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Started this morning with the usual Bolivian breakfast; bread (no toaster available), some form of mortadella, sliced cheese, cereal with no milk, fruit and you could order either a fried egg or scrambled.
Today was spent on and around Salar de Uyuni. We did a lot off the scheduled itinerary and our first stop was at a local museum to the local culture which pre-dated the Incas. There was a lot on display including arrowheads and a helmet made from llama leather. Next door was an outdoor area with natural and semi-natural stones being set into different animals.
Next was one of the highlights of the salt lake; Incahuasi Island, or the island of the cactus. This is one of the 13 volcanic outcrops peering through the salt. This one being covered with cacti. We walked to the top to get some panoramic photos of the salt lake and on the way down ran into a French couple that we had been with most of the first day. They stated that they were coming down to WA in January 25 and asked for Fran’s details (she who speaks French).
Now was the time for some panoramic photos so Ahui (our guide) and Rene (our driver) took us to a remote part of the flats and then proceeded to get out the toy dinosaur and a bottle of wine. As you can see from the photos it was a lot of fun. We had a lunch of llama steaks and salad on the flat and then visited the original salt hotel built on the salt flats. Yuk. Tourist central. The last couple of days we have been virtually by ourselves in the altiplanico and now we were reminded there were other tourists around. The inside of this now defunct hotel had about 60 tourists having lunch. We left pretty quickly and headed for Cacharas where we saw how the locals processed the salt from the lake. It either started as bricks of salt or piles of loose salt, broken down and dried in the sun. After a while it was placed over a hot oven and further dried, and then mixed with added iodine before being bagged.
We drove through Uyuni city (population 15,000) and onto the train graveyard. This was where all of the German steam trains were dumped after Chile told Bolivia it would no longer allow Bolivia to transport goods to its ports using German equipment. So they were left to crumble and rust. There were some interesting pieces of metal art here (as seen on cover photo). On our drive to our hotel we again drove through Uyuni and all of us noticed the number of incomplete buildings. The entire infrastructure of 3 storey buildings would be complete and then left with no walls.
The hotel is as the name stated; Palacio de Sal, and we were served a REAL coffee after checking in. Magic!