Day 12 - 4 Oct Drive to Uyuni salt flats, via desert train graveyard

Photo above - me at the railway graveyard near Uyuni.

More startling rock formations

Another early start today to drive north west to Uyuni (190km), a small, almost non-descript town that survives on salt and lithium production, and tourism. Sitting at an altitude of 3,656m/11,994ft, the town has a population of about 30,000.

Left Tupiza at 8am. A fairly nondescipt town itself, but it does have Tuk Tuks, which is a plus. The landscape continued the wild west of Bolivia theme, with arid landscapes, and amazing rock formations. Apparently some westerns have been made in this area. The road continued to follow a dry river bed, and there was little or no population.

Very long mountain pass

We eventually started climbing out of the river valley to go over mountain pass, which topped out at 4231m. As we continued through the mountains, we saw the odd individial isolated hut, and these belong to miners, looking for silver, zinc, or copper. We also stopped to look at an extinct volcano, which still had snow on it. There is a semi permanent mining town at the foot of it at 4600m.

Up on the plateau and a mining town

For a while we travelled across a plateau at about 4000m. It was semi desert, although we did come across a small hamlet, the first civilization since leaving Tupiza two hours previously. Near the hamlet they had prepared the ground to grow Quinoa. Although there were blue skies and sun, it was quite cold outside, primarily because of the strong winds.

We stopped to look at a mining town called Atocha. This is the biggest such town in this region. We were going to go into the town and get some food, but there had been rumours of anti government protest action, and sure enough, the locals had blocked the road with rocks, so we had to move on.

A bit further down the road we spotted some Rhea in the distance. These are specific to South America and are like Ostriches. As we progressed further, there were a lot of mini sandstorms, and in a few places the sand had been blown right across the road.

Arrival at the town of Uyuni

Finally, we reached the town of Uyuni. We then switched to 4WD vehicles. We drove to the centre to get some food. Then we set off to the deserted outskirts of the town, to pass through a train graveyard; a collection of early 20th-century train carriages rusted by the salt and left for dead after a major transportation project failed. The iron carcasses are a ghostly but photogenic sight.

Next we went to a nearby family run small scale salt production business. It is a very simple process. The salt is chipped off of the surface of the salt flats, then crushed to a light powder, then packed for sale.

Finally, we drove for 10 minutes into the desert where our hotel sits isolated and on it's own, just a short way from the edge of the flats.

Tomorrow, we will drive across the flats in our 4WD cars.