The Picturesque Salar de Uyuni Tour

This is it! The trip I had probably been most excited about finally arrived. The Uyuni Salt Flats has been a dream of mine ever since I saw a picture of them. In the dry season, they are an infinite expanse of salt white desert, and in the wet season an incredible mirror that reflects the blue sky above. My first choice would have been to see the mirror-effect, but the dry-season landscape I experienced was still pretty amazing.

The Uyuni Salt Flats is unfortunately something that you really cannot do without a guided tour. I say unfortunately because I have rightfully come to expect tours in South America to fall well below expectations. Maybe it’s just my personal preference, but I like to explore without a guide dictating the agenda. This tour, like most in South America, was very rushed. We saw so many unreal places. I mean these were truly amazing places that seem to belong on different planets. But unfortunately the tour guide barely gave us more than enough time to take a few pictures at each place. Another aspect of the trip which you cannot tour South America without is unkept promises. We were promised a sunset over the salt flats and a sunrise over the geysers. Our guide did not manage to keep any of those. But in the end, I’ve learned that there’s nothing you can do but expect that. You will not get any money back or any other type of compensation, even though we did pay more for those promised experiences.

Still, I cannot describe how amazing the landscapes were, so I think for this post I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. And although the guided aspect of the three-day tour left a whole lot to be desired, it was made up for by a great group of fellow young-ins that I wound up traveling with for a few days after as well. The group was especially fun because we could all easily communicate (everyone spoke English very well) and everyone in the group is of a different nationality (English, Scottish, German, Australian and Japanese, plus the gringo!).

Without further ado, first some classic salt flats pose pictures…

And now the wildlife…

One of my favorite parts of the tour was a big boulder field we stopped at in the middle of an otherwise flat and sandy desert. I dusted off my calluses and climbed as many of them as our 45 minute time-frame would allow. I can hardly complain, but I hadn’t realized how much I miss spending every free weekend that I have climbing in Red River Gorge, Kentucky with my girlfriend and all of our climber pals. It is usually assumed that climbing is a high adrenaline sport, but in reality it is a very focussed, relaxed mental game. Especially after so much time off of the rock, getting that feeling back was a fix that I did not know my mind was craving!