Salar de Uyuni- 3 day tour of the salt flats to Chile.

• Time: 2.5 days
• Location: Uyuni, Bolivia. Can also start from San Pedro de Atacama or Tupiza in Bolivia.
• Cost: B$870 (€113)
• Includes: transport, guide, breakfast x 2, lunch x 2 and dinner x 2, drinks at meals, accommodation x 2 nights, sleeping bags, transfer to Chile.
• Not included: hot springs (B$6/ €0.90), national park fee (B$150/ €20), paying for toilets along the way (all between B$2-5)

Salar de Uyuni, located in the Andes in South West Bolivia, is the world’s largest salt flats covering a massive 11,000 squared km. It is believed that a lake dried up leaving a white canvas of white salt, cati filled islands and rock formations. It’s the Machu Picchu of Bolivia and no trip would be complete to Bolivia without including this white desert.

There are a few options for doing a tour of the salt flats. The most popular are either one day or 3 day tours, with the option of finishing in Chile if coming from Bolivia or vice versa. You can also finish the tour back in Uyuni if you’re not travelling onwards and want to do the 3 day tour. I’ve seen 4 day and 2 day tours advertised also. The one day tour is the same on both trips and you finish back in Uyuni that night after visiting the salt island.

I opted for the 3 day tour as I was going onward to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. I thought the extra 2 days was well worth it and it would be a shame to miss out on the stunning lagoons, watching the geysers explode at dawn, warm up in thermal springs and see the most amount of flamingos in one place I think I’ll ever witness. We booked our 3 day tour with a transfer to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile with Salty Desert Aventours and paid B$ 870 (€113) for the tour including the transfer which was one of the best prices we found in Uyuni after shopping around. Opting for an English speaking guide will set you back a lot more. None of us really had any Spanish, myself and one of the other girls have a few words and can understand basic Spanish and we got by just fine. It’s more of a visual tour so an English speaking guide isn’t necessary.

Getting to Uyuni

Night day buses leave La Paz and Sucre to arrive in Uyuni in the evening to start the tour the next day or very early in the morning (4am) to start the tour that morning. Tours leave between 10 and 11 am so usually it would be fine to arrive that morning on a night bus, book your tour and grab breakfast in a cafe.

I came from Potosi where there are buses leaving every hour and the last bus is at 9 pm. The buses takes 4 hours and costs B$30 (€3.90).

I met friends coming from Sucre in Uyuni to do the tour with and luckily most of them hadn’t already booked a tour but some people on the bus did. The bus took over 16 hours, instead of the scheduled 8 as there was snow on the road and they ended up waiting until it cleared at a standstill for 7 hours.

My advice is don’t book a tour until you arrive, shop around for the best prices- the tours will never be booked out.

Uyuni is one of the grimmest places I’ve ever been. It’s not the worst but its absolutely freezing with nothing in it bar a lot of tour agents, a line of restaurants and a few basic hostels and hotels. It’s not somewhere you want to have to hang around unnecessarily. Ideally you wouldn’t have to spend a night but we did a night before we went on the tour and found a good pizzeria (Donna Isabella) and a decent hotel (Hostel El Cactu) with hot water, plenty of blankets and good WiFi for B$50 (€6.50) for a single private room.

After a good feed and meeting the two other couples Chris had met on the bus and booked bus onto the tour with, we stocked up on toilet paper, water, snacks and gloves for the trip. Uyuni is also alot more expensive than the rest of Bolivia. Its like the end of the world and they can charge what they like. If you want to bring wine or snacks on the tour, I recommend buying it before coming to Uyuni. It will be half the price.

Day 1

We went for breakfast in Breakfast Nonis before loading up the jeep with our bags. The tour left at 10.30 am so we enjoyed a nice lie in. Once the jeep was loaded, we set off for the first stop of the day, the train cemetery. This is cool, it’s just a load of abandoned trains and carriages that you can climb on and into.

After 20 mins or so here we set off for the salt flats. On the way we stopped in a small area of artesanal shops selling salt, llama jumpers and our guide explained how the salt is extract from the earth and produced.

The expanse of flat white terrain stretching for miles and miles, contrasting with the piercing blue sky is spectacular. We got to the Bolivian sign and the collection of world flags that you see on Instagram, that are beside the salt hotel.

The salt hotel is completely made of salt and was the first salt hotel build here. It’s no longer used as a hotel, rather a stop off and a place for the guides to prepare lunch.

Your guide for the 3 days is usually a driver, a guide, a photographer and a chef. They prepare the lunches and the hostels take care of the breakfast and dinners. Our first lunch was excellent. We had loads of vegetables, quinoa, sausage and beef and a mandarin.

After lunch we set off deeper into the salt flats to take our perspective photos. We didn’t have too many props with us, we had a hat and a box of pringles so getting some inspo from Instagram for pictures is a good idea and bringing some pros like a wine bottle, a deck of cards or toy dinasours is key for good photos. Some of the guides had the props but ours just had a box of pringles but still we managed to get some cool photos with minimal props.

We’d great fun taking the perspective photos and really tried our guides patience trying to time them right. The guides are good at having ideas for videos and panoramic photos.

