{"id":4636,"date":"2022-07-24T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-24T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/?p=4636"},"modified":"2022-06-20T14:13:08","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T14:13:08","slug":"uyuni-salt-flats-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/?p=4636","title":{"rendered":"Uyuni Salt Flats Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Uyuni Salt Flats are the main reason we chose to visit Bolivia. Known as Salar de Uyuni in Spanish, it is the world’s largest salt flat. It is located in southwest Bolivia and is almost 4,000 square miles in area. The salt flat formed from several lakes existing around forty thousand years ago but have since evaporated. Parts of the salt flat are covered in water to make a giant mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We arrived by bus from Sucre to Uyuni at 6 a.m., checked into Casa de Sal hotel, a hotel made out of salt, and then Michael and Lucas walked around town to find a salt flats tour. There are several tour companies. Most tours start and stop in Uyuni. We chose a four-day tour with Empexsa starting in Uyuni and ending in Tupiza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our driver was Abdias Flores, and our guide was Mauricio. They are great guides. We had fun hanging out with them for four days.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Our vehicle for the trip.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On our first day, we visited the train cemetery. It is a train graveyard just outside of Uyuni. There are rows of trains brought from overseas in the 1800s for mining silver, copper, and other minerals. When the mining operations failed, the trains were left behind. This place is where Mauricio took our first perspective photos. The photos are a fun memento for our family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We also made our first visit to the Uyuni Salt Flats. Miles and miles of salt that looks like snow. We drove to the cactus island. It is an island in the middle of the salt flats covered in cacti that seems out of place. We hiked to the top of the island and for great views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We ate lunch on the salt flats. Abdias set up a table, and we ate steak and vegetables. The food on the tour was delicious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Henry’s dream steak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After lunch, we drove to another spot for a photo shoot. We spent about an hour taking fun and funny photos and videos on the salt flats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our final stop was a spot on the salt flats covered in water. It looks like a giant mirror, and it is a unique sunsets experience. Mauricio took great photos and videos of us and the sunset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On day two, we continued traveling southwest to see lagoons, a stone forest, and hot springs in Reserva Nacional de Fauna. Our first stop was in San Cristobal, a mining town, to pick up some snacks and water, because we were heading to a more remote area. <\/p>\n\n\n

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We visited many lagoons on our four-day journey. On day two we visited Laguna Pastos Grandes, Laguna Chulluncani, and Laguna Cachi. These Lagoons are all at around 14,000 feet in elevation. It was extremely windy on this day, and temperatures were in the 40s and 50s. We saw flamingos! They looked so cold, but it did not seem to bother them. We also drove through a stone forest and stopped for some pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We ended our day at rustic hostel in the national park. We had a room with four beds, and there were shared bathrooms. It was so cold at night that we doubled up in the twin beds for warmth. Henry and I took a dip in the hot springs under the stars. Michael and Lucas joined us the following day in the hot springs before we left the National Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Day three was a long day in the car. There were more lagoons: A green lagoon, and a white lagoon, and a red lagoon. We also saw llamas, pecu\u00f1as, and Viscachas (they look similar to rabbits but are not closely related). We stopped at the Salvador Dahli desert. It is a barren valley that resembles surrealist paintings by Salvador Dali.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Our accomodations on the last night were in a hostel in Quetena Chico. It is a town with a population of 800 people. It was another freezing night in a room with four beds and a shared bathroom. The room we ate in was so cold that the owners cut a hole in the ceiling and installed a wood stove for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mauricio trying to stay warm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Hanging out with Abdias – Driver and Chef<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Our room for the night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Our final day, we walked through the ghost town of San Antonio de Lipez. It is a silver mining town that once boasted a population of around 150,000 people. The town was abandoned fifty years ago. Our guide told us that a group of miners had a pact with the devil, and they were killed when they did not keep their end of the bargain. The rest of the town believed it was haunted and fled. The views on the way to Tupiza are stunning. The landscape in southwest Bolivia varies widely.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We recommend doing a Uyuni Salt Flat tour in Bolivia. It was a fun-filled, busy four days full of unique landscapes, lots of animals and interesting history.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Uyuni Salt Flats are the main reason we chose to visit Bolivia. Known as Salar de Uyuni in Spanish, it is the world’s largest salt flat. It is located in southwest Bolivia and is almost 4,000 square miles in area. The salt flat formed from several lakes existing around forty thousand years ago but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[134,141,14,140],"class_list":["post-4636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-south-america","tag-bolivia","tag-salt-flats","tag-travel-with-kids","tag-uyuni"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4636"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4693,"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636\/revisions\/4693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gowatkinsgo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}