Uyuni
What a great place. Not Uyuni itself but I spent 3 days exploring the salt lake, desert, and Andes.
Bolivia seems to have some different attractions. There is a prison that you can visit illegally in La Paz. It is its own world there. Within the prison there is a real estate market (prisoners can buy a better cell). But the cells are like guest house. There are restaurants, barber shops, etc.
Spouses and kids live in the prison as well. Most are in for the drug trade with the range of murders to pushers. There was an English chap that was in for drug related charges and was given illegal tours. He would bribe the appropriate people and give you the tour. This caught on and more people got in on the game. The prison has its own drug lab and some go to buy cocaine. The government shuts it down once in a while and it was closed to the tours when I was there. There is a book called Marching Powder that details about life in the prison.
There is another odd attraction which a bone yard for old trains. I went to see it. I did not find it particularly interesting or Bolivian but it was on the way to the Salt Lake.
I met up with some really good people on the part of the trip. Two young English chaps, a brother and sister from Australia and another Australian women. We all had a interest in music and everyone seem easy to get along with.
With a guide and a cook the six of us make our way to the Salt Lake.
Salar de Uyuni (or Salar de Tunupa) is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles).It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, 3,650 meters high. The major minerals found in the salar are halite and gypsum.[1]
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Some 40,000 years ago, the area was part of Lake Minchin, a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind two modern lakes, Poopó Lake and Uru Uru Lake, and two major salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and the larger Uyuni. Uyuni is roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States.
Piles of salt at Salar de Uyuni.
Salar de Uyuni is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt, of which less than 25,000 tons is extracted annually. All miners working in the Salar belong to Colchani's cooperative. Every November, Salar de Uyuni is also the breeding grounds for three species of South American flamingos: the Chilean, James's and Andean flamingos. It is also a significant tourist destination; highlights include a salt hotel and several so-called islands. As it is so flat it serves as a major transport route across the Bolivian Altiplano.
Also, Salar de Uyuni holds half of the world's reserves of lithium, a metal which is used in high energy density batteries (see lithium battery). There is currently no mining plant at the site and the Bolivian government doesn't want to allow exploitation by foreign corporations, but instead it intends to build its own pilot plant.
You can take some incredible pictures here because of all the white and lack of perspective. Check out the pictures of the frog, the Australian women standing on my tongue and us walking into a Pringles can.
There is an island within the salt lake that is populated with hundreds of cacti. Later on that night we stayed in a hotel made of salt.
I think at one point we were at 5000 meters above sea level and went for a hike. It was a short hike so not that bad. We past through the worlds’ highest desert, lots of flamingos, and different colored lagoons
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