After an hour or more messing around getting photos we headed off again towards the island on the salt flats full of giant cati. The views of the salt flats from here were amazing.

After this we headed to watch the sunset over the salt flats.

We reached accommodation the first night at about 7 pm and got our rooms. We had 3 rooms between us so every couple had their own room. This place was quite nice, had the option of paying B$10 (€1.10) for a hot shower and a little shop to buy drinks and snacks. Dinner was soup and a fairly small but tasty portion of sausage, fries, egg and vegetables together in a sauce. The hostel is made of salt and has no heating bar one space heating in the dining room. The company gave us a each good sleeping bags which are definitely needed. I’d been warned by everyone I met how cold the salt flats are so I came with every warm thing I owned. Both nights I slept in 2 jumpers, 2 pairs of leggings, ski socks, my down coat, hat and gloves. This might sound excessive but it is cold! However Chris slept in his boxers and didn’t find it too cold so take what you will from that!

Day 2

Breakfast the next morning of fruit, bread and eggs was served at 8 am. At 9 am we headed off to the first of many stops. I lost count how many lagoons we stopped at, there are about 5 on day 2 we stop at and all of them have flamingos. The scenery is just spectacular.

Rainbow mountains, blue and red lagoons, thousands of pink flamingos and dry deserts. We had lunch over looking a blue lake with the lost number of flamingos I’ve ever witnessed.

They’re so beautiful and didn’t seem bothered by us admiring them at the edge of the lake.

After lunch we stopped at train tracks, a collection of rocks and several other lagoons, the most spectacular being the red lake.

We had time to explore and climb the rocks, the best part being where Jack and Chris got stuck, thinking they would easily scale up and down the rocks.

We arrived at 5.30 pm to the second hostel. We had been warned about just how cold it would be. This was more basic than the previous night but had all we needed for one night. The rooms were freezing, maybe – 5 or 10 in the rooms but it wasn’t too bad with all the blankets, the sleeping bag, all my clothes and a make shift hot water bottle. The boiling water half melted the plastic bottle I used for my hot water bottle but it kept my feet from catching frost bite.

There was a shop across from the hostel were we purchased wine and a few tinnies add a beer blanket to all the others on the beds. At dinner time the company gave each group a bottle of wine for dinner. Lovely touch I thought. Bolivian wine isn’t one I’ve had before but it’s quite good. Dinner was soup and a vegetarian bologense followed by copious hot drinks and wine.

After a lot of laughing and chatting we went to bed after being told off by a French lady shouting like something possessed that we were too loud.

Day 3

Breakfast was at 5am and we had been warned my Leonardo that the keep would leave at 5.30 on the dot regardless (whilst staring at me).

Breakfast was cereal and pancakes served with a tub of dulce de leche, caramel spread in a tub that is easily eaten with a spoon directly from the pot. A serving size is as much as you can fit on a spoon, regardless of the size of the spoon. Most of the table was too hungover to contemplate pancakes and some were suffering from the altitude. The maximum altitude we reached on the tour was 4700 m.

The first stop was the geisers at dawn. It was so cold we didn’t spend very long here but long enough to watch the geisers erupt as dawn broke.

After the geisers we went to the hot springs. We were split between getting in, enjoying defrosting and dealing with getting dresses and the cold after or trying to stay warm in the jeep. I put my hand in to test the temperature and gauge whether it was worth potentially losing body parts getting out. It was so nice and hot I knew I would regret not getting in. Putting my freezing cold feet into the roasting water and watching the sun rise from the hot springs was bliss.

We had 30 mins to soak in the hot springs before we had to move on to the green lagoon.

The green lagoon was frozen so we couldn’t full see the colour of it but the view of the lake with the mountains in the background was another beautiful one.

Our transfer to San Pedro de Atacama was waiting for us at the border. The disparity in wealth between Chile and Bolivia was so apparent even from the border. The vans that picked us up were brand new and the road after the border was a smooth tarmacadam road with clear markings. This was a stark contrast to the dirt tracks we had spent the last few weeks being bounced around on throughout Bolivia. We paid B$15 to skip the queue and get out exit stamps from Bolivia.

After bidding farewell to Jack and Aisling and thanking our wonderful guide, we caught our transfer to Chile. After crossing the boarder we drove 10 minutes to Chilean immigration. No fruits, seeds or animal products are allowed to be brought into Chile so keep that in mind if you’ve food left over or thinking of saving money by buying supplies in Bolivia. They’ll be taken off you. And the Chilean immigration officials check everything. We had to open our bags and let them search it.They’re re very throuough with their searches so get rid of any thing you shouldnt have before!

From here its about 45 minutes to the tourist town of San Pedro de Atacama. We got dropped off to the center of San Pedro at about 1pm. Having done the 3 days of the salt flats tour, I would definitely go for that over the 1 day. I was lucky to have a great group who I continued to travel with and two of who will actually be heading to Sydney after this so I’ll meet up with in a few months. The landscape is like nothing I’d seen before and keeps changing every day. It’s good value for all you get and it’s a very easy border crossing so makes sense if you’re going from Chile to Bolivia or vice versa.