salt and pepper

the last bit of amy and my time in boliva was spent on a three day tour of the remote and deserted area in the south west corner of the country. breathtaking scenery, heaps of salt, and a lot of time in a bumpy, cramped jeep. a perfect end to our time in bolivia.

the main focus of the tour was the salar de uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. wish i could remember more details of the trip, but at least i have some nifty facts to regal you all with. and that is much better than be droning on about the german guy who constantly wanted the car windows closed despite the desert heat or about about the nz couple who taught me how to chew coca leaves (which, by the way, tasted like dirt). right? now where was i?

ah yes, salt trivia. the salt flats were formed from a huge prehistoric salt lake that eventually evaporated leaving what is now the uyuni salt flats-- 12,000 sq. km of salt, salt, and more salt. it contains about 10 billion tons of salt and the people there produce about 20,000 tons of salt for use each year. the salt is about a meter deep in most places, but at some points is as deep at four meters. in short, there is a lot of salt. so we spent the first day visit the salt flats, driving around and taking pictures and trying to avoid being blinded by the shockingly white salt that surrounded us. oo, we even got to visit a hotel made entirely out of salt and an "island" in the middle of all that salt, filled with hundreds of cactus plants and some rodents that somehow got stranded out there. we arrived early that evening at our, erm, accommodations for the evening, a place rumored to have showers and electricity but in truth had neither. so we amused ourselves with travel stories and star gazing and went to bed at the late hour of 8 in the evening.
day two we left the salt behind us and headed into the desert to see more of what the bolivian countryside had to offer. volcanoes and bright red and blue lakes and scores and scores of flamingos. wasn't quite sure how the flamingos would on at more than 4800 meters above sea level, but they seemed to be doing just fine. but certainly one of the highlights of the second day was that after spending the previous day squeezed into the back of the jeep, we were able to enjoy the relative luxury of the front row where our bruised knees were no longer abused. the accommodations of that night pretty much mimicked the ones of the night before, except this time we had electricity but no flushing toilets. oh well, you can't have it all.

we started the last day bright and early at 5am. i guess its not too bad since there is nothing to do out there in the middle of nowhere except to sleep early. our first stop was to the otherworldly geysers where we could walk around and enjoy all that bubbling mud and sulfuric steam. then it was on to the hot springs. amy and i couldn't face the idea of stripping down to our swimsuits in the freezing weather, but we did soak our feet before breakfast time. after some more suffering in the jeep, we arrived at our last stop, the beautiful 5000m high laguna verde. after wandering around and snapping our last few pictures of bolivia, they dropped us off at the boarder and we were off... to chile.