Travelogue Bolivia 2003
Tupiza to Uyuni – Part 2

Moonset at sunrise

Flamingos in the Laguna Colorada

Once again day three started fantastic, as each of the days kind of replaced the last one’s impressions with new and even better ones. This is one of the reasons why I can’t describe every detail of this route and rather than excerpts. As we were going from Tupiza to Uyuni we were most of the time travelling alone and only passing the lots of tourist doing the route the other way round. And we started with the smallest sensation the tour offered and they got better all the way rather than starting with the best (Salar de Uyuni) and then becoming more "boring". First thing to see was the Laguna Colorada and we were the first tourists there at this day. We saw hundreds of flamingos standing in the water and got closer to them as everybody else as the fled from our approach and settled down some hundred meters farer from the shore. (One of the things I can’t describe in detail is all the animals we saw. Anyway, if you want to get an impression of our trip then visit http://www.tupizatours.com/ where you find maps of the routes and some amazing photos.)

Arbol de Piedra (some five meters high)

The lava landscape. I am still looking for an explanation how these waves have formed. So far Nicole B. came up with the explanation that sounded best to me: She said they might have formed under water.

Then we went through another amazing desert with astonishing rock formations, the most famous is the arbol de piedra, the tree of stone that looks as if it and the background with colourful mountains had been taken from one of Salvador Dali’s paintings.

Finally we reached one of the region’s few active volcanos. We did not visit the small smoking crater but a landscape of lava from an eruption some centuries ago. It looked as there had been a sea of lava in five to ten meter high turbulent waves which solidified in parts of a second. I have no idea how this landscape did form itself.

next travelogue