We were picked up by our guide around 7am as we stepped down from our night bus from La Paz. He took us to a café, for breakfast, and a couple of hours later we were on our way to see the famous salar of Uyuni.

The salar of Uyuni is one of the highlights of any trip to South America. A salt pan of 200km2, 1km deep. Even Belgium could not use all of it on its fries 🤡. And with the rain, it turns into a gigantic 200km2 mirror reflecting the sky. There is no more ground; everything seems to be floating in the clouds. Feels like walking inside a giant kaleidoscope. Feels like walking in heaven!

Before reaching the salar, we stop by the train cemetery. It’s an ancient repair area, abandoned some time after the pacific war, when the line to the pacific got shut. (It’s reopened now, but operated by the Chinese and going through Chile.. pretty hard to bear for Bolivians)

For lunch, and at night, we’re taken to hotels made entirely of salt blocks: the walls, the tables, the beds, the counters.. everything in is salt! It looks nice too, as the stratification creates alternative white and brown layers (for the wet and dry seasons)

It’s a tradition on the salar to make silly pictures, to play with reflections and the absence of perspective!

After the salar, we continue the tour for 2 more days in the 4×4, southwest to the Chilean border. It’s a volcanic region and the landscapes are breathtaking. We go through red rock deserts with lava formations creating beasty shapes, to snow fields 5200m in altitude, to coloured lagunas full of pink flamingos, to steam geysers…

Well, the original plan was to cross to Chile directly at the end of the 3 days tour, but we were discouraged to do so because the border is in high altitude and probably closed because of the snow. So we thought ok, we’ll return to Uyuni. Then on the last day when we reached the border, it was a bright sunny day and the driver said we were just 40 mins away from San Pedro de Atacama, so we switched back to the original plan and we left beautiful Bolivia just there, after barely a week in the country.

Leo was pretty sad though, because we had to skip bathing in the hot springs