Salar de Uyuni: Marfa, Dali and the Llamas

So we could give you the play by play of the three day tour... but it would just make such an amazing trip seem so boring.

The first day of course takes in the Salar de Uyuni, the highest salt plains in the world which occupy 12,000 SKM and even more in the rainy season. They lie at around 3600m above sea level and stretch in every direction into a hallucinagenic world. Mountains and volcanoes lie far into the horizon and appear to float in water above the blindingly white plains. Not white like Jessica Simpson´s teeth or like first snow on Christmas morning, but white like the last white you see before your retina is burned to a crisp. You fly across the salt plains in your jeep, in fact in a convoy of jeeps with all the other tours doing the same stops, and you take in a few salt hotels and processing plants, salt piles (where they collect the salt) and an island of cacti in the middle of the salt flats. In fact the salt plains were once at the bottom of a giant inland sea, and even now the salt forms at the top of a lake which at some points is up to 8m deep. This can be quite dangerous in some parts as the salt is a crusty layer, eerily similar to ice.

From there you drive as fast as you can off the flats, as getting stuck there in the rainy season can result in rain hiding the safe routes and potholes which could maroon your vehicle or send you under the salt crust. Night is spent in basic accomodations, but not before you dodge a few llamas grazing on the sparse grass of the high altiplano.

Following days are spent mostly driving, sucking dirt and attempting to arrange your cramped, crushed legs in some sort of comfortable position. Stops include high alititude lakes with thousands of flamingos, wind and water erroded rocks once at the bottom of the sea and now shaped into buttresses, windows and trees. More fun is found rising at 4am to see bubbling geysers and mud pots in first light and then of course soaking in hot springs while drinking morning beer with your cereal. All the while the other wordly landscape flies by amid the dust as you past red red mountains and deserts of rock. Endangered vicunas are pretty much the only animals that can survive off the sparse grass, and that is when it grows because in many places it is too dry and too high to have anything but rocks.

Our group was pretty good considering and we had fun listening to the same two SA panpipe dance remix cassettes on the tape deck. The Irish lads kept the nights interesting... and surprisingly we all made it back to Uyuni with only one flat tire.