Salt, salt, everywhere...

After Potosí we took the bus to Uyuni, home of Salar de Uyuni. Salar de Uyuni is the massive stretch of white salt, an ancient dried-up lake, otherwise known as the salt desert. We just did a one day tour, which started at 10am with a trip to the train cemetery.


The train cemetery was originally a trainyard, where trains were loaded up with minerals from the salt desert and taken to Chile. Eventually all the minerals were used up, and the trains were abandoned. They've been sitting there now for about forty years.



From the train cemetery it was about an hour drive into the salt flats. I'd seen photos before, but it was still incredible to actually be there, and to see such a huge expanse of white with no horizon. Walking on the salt is almost like walking on cut glass; crunchy like snow but not cold, like sand but not soft.


While we were at the salt flats we also visited Isa del Pescado, an island of cacti in the middle of the desert, so named because the shape apparently resembles a fish. (It doesn't. They should have named it Isla del Cacti, but that's Bolivia for you). Some of the cacti on the island were 800 years old or more, including a few that were actually labelled with names and ages -'Old cactus, 900 years' and 'Deceased cactus, was 1200 years, died in 2008'.

Nicola