After a couple long days of driving and hiking, driving and eating, driving and then some more hiking, we made it to the Uyuni Salt Flats. Amazing. Simply amazing.

Located in southwestern Bolivia and at 12,000 feet above sea level the Uyuni Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni as it’s known here) is the world’s largest salt flat, covering nearly 4,100 square miles. To put that in some perspective, that’s nearly 100 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The salt flats are the result of the drying of prehistoric lakes, the oldest dating from about 40,000 years ago. They left behind a lot of salt, a few meters worth over the entire area. Below that lies nearly half the world’s proven lithium reserves, enough to supply both manic-depressives and our iPhone batteries for years to come.

Besides the tourist value and minerals, the salt flats are also a major transportation thoroughfare. After days bouncing along the horrible gravel roads of western Bolivia, driving on the salt was like a fantasy – smooth, flat, straight. It was like my childhood memories of driving on Lake Superior after it had frozen over and been plowed, right down to the vast expanse of white everywhere. It was almost hypnotic – you’re cursing along at maybe 50 miles an hour but you can’t feel the road or really see anything changing as the distances are all so far.

We spent two days altogether in or along the Uyuni Salt Flats. First we drove out onto it, stopping occasionally just to admire the unworldly beauty. Our driver let us out maybe a mile from where he was going to set up lunch and said “Just walk.” What an experience. By the time we got there they had lunch set up out in the middle of the immense nothingness. I took our portable speakers from my luggage and we listened to various divas – Aretha, Ella, Whitney, even Lily Allen! – while having a great little lunch. The driver and Danilo, our guide, were pretty amused; they’d never had music out on that vast expanse.

Our time in the area included a couple big hikes on the “islands” that dot the salt flats, with again amazing views of miles and miles of whiteness. Our lodge was on the edge of a tiny town that itself was on the edge of the salt flats. One of the amusing things we noticed about some of these tiny towns is that while everything else in town seems to be falling apart they have beautiful soccer fields. Same case here, an oasis of bright green with perfect lines and nice stands. Apparently they know their priorities.

The next day we hiked around some more, always with great views. We went up and around La Bella Tunupa, a beautiful (thus the name) multi-colored old volcano. Danilo had come to understand that we like to hike so he suggested we head up there and explore options for further hikes. A fair amount of it was just bushwhacking across not always easy terrain, but most of it was pretty great. There was a mystery, though. The hills along the mountain – steep, difficult hills – were lined with old stone walls meandering here and there. Because of the seemingly random curves and swirls, it didn’t appear they were marking property. Danilo didn’t know what they were for and our Bolivian driver didn’t know either. Llama pens? Fire barriers? Property markers? No idea. So after we got down Danilo went into town and asked around. They’re apparently a couple hundred years old – they stand without mortar or anything, just rocks piled on top one another – but no one in town knew what they were for either. Weird and still a mystery.

Then as sunset approached drove back out onto the salt flats for some pre-dinner appetizers and wine to watch the sun go down. Again, an amazing experience with fantastic colors and shadows. And wine! One of my concerns about coming here was just whether it would feel Disney-esque, crowded with tourists and so on. So not the case. It’s big enough and remote enough that you just don’t see or sense anyone else. It’s just you and the salt. And the staff, of course, driving you around and setting up the bar. We know our priorities, too.

So that was the highlight of the multi-day trek, two days on the Uyuni Salt Flats. One more day, crossing into Chile, before moving on down to Iquique where we finish the journey. More pictures tomorrow, then.

On our second day out of San Pedro we continued to work our way north along the southwestern edge of Bolivia. The roads were still rutted and rocky and there was too much driving relative to too little hiking, but the scenery was great, too.

