In the middle of the Salar de Uyuni

Uyuni – The Salt of the Earth

Throughout the night I slipped into sleep only to be bounced out of it on a regular basis by the bumps in the road. The temperature was plunging, but I had learned through bitter experience to bundle up and wear everything I possibly could to keep warm in a bus. By 7a.m. we were deposited near the offices of the expedition company that would take us across the Salar de Uyuni – a huge plain of salt, in places meters deep. The sun was shining, and soon brought some warmth back to our bodies. It would be another hour or more before the office would open and so the various groups of people wandered off in different directions to explore Uyuni. There is not much in the town, yet there is a certain attractiveness to its ‘end-of-the-world’ feeling.

Downtown Uyuni, a small town square…

A small town square provided benches in a somewhat park-like setting, while small restaurants catered to the early arrivals looking for coffee and breakfast. There was very little traffic, and that which did make its way through the streets consisted mainly of 4-wheel drive vehicles.

Traffic control…?

Here too scrap metal had been recycled into a statue or two, perhaps to frighten errant drivers into observing road manners and regulations. I found a small restaurant and sat down for a coffee and a chance to recharge my telephone battery. I had replaced the battery in Ecuador, but the replacement seemed even worse than the original, so I was swapping batteries every few hours.

Soon enough it was time to return to the meeting point, and already small groups of eager travelers were milling about the several land rovers parked near the office. We were to travel in a small caravan for the first hour or so out onto the salt flats, but then break off into smaller groups of 2 vehicles. There were 11 of us, plus drivers and assistants, which meant squeezing into the 2 small jump seats in the back and the actual back seat, while driver and assistant sat comfortably in the front. I pity the other group, which had to squeeze six passengers into the vehicle. We each of us had bought a minimum of 6 liters of water, sufficient, or so we all thought for the next two or three days. It wasn’t. All our gear was shunted onto the roof top rack and carefully covered and sealed away – I wondered against what, but it soon became obvious that there is plenty of dust in the air when so many vehicles make their way across the Altiplano, and keeping bags free of dust was an absolute nightmare.

A souvenir from Uyuni

Houses of Salt

We set off on our trip, with as first destination a small collection of houses or huts which served as homes and shops for a small community on the edge of the salt flat. Here we took in a demonstration of how the salt is collected, dried, cleaned, crushed, and packaged. It is rather interesting to see, but what was more interesting was learning that these shelters had all been constructed using salt as the raw material. Hard-packed, the salt is cut in blocks from the ‘collection’ areas and subsequently used as building material. Even with the rain during certain parts of the year, the blocs are dense enough that they do not melt or otherwise fall apart. We were to visit another place later that morning, a hotel, built entirely of salt blocks. It is not difficult to imagine what products might be available for purchase as souvenirs, and there were plenty of people who turned over a dollar or two to take home a package or two of Uyuni salt. Uyuni is, however, not simply a source for salt.

Underneath the large salt flat, which covers nearly 11,000 square kilometers, lies roughly 70% of the world’s known Lithium reserves. A wealth of other minerals make this desolate area an important economic resource for Bolivia. Initially plans were created to allow mining of Lithium to take place on a grand scale, but due to protests, foreign mining companies halted operations, and it is now only the Bolivian government that is mining much smaller quantities on an annual basis from the area.

Slowly sinking away…abandoned train near Uyuni, Bolivia

Steel giants

Due to its mineral wealth, construction of a railway was started in 1888. The railway was envisioned to carry mineral wealth from this region and others to the Pacific coast. Yet by 1892 construction had halted, and when mining collapsed in the early 1940s, the railway and many of its running engines and cars were abandoned. Situated only 3 kilometers outside the town of Uyuni, we were taken to the ‘railway cemetery’ and allowed to wander around the slowly rusting remains of these abandoned iron monsters. Due to its location, altitude, clear blue skies and flat surroundings, seeing these behemoths slowly sinking into the sand and salt is an eerie sight.

Abandoned trains – a graveyard for steel giants

We moved on, having taken our pictures, and were happy to get back into our vehicles. As cold as the night had been, the sun was shining brightly, and the temperature was slowly creeping toward the low-teens, a level I hadn’t felt for quite a few days.

We sped off across the valley, making our way to the next destination on our itinerary, a landmark for the Dakar rally which crossed the salt flat for the rally segment between Argentina and Bolivia. At the site, a hotel built entirely of salt is an oddity interesting to visit, while outside, the stage created of salt and festooned with flags from many different nations, is almost impossible to photograph without some person or another popping up in the frame.

Salt hotel, built entirely of salt blocks

It is a weird sensation, being at an elevation of roughly 3,700 meters, surrounded on all sides by a vast white plain that is gritty, dry, and potentially blinding. We moved on again, ever forward across more territory. The water we thought would be sufficient for several days slowly being depleted, and we all realized the potential danger that lurked in such an intriguingly beautiful landscape.

Flags near the salt hotel on the Dakar rally route in Bolivia