Updated: Day 6 The Salar de Uyuni

Today’s experience is more than a little surreal. Piercing blue skies contrast with blinding white salt as we drive across the flat lakebed. We are at 3.600 metres above the sea. Twice submerged by a large high-altitude lake, the Salar de Uyuni salt flats now cover a total area of over 12.000 square km (7.440 square miles) and are the largest salt flats in the world.

The last large lake dried up about 8.000 years ago, leaving the small lakes of Poopó and Ururu, as well as the salt flats of Uyuni.

Today they serve as one of the country’s main salt mining centres. The Salar de Uyuni is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt, of which less than a mere 25,000 tons is extracted annually. Salt extraction is a tedious work in the hot sun, as the salt has to be crushed by hatchets and then piled to dry in the sun. We get totally absorbed by the stunning views of the salt-encrusted lakebed surrounded by golden-hued mountains, snow-capped peaks and an endless azure horizon that will forever engrave itself in memory.

Our excursion ends in the town of Uyuni, where we spent the night of day 6. Despite its isolation and challenging climate (cold and blustery most of the year), Uyuni has earned the nickname of Hija Predilecta de Bolivia (Bolivia’s Favourite Daughter). Why that should be so is quite a mistery to me, as the place is remote, industrial and mostly ugly. Most of its hardy residents are either public sector workers or salt miners in the dried out lakebeds, with tour operators a close third. The main attraction in town is the Train Cemetery, a collection of rusting railway relicts just southwest of the present train station.

This is the local “football club” in San Jose, a fifty soul village on the border of the salar. The club consisted of every kid above the age of five and they train before school, at 6 o´clock in the morning. At minus fifteen degrees and 3.600 meters above sea level, they take the word “warm-up” quite literal…