Day 99: The Great Salt Desert of Bolivia

The Railroad Graveyard at the edge of Uyuni was a walk back to the 19th Century. Visitors frolicked all over the rusted steam engines. Several girls lay on the tracks to be photographed – Were they waiting for their Oil Can Harry?

Even after buying a tarp and wire to protect the undercarriage of the car to go into the Salar, we declined the water passage in the Cayenne – too many electronic sensors to tolerate the 8” salt water. We enjoyed taking our pictures from the end of the road and taking pictures and playing with the animal salt sculptures in the Salt Museum.

The ride to Saint Cristobal through the salt landscape looked like Death Valley in the high Andes. We covered 150KM of dirt road, mixed (70% good) quality in the salt valley.

San Cristobal is a newly relocated silver mining town. The mine is owned by the Japanese, who have constructed comfortable houses for the workers. We were charmed by the creativity of the atrium at our rustic mining town hotel. It is formed from recycled giant mining equipment. I loved the bar stool using a giant machine spring as its base. The room is pretty basic (cold water shower), but the aromas of cooking coming out of the kitchen are nice. We enjoyed a visit with Jose (Joseph), our local guide. He is a Quechua speaker. Half of the area is Aymara speaking/ half Quechua. They enjoy very good relations. I will ask about the cultural differences between the 27 indigenous languages here.