uyuni continued

Our tour of the Salar started the next morning, beginning with the train graveyard. Supposedly, the last train that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed, which led to their untimely demise here in Bolivia, is here in the graveyard. 

Yeah, it’s probably this one.

I could have spent hours climbing around (although very short of breath due to altitude), but we have a lot left to do and the other tourists in our jeep are not so into it.

We drove on to Colchani, a town at the edge of the Salar, where the salt is processed. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world, at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles). It is at about 3,600 m above sea level and used to be part of a giant lake.

The salt is scraped together into little mounds, then transported to the “processing facility.” First it is dried, by spreading it out on a big table over these 3 furnaces;

 then put through this machine which grinds it up fine;

 Then it is hand-filled into plastic bags of about 1 kilo, which are sealed with a blow torch.

Because Bolivia has so much salt, (they have another salt flat too), it is worth practically nothing: 50 kilos of salt are sold for 9 Bolivianos! (~1 Euro! $1.50!) They can’t export it either, because all of their neighbors have their own salt flats! They should export it, unprocessed, coarse and “organic”, to Europe and the US and make a killing.

Anyway.

Because of the endless white plain, the tourists all hop around making weird pictures and playing with perspective:

 

There is a hotel in the middle of the salar, built entirely out of blocks of salt. There we engaged with other tourists in taking silly pictures. The tour compay serves us lunch in the salt hotel: llama and mashed potatoes.

As I said, the Salar used to be a huge lake….in the middle of the salt flat is an island out of coral, and covered by cacti. It is called  Isla de Pesca because of its fish shape.

 Back in Uyuni in the evening, we went to an internet café (where I received the emailed news that Michael Jackson is dead) and buy souvenirs and blankets, alpaca shawls, etc. We found a great greasy spoon to eat at: chicken and fries.

Boarded another bus, to La Paz. We had asked 3 times in the office if the bus had heating, we were told “yes.” Turns out the bus did not have heating. Which is really a problem at night, at these altitudes. It was another rough night. The “road” was so bad that I did not sleep. Eventually, I couldn’t hold out any longer and had to go to the bathroom. First I had to clamber over all the people sleeping in the aisle, then discovered that the light in the bathroom was broken. Which was probably not such a bad thing…

Eventually, closer to La Paz, the roads got better and I dozed off.