Salar de Uyuni: 4WD trip over 12000 squared kilometers of salt

From La Paz, we took a night bus to Uyuni. The best buses to go there are from todoturismo because they have heating system that is very needed for the cold nights in Uyuni. The previous day, we spent the entire evening looking for their office but couldn't find it, until a worker from the station called his supervisor to ask about it. Even policemen didn't know it was across the street from the station! The trip was 10h long and the worst part were the last 180km through a dirt road. The bus was shaking like a blender!

Most tourist hire the tour when they get to Uyuni and start it a few hours later. However, we wanted to rest a bit from the bus ride and also research thoroughly the different agencies as we read pretty bad things such as car accidents and drunk drivers! We researched so much that we even knew where the drivers were washing the jeeps after the tour!

As we wanted to do the Salar tour crossing to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, we decided to hire Estrella del Sur, which has agencies in both countries. We read good reviews from this agency and also it was the only one that gave us a written contract. Moreover we discovered that one of the drivers leaving the following day, Figo, was driving a Lexus, which is a sign that he is a good driver as these cars are mostly used in private tours. We lobbied to go with him.

The following day we started the tour at 10am. We met Figo and our jeep-mates: two Chilean guys, Martin and Felipe, and a couple who live in Belgium, Dani from Marbella and his girlfriend Kinga from Germany. They were traveling backpacking for 9 months around Asia and Latinamerica.

The first day we visited a train cementery and the Salar itself. We drove through a flat and white huge salt surface of 12,000 square km! You can't see the other side of the shore. It is like a white dry sea. It is difficult to drive there because it is hard to get oriented as you only see the horizon line and nothing else.

We stopped to take some funny pictures. Being all white it is easy to play with the perspective and make people look tiny in the pictures while others look huge.

 

After that we went to visit the Incahuasi island. It's an island in the middle of the Salar full of cactus. We had lunch there and then we hiked to the top of the island. We saw huge cactus. One of them was 9m high and we found one that was already dead and it was 12m! Since they grow 1cm per year, it means that they were 900 and 1200 years old respectively.

After lunch we continued driving through the Salar and just before sunset we got off the jeep to walk on the Salar to enjoy the sunset. Beautiful!

That night we slept in a basic hostel made of salt. While we were waiting for the dinner we played cards. After a while, the daughter of the hostel owner, Guadalupe, joined us. She wasn't shy at all! she was used to tourists and she was very impatient. She didn't like to loose.

The second day we visited a volcano view point and lots of lagoons full of flamingoes. The lagoons had some weird white material on the surface and Figo explained us that it was "borax".

After having lunch at one of the lagoons, we continued our tour to see "el árbol de piedra". It is a stone formation with a tree shape, made by the erosion of the wind on the stone.

Around 4pm we arrived to "Laguna Colorada". It was the perfect time to see the red and orange color of the water. It is a special lagoon that in a specific point in time during the day it changes the color of the water from transparent to red. That happens because in some specific conditions of wind and sunlight, the movement of the water moves the red algae of the lagoon and the water changes the color.

That night we stayed in a pretty basic hostel near the red lagoon. It was a very cold night (-15ºC) luckily we had our sleeping bags and we slept 6 people in the same room.

The third and last day of the tour we woke up very early, at 4.30am to see the sunrise at the geysers. It was very nice to see the steam but it was hard to walk close to the geysers because it was veeery cold during the sunrise.

After that we went to the hot springs. One of the Chilean guys got inside the water. We were tempted to jump in the hot water but it was so cold that we couldn't imagine how to get out of the water after the swim.

We had breakfast in the trunk of the jeep. Figo prepared us a nice breakfast with pancakes and hot tea. Delicious!

After feeling a little bit warmer with the tea, we continued the route until the Salvador Dali desert. It is an area with rocks on top of sand dunes that remind to Dali paintings. While we were driving through the desert we saw some snow formations on top of the sand. It is very interesting to see snow in the desert.

Finally we arrived to the last stop, the Green Lagoon. It was  too early to see the green color of the water and there wasn't enough wind. But the mirror effect on the lake was pretty cool.

At the green lagoon we said goodbye to our Chilean friends and the rest of us went to Hito Cajones, the border between Bolivia and Chile. We took a minibus and we said goodbye to our guide Figo. It was nice to change the bumpy desert for asfalt road.

Next Stop: San Pedro de Atacama.