Uyuni

Uyuni is a super mellow town in south Bolivia, which nowadays only seems to exist as a tourist haunt. Uyuni itself only features two worthwile sights; the archeology museum (I didn't bother) and the train cemetery. The latter is a graveyard of old rusting steam locomotives, which were just left here when they became unmodern at the time of the electrification of the railway. It was probably cheaper and easier to just let them rest here, rather than transporting them away, and getting rid of them properly.

However, what draws the masses to Uyuni is no shitty locomotives; it is the nearby salt flats and a spectacular untouched nature featuring several coloured lakes that has caused numerous tour operators to establish themselves in Uyuni. Once there, there is no problem finding a tour as they all seem to fight about the tourists and one is definately in a position to bargain.

To see all the remote lakes, one need three days to spare so I settled with only visiting the salt flat this time, a one-day tour. There always has to be something left for the "next time", whenever that is.

The Uyuni Salar (salt flat) is 12000 square kilometres large (world's largest) and was part of a prehistoric salt lake, which now has dried up and left a massive block of solid salt. At the time of my visit was the rain period (of course, it is always the rain period whereever I go!) and parts of the salt flat was covered in a thin layer of water, creating some amazing optic reflections.

Some pictures from Uyuni follows: