Just over a year ago Iza and I created a map of the entire world on the walls of our hallway, where we posted notes and pictures of places we dream to see.
A year later, the picture dream became a reality. When we found our selfs staring at the whites natural beauty we’ve ever seen, 1,2000 km square meters of pure white salt, The Solar Flats.
Perfect octagon forms created by wind makes the flats a unique design of its own. We were in a different place, a place we’ve never thought it would be so unreal.
“Iza look, do you see what I see??” I kept pointing to random landscape as we did over 120km in our 4×4.
Our driver kept gearing left or right while his eyes slowly closed.
“lol, our driver is falling asleep!”
But somehow we didn’t care, the Solar Flats was so big that it didn’t matter if we went left or right, we just admired.
“Bolivia, I love you. You are so beautiful!”
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| From Bolivia |
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We took a 3 day tour of the Solar Flats and “Mars”.
It was 7 of us, three Brazilians, two Bolivians and us, plus our driver who was also a guide, mechanic and a cook.
First day, we cruised on the Flats, where we visited the original salt museum, the Pascado Island, a fish form island with 100ths dildo spikes called cactus, apparently they are years and years old. The island had a walk path, through these sexual giants, and there was a breath taking view of the Solar Flats from the top.
It was also windy as f…. Iza was blown away!!! Literally.
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In the Solars it’s a common trend for people to take unreal prospective pictures, where things appear bigger or smaller then in real life.
“What did you bring for your pictures” asked Simon, a cool traveler that we met at our Santa Cruz trek in Huaraz, and we bumped into him again.
“I brought Iza with me!! Watch, I am going to be bigger then her, and blow her away. Hold the camera and snap away!” We posed as Simon shoot our creative perspective image.
“Simon we keep bumping into you, you are the coolest” He is also moving south towards Argentina in our direction.
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| From Bolivia |
The first day ended with lots of pictures and a good night sleep in the salt hotel. The hotel had everything made from salt, even the bed. Apparently it’s healthy.
Next day we woke up at 6am, drove most of the day through a desert scenery, till we got to the Laguna Caneta. It was freezing cold, elevation around 4,000 meters, wind chill factor below 0, but we didn’t care as the sound of thousand flamingos took over our senses. It was an optical stimulation that followed by many photo stills.
“Are these flamingos crazy! It’s freezing here, what are they doing here?”
“They are eating algae. There are two types of flamingos, these don’t get cold and they like this algae” said our driver, guide, and cook, as we observed and ate our lunch with a kick ass view.
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We continued south, passed few other lakes with more flamingos, but once we reached Laguna Colorada is where the real beauty set in. A lake with many different color algae, that housed even more flamingos. These flamingos were a bit more red from the red algae that they eat.
We climbed a small hill to see the lake from above. A super duper view of multicolored algae and a volcano peeping in from far, with a shit load of flamingos dipping their heads into the water.
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“I am freezing!!!!” I screamed, as we walked into our hotel. It was -8C, with strong winds. No heat and many holes in the roof and windows. “if we survive tonight, we can survive anything.”
But waking up the next day was even harder. 5am, cold, early and broken body from the bent mattress. We visited Geysers, boiling mud, and lots of steam from the hot volcano. Quite interesting, but it was freaking cold. Again we bumped into Simon.
Another hour and we were rewarded with hot thermal springs. Outside was easily negative something but the water was 30C. It was extremely hot going in with a frozen body, but shortly the water felt just right. Our bodies melted away, and our heads froze.
“ahhhh, what a nice hot morning to a freezing cold night.”
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| From Bolivia |
The rest of the day was classified as the return to Uyuni day, we drove for 8hrs in our dusty 4×4 on desert terrain. Once again the views were spectacular, no vegetation, just orange, red color sand, rocks and volcano. With the sun beaming strong and the sky screaming blue we were in a different world, perhaps a world of Mars.
A beautiful part of the world that we feel everybody should visit.
“You will loose yourself, and your reality, I promise.”
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