Day 1 — Salar de Uyuni

Well, we’re finally back in Canada. It’s a sad moment in some ways, though it’s also good to be back on Mountain Daylight Time. Among other things, it finally gives me a bit of time to write a bit about our trip before the memories start to fade. So, here goes…

Our first step on our month-long adventure was an all night bus ride from La Paz to the town of Uyuni. Once there, we quickly surveyed the town, and signed on with a likely looking tour operator to do a 3-day swing through Bolivia’s “Southwest Circuit.” Our first stop on said tour was the Salar de Uyuni, located in southwest Bolivia. It’s the largest salt flat in the world, and one of the most surreal places on earth. If I were to make a film about purgatory, I’d film it here. I’ve never seen so much nothingness — just blue and white, stretching on towards infinity. It’s the one place in the world where formal modern art accurately captures the world.

Once the bottom of a vast inland ocean, the salt flats still boast a series of islands, oases of colour in the sea of salt. Climbing one, you can even see a former shoreline.

The islands, though isolated, are by no means barren. Here’s a picture of me with Spike, one of the cactuses on the island that we stopped beside for lunch.

As we ate, I couldn’t help but think of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; I’m sure this was the closest I’ll come to eating dinner at the end of the universe. Shown here are a few of our fellow-travellers.

We finished our trek across the salt flat later that afternoon. The truck had a bit of trouble starting at one point, but it turns out that you can start a car anywhere in the world by pushing it down a hill and dropping it into first. The trick in this case was to find a hill…

However, eventually we got moving again, and finished the day a couple of hours later at a hostel in a dusty little town that lives on alpaca-herding and solar power.