One of the most talked about and probably most popular destinations in Bolivia: The Salt Flats. I’ve heard from so many friends and bloggers who have said the salt flats were the highlight of their time in Bolivia, which I totally agree with after spending 3 days doing the desert crossing. (Warning in advance there is lots of photos!)
The crossing started in Uyuni which is a completely remote town in the middle of the desert. A population of probably no more than 2,000 live there so spending a night there was far from any other town I’d been to before but they cater pretty well for tourists as everyone starts the desert crossing from Uyuni. Luckily this meant they had a good pizza restaurant to have dinner in!
We set off at midday the next day in groups of 5. We were picked up in 4x4’s - the only cars suitable for the journey! The first stop was just 10 minutes away from the hotel at the train cemetery. A slightly eerie place, which looked a bit like a film set.
The next stop was the Salt Hotel, with the famous flags! The hotel costs around £600 a night to stay there so not many budget travellers stay there! But of course it’s a good stop for photos anyway. I’d have liked a larger UK flag to have been there but I think travellers from the UK are of the minority compared to the rest of the world!
So the next stop was the one we’d all been waiting for - the Salt flats themselves! Time for some photo fun and lots of terrible jokes like ‘where’s the pepper?!’ I actually tried some of the salt and it was very very salty!
Water needed asap. We spent around an hour taking some photos and enjoying the white salty scenery. For miles all you could see was white! An hour was definitely long enough in the heat... Someone told me Bolivia was meant to be cold - they were wrong!!
Isla Incahuasi was the next stop - basically a island of cactuses in the middle of the Salt Flats! It was actually one of my favourite stops on the desert crossing. You could climb up to the top of the island in around 40 minutes and you had the most beautiful view across the Salt Flats from high up. Occasionally you saw 4x4’s from other tour groups drive past but other than that you saw nothing but white and a volcano in the distance.
As the sun started to go down over the salt flats our final stop of the day was to watch the sunset before heading to Jukil Community Lodge where we spent the night.
As the sun started to go down over the salt flats our final stop of the day was to watch the sunset before heading to Jukil Community Lodge where we spent the night.
A few of us opted to do a sunrise hike the next day which involved a 5am wake up! It took around 40 minutes so it wasn’t too strenuous and it was totally worth the early start with the view from the top.
We we’re back on the road again by 7.30am and the sun was blazing already. Throughout the whole day we did around 5 stops over 8 hours - a cave, another abandoned train line and my favourite stop of the whole tour; the lagoons where flamingos lived. It was so amazing to see them in the wild, and they were beautiful!
The next day was our final stop of the tour - the natural hot springs. We spent just an hour there before ending the tour and crossing the border to Chile!!
