Uyuni Salt Flats – a must-do 3 day expedition filled with amazing landscapes…

To be honest, before I began researching our trip to South America I had never heard of the Uyuni Salt Flats – or Salar de Uyuni as it is known in Bolivia. Once I knew of it, the next step was deciding how best to explore what appeared to be a simply sensational part of South America. It soon became apparent that if we kept our wits about us, we would be able to do a well-priced three day/two night tour at reasonable cost if we waited until we got to Uyuni before paying for our trip. Booking online guaranteed that one would pay a higher price – so we waited 🙂

Getting to the small town of Uyuni involves an advertised 10 hour overnight bus ride, which we booked with the tourist-orientated Todo Tourismo coach line, at a cost of $47/person for their VIP service including meals with luxury reclining seats and individual TV sets. We used the identical type of bus coming from Ecuador to Peru with Cruz del Sur. Unfortunately with Todo Tourismo the individual TV screens didn’t work as advertised. Nor was the air-con switched on. The trip also took 12 hours to get us within 8km of Uyuni. Then without warning the attendant came around with a Google Translate message on his phone saying there was a blockade, and we would have to get off the bus with our luggage 8km outside of Uyuni. The message said we would have to walk for 10mins, and then cars would come and fetch us.

Well, that’s nor at all how it played out. In the end we had to drag our luggage for more than 5km with absolutely no assistance from Todo Tourismo staff, who essentially stayed behind with the bus. After 5km of walking with a 10kg backpack on my back, dragging a 23kg large bag, I said to Akhona that I didn’t think I’d make another 3km to the edge of town, plus another 2kn to the actual hotel. So I did what any survivalist would do – I feigned a collapse just as we approached the third road blockade. I had wondered if the people who manned the blockades had given any thought at all to the stream of exhausted travellers that their action had left stumbling along the highway. To my surprise the blockaders were very concerned…they rushed to my assistance, and within 2 mins they had bundled Akhona and I with our bags into a vehicle. We were driven straight to our hotel, with me putting on the performance of a lifetime…when I tried to pay for the transport the driver refused to accept my money. I had a twinge of guilt, but that passed quickly when I thought back to the physical exertion we had been forced to endure. Needless to say we made a beeline for the Todo Tourismo office to shit them out once we’d rested and showered. The head office was called, I shouted at them too, and they offered a partial refund as compensation. We accepted it as a matter of principal – it was just shocking that no attempt had been made to assist paying customers including families and elderly passengers.

I booked us into Hotel Salcay for $20/night, which was right in the market street, had heating and a hot shower, and a mediocre included breakfast. We decided to spend the real money on the hotel we’d stay in after the three day salt flats trip – Hotel Casa da Sal – which was built out of salt, cost $60/night and was pure luxury :). I knew we’d need some spoiling after three days in the wilderness without a hot shower.

As soon as we were rested we set off to find a tour operator to take us safely through the salt flats and into the adjacent national park. The web abounds with horror stories of bad experiences with drunk drivers, unroadworthy vehicles, awful food and yes, deaths on this very trip. So after much research we had whittled it down to two tour operators offering reasonably-priced tours who both had predominantly positive reviews on trip advisor….Salty Aventours and Andes Salt Expeditions. As it turned out their offices were right next door to one another. We had a quick meeting with each tour operator…Salty wanted B850($130)/person….Andes Salt wanted B700/($110)person. Accommodation and route were identical. Both included a sleeping bag in the price. The manager at Andes Salt was more friendly and convincing, so we went with them 🙂

The next day we were at the Andes Salt Expedition office at 09h30, after dropping off most of our luggage at the fancy Casa dal Sal Hotel for safekeeping. We took only camera’s, drone, a change of underwear and our toothbrushes, plus a few bottles of water and some snacks. We’d heard that the food on the budget tours was not that great. For an extra $70 – $100/person we could have gone with an English-speaking guide, but we don’t like chatty guides, so we went with the cheaper Spanish guide.

Our guides name was Oswaldo. He was a friendly guy who made an effort to explain where we were and where we were going to throughout the tour. Our travel companions were Spanish sisters Mayra and Sonja, and French guys Zac and Cyprian. Luckily they all could speak Spanish and English, so they translated for us where necessary. We rotated regularly in the Toyota Landscruiser so that nobody got stuck in the crappy seats at the back for too long.

Our first stop was at the train graveyard just outside of Uyuni. I flew the drone for a few shots and some video just to test it out after not using it for so long, and took some cool pics of Akhona using the trains as a backdrop. Then we set off for one of the star attractions….Salar de Uyuni. These massive salt dominate the landscape outside of Uyuni, and even though literally a hundred tours may be underway at any given time, they are so big that one hardly saw other jeeps other than at the stop for lunch at the old Salt hotel at Colchan and at the Incawasi Cactus island. Before we got there, we stopped on the salt flats to do some photographs and I flew the drone again for some epic shots. Osvaldo also did some perspective shots with a dinosaur of the group, but they were not very successful.

