Our final day starts out early, with us being on the flats just after 5am to position ourselves for the sunrise. We park the vehicle on the flats, facing east and wait in the cold. The salt pan is partially covered with rain water at the moment after rainy season and thus we have an opportunity to get many reflections shots. Once getting out of the vehicle and stepping into the icy water we nearly all have cold and wet feet pretty quickly but hold out until the sunrise. As it most often is, the west is a prettier sight than the east, with baby blue pinks and blues and the full moon!
We drive across the Uyuni salt pan to Hotel de Sol (Salt Hotel) which was the first hotel on the salt flat but was closed in 2000. Now it serves as a stop for travellers like us and is the start of the Dakar race across this Bolivian natural wonder.
After breakfast we head off to some drier parts of the salt flat as an opportunity for the group to take some perspective shots. We all decided that it is harder than the photos make it look! Fun was had with several traditional and less traditional props. We also had a proposal …our English / Canadian couple got engaged! Blake asked after 7 years of dating and Grace said “Yes”!
Our final / final stop of the trip was the Train Cemetery near Uyuni. These are abandoned trains from the 1920s-1930s when English technology took over and they were no longer used. This together with a loss of access to Iquique port, in Chile and a drop in mineral prices. Considering it is also Bolivia, you can climb all over, into and under them- do whatever you please really.
We all hugged and said goodbye before leaving our separate ways. I stay in Uyuni for one night, a town which is surprisingly dirty and very non-inviting, despite the hordes of tourists that come through its “doors”. I but a ticket to get out on the first bus out the next day.
