Friday, February 6, 2009

Surreal Salares de Bolivia


Uyuni and the salt flats of Bolivia. Unique landscape of miles of white salt ¨lakes¨ surrounded by pink and brown desert mountains. I spent 3 days on a tour with 6 Brasileros and an Aussie couple driving across this area in a jeep, stopping at the sites. This entire area was a prehistoric lake (sound familiar - no wonder it looks so much like Black Rock City!) and left behind are the giant salt flats - the world's largest - colored lakes, colored by the minerals in the area - borax, copper, arsenic, lead, and hot spring geysers. The salt flats make for some fun perspective pictures. You meet lots of travelers who have been here and everyone tries to outdo each other on the cool perspective pics. What you don't realize is that the drivers barely give you any time to take them! But, we still had fun messing around. The strangest thing was that after a couple of days of driving, the landscape kind of made me trip out. I swear I started seeing faces in everything, first the clouds, then the rocks... And, no, I wasn't even on any mind-altering substances! Crazy.





There was even a hotel made entirely out of salt - here is a pic from inside. Though, it was shut down because apparently plumbing and sewage was an issue...

For those of you not on facebook, I have more pics posted here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=
78276&id=704551738&l=5cc47e7a76