Our lunch was not great – tough, dry meat for the meat eaters, together with salad and another side dish. Luckily there were lots of tasty vegetarian omelettes to go around which we could tuck into to make up the meal. After lunch we headed out to the Incawasi Cactus island where we spent about an hour shooting some very cool shots using the island as the background. We didn’t walk across the island as others did, so didn’t have to pay the entrance fee of B30/person.

We set off once again and stopped near the edge of the Salar to watch the sunset, which was quite a magical experience. We exited the salt flats and travelled for well over an hour to reach our accommodation for the night in a modern ‘salt hotel’ which was pretty basic accommodation. We had a private room, but had to share the ice-cold bathroom with about 40 other travellers. Luckily our bathrooms were clean – we’d heard stories about conditions at other accommodations. Supper was pretty miserable though – a fried chicken patty and chips and a bowl of soup. We skipped the $2 hot shower, rolled out our sleeping bags and went to bed early. It was very cold, but once under the covers I slept well until I had to get up to go to the distant bathroom at 03h00. It took me an hour to get back to sleep 🙁

We woke up at 07h00 for an early breakfast, and Osvaldo fetched us at around 08h00 for a very full day. The only worrying aspect of our trip was the fact that the power steering unit on our Landcruiser had been leaking oil right from the start of our trip. Oswaldo had stopped to buy oil and top it up in Uyuni on our way out, and every time we stopped he had the bonnet up, topping up the oil. This became of concern as it became obvious that the leak was getting worse, and he had to try and buy more oil everywhere we stopped. As a 4×4 owner I knew that steering would virtually become impossible without the power unit working properly, so this mechanical issue put a bit of a damper on my enjoyment of the trip…The last thing we wanted was to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with a vehicle which couldn’t be steered…

Our second day was focused mainly on seeing the multicolored lakes which are spread around the area. The weather had taken a change for the worse, and an icy-cold wind had come up, together with thick cloud cover. It was pretty obvious that we were heading into either rain or snow, but we persevered and forged ahead. At each stop we darted out of the Landscruiser to get some photographs while being buffeted by arctic winds. It was definitely not the ideal conditions to shoot great photographs, but I rationalized the situation by saying that we would get more dramatic shots of the landscape 🙂

In the afternoon, as we headed towards our overnight accommodation, we drove into a snow blizzard at an altitude of around 5000m. As Akhona had never seen snow before, we turned this into a positive experience, even though the conditions were miserable and at some times dangerous. We stopped a few times, once to make snowballs, once to check out geysers spewing clouds of sulphur from fissures in the ground, and lastly to have a much-needed pee…yes, it melted the snow 🙂

We continued through the thick snow until we finally arrived at our overnight accommodation near the much-talked-about natural hot springs. Because of the bad weather, only three vehicles made it, and we heard that the rest had turned back to overnight elsewhere. Vehicles from Chile had also not arrived as the border had been temporarily closed. The accommodation was VERY basis, more like a shelter. It was of course freezing cold, but we had sleeping bags, hats and gloves, so we were OK.

After a very unsatisfactory supper of boiled pasta and a tin of heated up tomato salsa, we headed off to the hot springs, where Akhona and her two new besties had a great time 🙂 I spent about 30mins in the water before hastily drying off and heading back to the slightly warmer accommodation. We polished off a bottle of red wine between the 6 of us while in the baths, which helped 🙂

We actually slept quire well, considering how cold it was, and were up bright and early at 07h00 for a basic breakfast, before starting the final leg of our trip which would take us back to Uyuni via a few more interesting locations. First stop was another massive coloured lake, where we spent all of 5 min hastily shooting a few shots in the wind. Then we set off for the Chilean border to drop off the two Spanish girls who were continuing to San Pedro de Atacama …so we got the chance to at least unofficially enter Chile for 30mins.

The return trip took us through dramatic and beautiful landscapes which varied from wide expanses with massive mountains in the distance to endless miles of rock formations to rolling grasslands with hundreds of Llamas grazing…There were few stops however so not much of a chance to take decent photographs. Our driver seemed to be in race against time to get back to Uyuni before our power steering stopped working…

This tour proved to be one of the highlights of our South American trip this far, and even though we had adverse weather it was well worth the discomfort and cold…The landscapes are simply spectacular. I’d suggest doing thorough research on which tour company you travel with…Our driver from Andes Salt Expeditions was great, let down by a poorly maintained vehicle, but in the end we saw all of the sights and got back safely for $ 110/person. For $ 150/person with Salty Aventours I think you get a better vehicle, so they are worthy of consideration. In the end, andwe had an adventurous time of it, and have no regrets :). I posted about our experience on TripAdvisor, and the owner of Andres Salt Expeditions pretended that the power steering only started leaking into our trip after being damaged. This is a lie, as our driver stopped in Uyuni to buy a bottle of oil, and started topping it up right from the outset. Tour companies should stop making excuses and simply maintain their vehicles properly as our lives depend on it…Just a week previously two UK travellers died on a Uyuni tour when their vehicle rolled. Safety and maintenance need to be non-negotiable.