Uyuni - Salt Flats and Train Cemetery

We hired a couple of jeeps from Uyuni to take us to the Salt Flats and on the way we stopped at the Train Cemetary on the edge of town. It is a surreal graveyard in the middle of the desert, full of the rusting hulks of old steam trains. Apparently for some years there has been the intention to turn it into a museum but this is Bolivia and it remains a pipe dream and unfortunately nothing more than another good photo opportunity on the gringo trail.

Bridge over troubled waters...

Back in the jeeps again and the next stop was Calchani, a god forsaken village in the desert on the edge of the salt flats. It exists to process the salt which comes from the dried up lake that created the flats. A few old ladys have stalls selling souvenir pots and ashtrays made from salt which has been filed down and painted and there is a one room "museum" with furniture made from salt. It had one living breathing occupant - a llama which was later encouraged out by the woman with the stall outside. It obediently obliged but then insisted on constantly sticking its nose firmly up her bottom as she tried to continue enticing customers to view her wares, pretending to be nonchalently oblivous to her furry butt plug!

Cemetaries Bolivian Style

Having seen how they processed the salt we headed out to the flats. Just outside the town the ground starts to resemble dirty snow. As we continued it became whiter and whiter until all you can see ahead is the blinding whiteness of the salt flats meeting the brilliant blue sky. From hideous grey brown desert there is pure brilliant white beauty. It is 12,000sq km of salt flat which was left behind when a massive inland lake dried up thousands of years ago. It is unbelieveably stunning and surreal. We drive across it for an hour or two until we reach Fish Island,a rocky outcrop covered in cacti and a baños where we stop for lunch.

After lunch we head out onto an area of the flats armed with props for our photo session. The flats are an amazing spectacle for which the main draw for tourists is to utilise the nothingness and lack of perspective for silly photos. We spend an hour or two getting some great shots before heading off to the salt hotel. Aside from the straw roof it is built entirely from salt blocks including the tables and chairs outside. We chill some bubbly in the salt pool which is filled with cold salty lake water which has come up from under the salty crust. We were celebrating a birthday in the group so we drank the bubbly whilst watching yet another stunning sunset.

Chess - the thinking womans game

The birthday celebrations that night meant that we all donned fancy dress outfits sourced from the local markets and entailing an eclectic mix of traditional bowler hats, ponchos and other accessories which when worn all together, particularly by the wrong sexes raised quite a few local eyebrows. In Bolivia only the women wear the bowler hats so the sight of our bunch arriving in bars in our collection of outfits drew plenty of giggles from the locals - those locals who had remained conscious. In Bolivian bars people drink simply to get drunk so bars can be quite quiet places as most of the clientele will be snoring. However sleeping is often a better option than listening to the inebriated droneings of the conscious clientele who will try and belt out the lastest Bolivian hits on the unfortunately highly popular Karaoke machine. Thankfully we finished the evening in a bar where we joined the locals in dancing and endless rounds the rarely practised pub game of limbo.

Dave the Birthday Boy

Downtroden woman

Entertainment on the salt flats

Me on the salt flats!

Some more fun on the salt flats

Stallholders in Uyuni

Sundown on the Salt flats

The boys on the beer

The town with no name

The Train Cemetery

The Train Cemetery - Uyuni

Uyuni