Saturday, February 20
We reluctantly pulled ourselves out of bed and went to search for a big breakfast. As we were heading out, we ran into Martin, Lauren and Pedro. We were all looking to ride the Salar de Uyuni today, so we agreed to meet up after breakfast and head out together. We managed to choose the place with the slowest service in the universe and it took us an hour to get back to the hotel.
Back at the hotel, we chatted and swapped travel advice and war stories before realizing that we really ought to get heading out. It was very overcast this morning, but our chatting had given the sun some time to work and a few cracks were appearing in the clouds.
Our first destination was the train graveyard. For reasons unknown to me, Uyuni was the end of the line for scores of Bolivian locomotives. The tracks just end in the desert behind town. We rode over and parked amidst the rusting rail cars.
It was such a strange scene and no one had an idea for why these trains were just abandoned here. It seems like enough metal to be worth melting down at the very least. However, it made for great fun clambering all over them and taking photos.
A few tour groups soon showed up and that was our cue to depart. Pedro went back to the hotel as he had ridden the salar yesterday. The rest of us headed north to vibrate our way 25 km to the salar entrance. The salar had been flooded and few weeks before but it was now nearly dry. We had to be careful to avoid the puddles as they were saturated salt water and would splash into hard to clean places in the bikes and rust away.
We rode agonizingly slowly and picked our way through the puddles until we reached the firm white salt of the salar proper. When I had first started thinking about doing this trip years ago, the Salar de Uyuni had always been on the top of my list of must see places. It is the remains of a giant prehistoric lake that dried out and left two major salt deserts, one of which is Uyuni. It’s a perfectly flat, white expanse of salt that goes on for mile after mile. There is nothing to give any perspective, it’s an infinite vista of white beneath the vivid blue altiplano sky. It’s marvelous!
Once we were on the salar, we stopped to take the obligatory false perspective pictures. With nothing around to give any scale, it’s easy to trick the camera. Well, not so easy as getting things aligned perfectly turned out to be challenging and required a good deal of patience. It was nice being with Martin and Lauren as we could help each other take pictures.
After exhausting our ideas in photography, we rode out to the Salt Hotel. It’s a hotel build out in the salar out of blocks of salt. Despite reports of it being closed as a hotel, people were staying there and it had an interesting bar and lounge. We split up afterwards. Inna and I were going to ride out to the island in the middle of the salar while Martin and Lauren rode back to Uyuni.
Riding the salar is like nothing else. You can follow the tracks of the tourist expedition vehicles, but there are no obstacles and no speed limits. We set off in the general direction of the island and were soon zooming across the salt. It was surreal. The only reference points were the five or six sided 2 foot wide salt crystals of the salar surface. Zoom zoom zoom and ride anywhere you please as fast as you like. I was laughing aloud in my helmet, so happy to finally be here after dreaming about it for so long.
I took the liberty of filming a few videos while riding since there was nothing to run into out here. I was heartbroken to find that the videos had a strange purple tint in the right third. The camera had never done it before nor since. The videos are still cool, but it’s maddening. If anyone knows some photoshop type skills to fix the color please email me.
It took us forty minutes to reach the island. The island was made out of coral from when the salar had been a lake. Now it was covered in cactus, some over a thousand years old. The island was crowded with tourists who had arrived by 4×4, and we definitely stood out riding up on our own bikes and walking around in full riding gear. It was hot but we played cool.
We climbed to the top of the island, took some pictures, and then were off back to Uyuni. The ride back was as satisfying as the ride out. With no reference points, I roughly followed our GPS track back. We took a few pictures of the reflection of the clouds in the puddles and then were back on the rattling road to Uyuni. Since we knew the road by know, we flew along over the corrugation. If you go fast enough, you can skim the top of the ridges and it’s not so bad.
Our first stop in town was the car wash. As we watched the huge caked layers of salt wash off the bike, Inna noticed that her license plate had fallen off. Corrugation strikes again. We waited impatiently for a thorough cleaning, and then we went back to the main road. We rode tediously slowly back towards the salar with one of us on each side of the road, scanning the edges. After 10 km Inna spied her plate and we were greatly relieved. We decided we wouldn’t bother putting them back on.
Back at the hostel, we cleaned up and met Martin, Lauren, and Pedro for dinner. We went to Minuteman Pizza, run by an American ex-pat from Boston. The pizza was very good, and I think it was our first dinner of the trip with fellow travelers. Since they were going north and we were going south, we traded advice and stories.
