square kilometers of flat, blinding white salt. (Yes, I wore sunscreen on the small amount of skin I had exposed.) It is so huge and flat and reflective that it is actually used to calibrate satellites.

Not only is the Salar a source of salt, of course, but underneath is the world’s largest lithium reserve. As we move towards electric cars and renewable energy, battery technology is going to be really important. But having suffered centuries of foreigners coming in to take natural resources and leaving nothing, Bolivia isn’t going to let their lithium go easily. It will be interesting to watch how it plays out.

But back to our vacation. Much of it was spent in our Toyota SUV that is just like the other 30 or so SUVs that are lugging tourists around to all the sights. Our tour guide had us on a tight schedule, always telling us how much time we had to take pictures of each place. Bathroom stops, unfortunately, were not part of his schedule.

After the first day in the Salar, we woke up our second day and went to see some pre-Inca mummies that were not very well preserved in these coral-rock tombs. We learned nothing about these mummies, but it was certainly a creepy way to start our journey into the desert. We spent most of the second day driving around the desert, stopping to see beautiful lakes and crazy volcanic rock formations. The starkness of the desert was striking. Dusty soil, a few scrubby plants here and there – it is amazing that people can even live out there, but this seemingly dead soil is the home of super-nutritious quinoa, so go figure. Llamas and vicuñas, their wild relatives, are just about the only animals that can live at such an altitude and such dry harsh conditions. Except for, you guessed it… flamingos! Did you know that flamingos lived in the Bolivian desert? Neither did I! Oh, and this weird rabbit-chinchilla thing that jumps around on the rocks. Very strange place.

On day three, we woke up at 4:30 to put on our bathing suits. Very surreal to put on bathing suits inside my down sleeping bag when it’s below freezing. That’s right, below freezing INSIDE the room. Then we drove through the dark for a bit and I think we took a wrong turn and ended up in Mordor because suddenly we were surrounded by scalding hot, nasty-smelling gases come out of the ground all around us. Glad I wasn’t wearing any rings.

Next stop, we get out of the car, strip off our many layers of long underwear, hats, gloves, etc, and jump into the most amazing natural hot springs I have seen in my entire life, and watch the sun rise over the mountains. Then pancakes with dulce de leche for breakfast. Paradise in the middle of the desert.