Enroute we happened across a couple rheas, large ostrich-like flightless birds that run around this part of Bolivia. We never got any decent pictures, but they’re a fun bird to watch. And to read about. They’re polygamous, with males courting up to a dozen female birds. Even more interesting, though, is that it’s the males, not the females, who protect the nest, incubate the eggs, and even tend the chicks. And then on one lagoon we hiked around we watched Giant Coots – another bird that, while relatively big is “giant” only in the context of other coots – fighting over territory. Our guide Danilo told how once he absentmindedly got too close to a giant coot nest and the birds went straight at him. Ain’t nature interesting?

At the same time, the human life could be confusing. We went into one tiny little village; just tiny, maybe a few dozen people living there. The Bolivian government had recently invested in building some new housing in this remote, isolated location and you could only wonder what life must be like in such a tiny, remote, isolated location.

We’re here in what is supposed to be the end of the rainy season, but the rains failed pretty significantly. One result is that some of the quinoa fields are just devastated. From afar, quinoa fields in this part of Bolivia can be beautiful, big red squares in an otherwise colorless region. Without water, though, there were some really sad-looking plots. You can only imagine the impact it must have on local farmers who are already poor beyond most anything I can imagine.

What else was interesting about Day Two? We walked the last mile or two to our lodgings, mostly just because walking is more interesting than bumping along the gravel roads. While we were walking you could hear big thunder rumbling across the landscape. Ultimately there was no rain, but the thunder was impressive.

And speaking of impressive, we went out after dinner that night to view the stars. Danilo had a laser pointer to show us some of the constellations, after which for the first time I could easily identify the Southern Cross, the southern hemisphere’s answer to the Big Dipper and North Star. Orion, Castor & Pollux, Jupiter – we saw them all, along with billions and billions of other stars.

The trip brought us right to the very edge of the Uyuni Salt Flats; tomorrow we cross in for two days. I’ll just add in anticipation that the experience was amazing.

After a couple days hiking around San Pedro de Atacama our big adventure for the region is a five-day journey with car and guide up into the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia. The map here shows our route, starting from San Pedro at the bottom in Chile, going north into Bolivia, and then west to Iquique. It’ll take us a couple days to get up to the salt flats themselves, but in the meanwhile we’ll spend our days in some of the most remote regions I’ve ever been in; no wifi, no Internet, no electricity, and, for the most part, no people. The company we’re doing it with, though, does provide food and shelter so we’re not completely destitute.

Day One was a long day on terrible roads. Hours and hours on crazy, rocky, rutted gravel roads. It took a couple hours to get to the Bolivian border at one of the most remote border crossings you’ll ever see. The most amazing sight during that long ride was the bikers, a couple here, a few there, maybe half a dozen altogether. Intrepid and adventurous travelers riding bicycles, not motorcycles, with all their camping gear at 14,000 feet on those roads that were so brutal in a car. Mark thought they were crazy; I was jealous.

Unfortunately the day was a lot more about covering ground in the car than hiking. We stopped at a Bolivian geyser field where it would have been easy – and deadly – to fall in, and had a great lunch – a salmon salad, lettuce salad, good wine – our guide whipped up when we stopped at a flamingo-settled lagoon in the middle of nowhere.

The middle of nowhere. This certainly feels as isolated a place as you can imagine. Just miles and miles of high plains, mountains, and flamingoes. Lots of flamingoes. And here we’re going to be with no Internet for days while the Wisconsin primary plays out. We won’t know anything until days after the results are in!

We were curious what the sleeping arrangements would be. There are no settlements of any size at all up here and certainly no hotels. The company we organized the tour with said they use “shipping containers” for sleeping and eating, and sure enough when we pulled in toward the evening there they were: old shipping containers retrofitted as little cabins. Cots with great sleeping bags for the cold nights. Separate kitchen and bathroom shipping containers, all out in what is just the middle of nothing. Pretty cool, really.

Without Internet or even electricity there was no opportunity to load pictures or write this blog, so I’m doing it all now that we’re back in civilization. I’ll add more on our subsequent days over the next day or two, but there are a lot of pictures to load so it’ll take a while. For now, though, here are the rest of our pictures from Day One.