After losing 7 toe nails and needing to wear shoes one size bigger (luckily, no injuries during the race apart from slight knee pain - several competitors had to give up because of ankle injuries) Jocelyn and I set off for the Salar de Uyuni, largest salt flats in the world, set at 3,650m high and visible from the moon...
Before the race, we had toured around San Pedro de Atacama, north of Chile, to acclimatise. We saw geysers, vigoñas, mountains with unnatural colours, fields of cactii, lunar landscapes, stars that looked so close we thought we could touch them (seriously, the stars were amazing, I had never seen them that clearly, even in Disney's Space Moutain).
Needless to say that our expectations for the Salar were high... But we weren't disappointed! The wow factor was at its max.
So the Salar of Uyuni used to be a lake some 40,000 years ago, and is estimated to hold 10 billion tons of salt. I can't even imagine what that represents. Big piles of white I suppose. They even make hotels out of salt bricks. We tasted them, yup, it was salty. Duh.
7 billion tons of salt...
The trip we did was an in-and-out of Bolivia tour. 4 days 3 nights. It sounds short, but every second counts, as the landscapes are simply breathtaking.
Pictures are worth a thousand words (and they really don't do justice to the real thing), so here are a few.
Geysers of San Pedro de Atacama
The city of Uyuni, women in their traditional outfit
A cactus several hundred years old
A vigoña (it looks like a lama, it spits like a lama, but it's not a lama. This lama-like animal simply hangs out in deserts and villages, chilling. Easy life...)
These moutains inspired the extravagant Salvador Dali for some of his paintings...
One of the crazy-looking rock formations of the region
There are 3 species of flamingos in South America
And a 4th one, only found in Bolivia apparently
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