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SALAR DE UYUNI! The place I always saw on the Internet, on social medias, on travel magazines and on TV. It’s a place full of tourists. And now I understood why. It’s an amaaaazing place, really beautiful. I visited it in January, rain season, so the salt desert was covered with a thin layer of water, reflecting the sky light in the ground. It looks like a giant mirror and sometimes I tried to look at the horizon, but I didn’t know where was the sky and where was the ground.
Salar de Uyuni is located in Bolivia and the closest airport is Uyuni Airport (Aeropuerto Joya Andina). It is the largest and highest salt desert of the world. It’s located at an altitude of 3.656 meters from sea level. The flight from La Paz takes about 45 minutes. After arriving at the airport, there are some taxis waiting at the door, but when I was there, there weren’t many taxis, so I shared one with other tourists. City centre is quite small, but there are a lot of accommodation and restaurants for tourists.
I stayed at Onkel Inn Wagon Sleepbox, a small theme hotel. I found it very interesting that the hotel is inside the train station and the prices are quite good. The trains are part of the history of the city and the rooms of the hotel look like small train cabins. I don’t think it would be good for someone with claustrophobia, but it was quite interesting to sleep there.
SALAR DE UYUNI – 1-DAY TOUR
Most people who visit Salar de Uyuni do this 1-day tour. I booked it in La Paz, in one of the many travel agencies of the city, but it is possible to book it in Uyuni as well. The tour begins at train cemetery (Cementerio de trenes), where we can see many abandoned trains. I t seems that the trains were used to transport minerals, but got unused in the 1940s and were abandoned. It’s a nice place to take pictures, but I was impressed by the amount of garbage left there, unfortunately, I think most of it was left by tourists.
After train cemetery, we stopped at Colchany, a village where salt tis processed and where they welcome tourists with many handmade souvenirs. I wanted to go to Salar de Uyuni as fast as possible, so I didn’t pay much attention to the shops. Then finally, we headed to the desert. We had lunch at a salt hotel, where we can see a place with flags of most countries of the world. I even found a flag of Coritiba, a football team in Brazil. The restaurant us made of salt, even the seats and tables.
We stayed there until sunset and I took a lot of pictures. Everyone brings “toys” to take pictures with and the driver had a dinosaur collection. You can take a funny picture even with the rice pot from lunch. It’s fun to search for funny pictures taken in Uyuni on Instagram, to see the creativity of the tourists.
We came back to Uyuni centre on the evening. On the next day I was going to leave to San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile. This trip is done in a 4×4 car, with about 5-6 people and the driver, in 3-4 days. I’m going to write about this super trip on the next post.
My TOP 10 of this backpack trip: TOP 10 – PLACES/EXPERIENCES OF MY LATIN AMERICA BACKPACK TRIP
How much I spent in this backpack trip: LATIN AMERICA BACKPACK TRIP! ～SUMMARY～
If you have questions, advice, etc., please let me know
You can also email me: backpackandme1@gmail.com
