Southwestern Circuit

We went next to Uyuni, a launching point for expeditions around the so-called 'Southwestern Circuit' of Bolivia.  All tourists tend to organise the same 3 day/2 nights anticlockwise tour of this region, travelling in groups of six in a jeep.  The journey cannot be attempted in a normal car - the terrain is at times rocky and bumpy and takes you across rivers and deep puddles.  The draw is the stunning landscapes and views. 
 
On the first day we crossed the Salar de Uyuni - the blinding white enormous salt flat, the largest in the world.  It used to be a salt lake millions of years ago.  The salt is extracted for human consumption and there are even salt hotels dotted around to stay in.  In dry sections it's just the most amazing expanse of white nothingness, as far as the eye can see.  When wet, the surface perfectly reflects the clouds and blue skies.  The horizon disappears and it feels like you're driving across the sky.  It's so surreal and absolutely stunning.  It's like some kind of amazing Winter wonderland - you keep having to remind yourself that it's salt and not snow.  Our driver can only have been using the distant mountains to navigate because there are no other landmarks.  We witnessed him dozing off twice (what is it with our drivers?!).  To be fair, on the salt flats there's absolutely nothing to crash into, but still! 
 
People have fun taking silly pictures - because it's all just white you can take photos where the perspective of objects is lost.  We took one of me 'holding' our jeep in the palm of my hand and one of Brad where he looks smaller than his precious Harry Potter book.  Of course you have to slap on the sunscreen because of the way the sun reflects on the surface of the white salt.
 
There is a little 'island' on the salt flat that we visited.  Slap bang in the middle of white is a rocky bit of land covered in phallic cacti.  A bit surreal.  Even stranger is that there's a restaurant built there, which seems a bit wrong.  Our driver 'provided' all our food although women seemed to appear from nowhere at all the places we stopped for food and the food was prepared extremely quickly!  It's funny, this area is so vast and unspoilt, but it's very much a gringo trail with sometimes dozens of jeeps parked alongside the various sights.  We kept bumping into the same people - some people we spent Christmas with, others we met on NYE. 
 
The driver was our guide too.  The stuff you see is pretty self-explanatory, but sometimes it would have been nice to understand a little more of what he was saying.  He spoke no English, so we usually relied on the other four in the jeep to translate.  We were with a couple of Brazilian male students who have only been travelling for a week and were obsessed with spending as little as possible, to the point where they having second and third helpings at the meals and taking any left-overs to eat later.  They said that they've already lost loads of weight because they've been eating just one meal a day.  I would honestly rather not travel than eat once a day.  Anyone who knows me will not be surprised by that statement!  It was lucky that we got on so well with the other two, a Dutch-American couple who have been living in Bolivia and working as teachers.  The sights we saw were stunning but there was so much driving to get to them!  The accommodations on the circuit are very basic with electricity only in the evenings after 7.30pm and no showers.  We entertained ourselves by buying a 5 litre plastic bottle of red wine (which was surprisingly nice) to drink between the four of us.
 
We saw a couple of huge, intensely coloured lakes - one brick red, the other called the 'Green Lake', but is actually blue like a swimming pool.  The colours are due to the high concentrations of minerals in the water.  These are inhabited by all three varieties of South American flamingos, weird if you usually associate them with tropical climates.  With the exception of the salt flats, the weather on the circuit is bitingly cold - with the exception of distant snow-peaked mountains, the areas covered are flat, vast and unsheltered, not a tree in sight.
 
We saw geysers which stank of sulphur - wells of hot, bubbling mud and steam.  At nearly 5 thousand metres above sea level, it's still bloody cold.  You have to watch your step because the ground is quite giving - you would get serious burns if you fell in. 
 
There was a small thermal pool.  Even though we were prepared and had brought our swimming things, we didn't go in.  Although hot in the pool, we didn't fancy the getting out again part, plus I didn't like the idea of prancing around in a bikini with lots of fully clothed people gathered around the edge, watching (which is what we ended up doing, of course!).
 
Most of the last day was spent driving back.  I've never read so much in one go!  Read two books over the 3 days.  We headed back to Uyuni with sore knees, backs and bums from such a rough journey in a cramped jeep, but honestly the sights we saw made it all worth-while.

After just over 2 weeks in Bolivia we're off to 'conquer' our next South American country - Argentina.  Over and out until then.