Bolivia - Salar de Uyuni Daytrip

Day 1.

 

You will spend the day exploring the pans, driving across the Salt Desert to visit a salt works, where villagers have sent piles of salt to be ground and iodised before being sold. The landscape is surreal in the extreme, the bright blue of the skies contrasting sharply with the blinding white salt crust. Flamingos live along the shoreline and subterranean rivers flowing underneath the Salar form breathing holes, whilst the snow-capped peak of Volcan Tunupa (5400m) looms far in the distance.

You will visit the Fish Island (Isla del Pescado), so called because of its shape. Here we see how nature has adapted to this harsh environment, with strangely shaped cacti growing defiantly amongst the barren landscape, living beside a stranded colony of vizcachas, long-tailed rabbit like rodents related to chinchillas.