The random adventurers: Uyuni salt flats (or how sometimes it's worth it to do the touristy things)

The first day at Uyuni was pretty uneventful but extremely nice.

We walked around, people-watched, and enjoyed the super bright sunlight.

Around town you see a 50-50 mix of locals and tourists.

The locals wear their typical clothes, mind their own business mostly, and work hard. They tend to their stalls or shops, they try to convince you to take tours, they walk at a steady pace carrying their blanket wraps of mysterious goods.

The tourists, on the other hand, walk around looking for tours, coming back from tours, or having one day of rest before/after a tour. Everyone is wearing llama wool hats, leg warmers, and sweaters (75% of which have llama patterns).

The options for eating are clearly divided among the two groups: locals eat typical food (diverse meat dishes with loads of Andean potatoes and a few other vegetables), while tourists eat at those horrid "tourist menu" places that look exactly the same in every town in the country.

The touristy restaurants offer an assortment of a few meaty dishes, bland pizzas with way too many random toppings, pasta, and "Mexican" food. In every place they have literally the same menu with 2 or 3 differences.

What else do you get at those places? Food safety. Ish.

After booking a tour of the salt flats (it's pretty much impossible to do independently without a car that you don't mind destroying by driving through salt) we ended up having lunch at the one restaurant that was a bit further from the main boulevard where most of the eateries for gringos are.

There we made friends with an adorable little boy and his baby cat.

Making friends with the locals

That's another interesting thing in Bolivia: 9 out of 10 shops of any kind have at least one little kid chilling around.

I guess babysitting must be not the most common, and kids are extremely well behaved as a result of having to join their mothers through their working day.

Well behaved kids were a big surprise after all the horribly spoiled brats we run into in Argentina and Chile (sorry to say it, but it's definitely true).

So the day went by happily, anticipating the fun of the salt flats the following day.

But the following day, the delicious juices we had the previous night proved that they had been made with tap water.

I won't say much more than this: do NOT drink tap water in Bolivia.

...

Luckily, it took just one day of rest and rehidration salts, and the following day, a beautifully sunny one, we took a 4WD to the flats with our guide Roly, and 4 other people.

After a lot of consideration, we had decided on the one day tour.

It seems like the 3 day tour of the flats is also very nice, going through a National Park with flamingo lagoons and a lot of natural beauty.

Nonetheless, we decided that we had seen a lot of beautiful nature independently, and would see more further up our trip... without having to spend the best of 3 days in a car with other people, without the chance of deciding on when/for how long we wanted to see or do things.

And we didn't regret it. The tour was beautiful, and we got to see a lot.

First, they took us to a "train graveyard", which was like something out of a movie. The big train geek of the group (Chey) was like a kid in a toy store.

The train graveyard and beautiful sky.

Dead train.

Chey recreates the Far West fantasy of climbing up a train.

And then does the train walk.

More train corpses.

We would've spent hours there... which led me to thinking,
not for the first time: "why don't we have our own vehicle
that we're willing to destroy driving through salt all day!"

Goodbye, cruel world.

Before heading deep into the salty parts, the guide took us to the town where the salt is processed. That's just a stop for people to buy salt-made souvenirs and for the groups on the 3 day tour to eat. And for a very necessary toilet run (remind me to tell you things about Bolivia's relationship with toilets).

Then, the salt pyramids.

Wow. Much white. Very salt. Such flat.

Adventure motorcycle guy filled everyone with envy (especially us).

Coolest kid in the flats.

At lunchime, we eat on salt tables, sitting on salt blocks (yes, it sounds like a children story) outside Inca Huasi, or "the fish island". A rock island in the middle of the otherwise perfectly salty and flat salt flats.

Inca Huasi.

Hiking the pretty short trail to the top of the island left everyone out of breath because of the altitude, making us doubt about our status of "young", "fit", or anything of the sort.

But it was beautifully worth it.

Once we were done with Inca Huasi, our guide took us to the middle of the flats, with no-one else in sight, to take the famous "perspective photos" that take advantage of the flatness and whiteness of the place.

The flatness and whiteness.

Chey in the middle of it.

Our fantasy brought to life: human-sized stuffed traveling partners.
(from left to right: Emperor Meow, us, Dalai llama and Barry)

The famous photo of the dinosaur attack rescue.

Gringo-eating dinosaur.

My head was feeling like filled with lead due to the altitude, but I managed
to repeat the bridge not one but 5 times for Chey to take pictures.
(I love them, though)

Then there was a quick look at the salt hotel, where people can't stay anymore (a lack of proper sewage system made it insanely contaminating).

What you can do is walk around the little salt building, where EVERYTHING is made of salt (except for the bedding).

Salt bewbs.

A little flag spot is there, where flags from everywhere have been planted by
people through the years...no aussie flag, though :(
(if you see this picture big sized, you can see the van guy being a creep)

Majestic flags in the wind.

Last, when the sun was about to set, Roly took us to the place where the salt is covered in water.

We had been given gum boots, and got to frolic in the salty water with the insane reflections that make the sky seem neverending.