the lagoons and salt flats of southern Bolivia

Potosí (see previous post) was one of the highlights of the trip, but it was to get even better as we got into the region of lagoons and salt flats in southern Bolivia.

First was the famous Salar de Uyuni, over 10,000 square kilometres of flat, white, salt that was once an inland sea.  Marooned within it is the Isla Incahuasi, which we clambered around to try to get that perfect "cacti and salt flat" photo, a couple of us also enjoying the birdlife.  We also visited a small village and watched the salt processing, wandered around a 'cemetery' of rusted old steam trains, enjoyed a night in a hotel made of salt, and visited a couple of caves on the edge of salt flat, one containing several mummified human corpses.


From the Salar we drove on through the high altitude altiplano, past other salt flats, extinct volcanoes, fumaroles, and a number of different coloured lagoons - green(ish), white, and my favourite, the Laguna Colorada which had red water between the expanses of salt.  All the time there was a ferocious wind blowing, good for seeing the colours of the lagoons as it stirs up the bacteria, but difficult to stand and extremely cold.



At lunchtime however we stopped next to another lagoon which thankfully was in a bit more of a bowl, the surrounding snow-capped mountains providing some shelter from the wind. Perhaps for this reason it didn't have any coloured water, but it did have two species of flamingoes that allowed me to get relatively close to take their photos.  The James's flamingo has particularly spectacular colouring:

On a good day for birds I also saw giant, Andean and horned coots, crested ducks, and a lesser rhea (like a South American version of the ostrich), amongst others.

In the afternoon we crossed the border into Chile.  It felt different straight away, the road in a much better state - but somehow felt less "authentic" to me, I preferred Bolivia.