Approaching Salar de Uyuni

In Southwest Bolivia there is a province called Potosi. Aside from the city Potosi, which had the richest silver mines in history, there is also an incredibly diverse and seemingly hostile environment. Not to mention beautiful. In this area there is an enormous amount of strange and wonderful things to see. Thats why we took nearly 400 pictures in less than 4 days.

Our tour started at the super early hour of 9 am. Paired up in a 1990´s Nissan Patrol with our blind date travel companions, Lance and Simon. Our captain, driver, safety officer, guide and early morning motivater was Jaime(Hi Me). And last but not least, probably most important, is Sara, our executive chef and doler outer of snacks and candy.



This is what an oasis looks like. And I would say life here is still less than easy. Being in a 4x4, running over unpaved and rough roads for hours at a time is really not that fun, but every time you stop there is a great reason. At this oasis there was such a wonderful contrast between the windswept volcanic wasteland and the realatively lush and green spring that fed the llamas and wild vicunas.


On the first day we reached the highest peak that we would have to bear. It was 4855 meters high. Which is, according to google, 15,930 some odd feet high. It´s hard to breath up there. But according to Jaime we were all ¨mas fuerte¨, which means ¨thanks for not being cry babies about the altitude sickness¨.
An interesting thing about the elevation and the vehicles was that Jaime had to adjust the timing every time the elevation changed more than about 1500 meters.

This is me playing basketball with some children at the first village that we stayed at. The other people playing basketball are our competition. Believe me there is competition, because there are no less than about 20 4x4´s from Tupiza and 60 or so from Uyuni all doing the same thing we are. So after the first sleepless night we woke up at an ungodly 4am to get some breakfast and get out the door. Jaime was great because we never felt rushed and we never had a zillion other tourists ruining our pictures.


If you have ever wondered where Salvador Dali recieved his inspiration for many of his surreal landscapes it was here. Being able to see the Arbol de Piedra, the surrounding desert, and the surrounding volcanoes that rained down all the interesting rock formations was my favorite part of the 4 day trip.


This is Laguna Colorada which is colored red. It is colored red from all the minerals and such from the volcanoes. The whole are has incredible amounts of mineral deposits and the small lagunas that exist are blue from minerals unknown to me, red from I believe algae and green from magnesium.