The Salt Plains!

Posted by Dave and Zephie

After our mammoth journey from El Bolson to La Quiaca in the very north of Argentina, we crossed the border to Bolivia and seemed to enter a completely different world! Border towns seem to be a bit weird anyway, sort of a no man's land. But crossing to Villazon was so different to what we had been used to in Argentina and we soon realised we had had it pretty easy so far!

We took a rickety, hot, dusty, bumpy bus straight from Villazon to a town called Tupiza, which I am sure you will all be thrilled to learn was apparently where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end. We didn't do a great deal here as there wasn't much to do! We also gave ourselves a few days to get over the long journeys and acclimatise to the altitude, which made us really groggy and lethargic. Dave managed to catch a cold on one of the buses as well, which made it worse! But we contented ourselves by walking around, checking out the scenery and eating at one of the many "Italian" restaurants. All of these restaurants had exactly the same menus, the same signage and everything, it was really quite bizarre! And there were about a million of them!

We wanted to take a tour of the Salt Plains, in the south-east of the country and we decided to take it straight from Tupiza instead of Uyuni, where most people go from. We were really glad we did. We luckily found three lovely Kiwis (the people not the fruit) who wanted to go on the same day as us, which made it nice and cheap! They were Jamie, Phillipa and Pete and we had a great time with them.

The trip was hard going - we spent four days in a 4x4, getting out every now and then to check out the AMAZING scenery! It was like nothing else we had ever seen and felt like we were in a surrealist painting most of the time! But we had very early mornings, incredibly high altitudes (we reached over 5,000 metres above sea level at one point) and long days, so were totally exhausted by the end. Totally worth it though!

Although the Salt Plains are the main attraction (it's something like 12,000 squared kilometres of 11-metre deep salt that at one point thousands of years ago was three huge lakes - so wierd I have never really thought of salt as anything more than what I put on my chips!!!!), we also got to see volcanoes, deserts, green, red and blue lakes (thanks to all the crazy minerals in the area) and LOADS OF FLAMINGOES!


Here is the Valley of the Moon near Tupiza....




On the first day we stopped for lunch in a field with about a MILLION LLAMAS!!!!!!!!!! They are such funny creatures - totally dumb but REEEEALLY CUTE!!!! We were priviliged to see this wee chap a few minutes after he had been born and watched him take his first steps! AAAAAAAWWW! Unfortunately this also meant there was a huge pile of afterbirth quite close to where we were eating lunch - gross. They had put llama meat on the menu as well, which I thought was highly inappropriate!!!!




That night we stayed in a military base that was literally in the middle of nowhere! We have never stayed anywhere so remote!!! But it was so beautiful and we enjoyed lots of vegan food prepared for us by our lovely cocinera Agustina.



It was absolutely freeeezing though at over 4,000 metres above sea level (EVERYTHING is high up in Bolivia...!), so we were fully clothed, in sleeping bags and under covers. BRRR!