Uyuni
BOLIVIA
The Great Salt Expanse
By AARON
Monday, September 20, 2010
So even though Lyndi had visited Uyuni many times before on her tours, this was my first town south of La Paz that I had seen in Bolivia. The train there was like being transported back about 15 years, with an old time dining cart and basic seats. The train ride took about 9 hours in total, but had we taken the bus, the travel time would have been much more due to the poor road conditions.
We arrived in Uyuni around 1am the next morning, so not much happened that night, but the next morning we set off for the famous salt flats in Bolivia, just outside of Uyuni, known for well, its salt.
The salt flats cover over 4,000sq miles and is a huge expanse of salt that is a result of a giant saltwater lake that formed about 20,000,000 years ago when the tectonic plates crashed together, forming the Andes mountain range as we know it today. Not only is it amazing to see, it’s also a great place to take pictures because there’s no point of reference on this large, flat expanse. Our first day was spent taking many a picture where Lyndi was eating an entire plate of her tour group, or kicking a miniature me; pretty much anything we could think of that would make for a cool picture. The night was spent in a salt hotel, made entirely of salt, which was pretty cool, because if you wanted to take a tequila shot, you could just lick the wall before the shot.
Day 2 on the salt flats was spent visiting a couple of caves on the edge of the flats, along with visiting a dormant volcano where we dined for lunch with just about the cutest kid in the area- Rodrigo. At the base of the volcano, we enjoyed views of a huge peak at our backs, and a large white expanse of nothing set out in front of us. On our way back to the town of Uyuni I did get to fulfill one of my dreams though. No, literally fulfill one of my dreams- you know the dream where you’re naked in public? Well it wasn’t exactly public, but I did take some pictures of me naked on the salt flats, and even though the rest of the group was about 50 yards away, it was public enough.
After shooting my “risqué” photos, we decided that was enough for the salt flats and headed back to Hotel Tonito in Uyuni, where we were all craving the pizza that Lyndi had taunted me about ever since she first passed through this town. Minuteman Pizza is owned and operated by Chris, a native of Massachusetts and a lover of great pizza. Not only has he managed to make a great pizza, he’s managed to do it at around 3700 meters (well over 2 miles above sea level). This may not sound like a huge accomplishment, but it is for 2 reasons:
1. Pizza in South America sucks. They just don’t get it here. Either they just smother it all in cheap cheese, or sometimes they won’t even bother to put any tomato sauce on it. Regardless the mistake, no one here seems to be able to get it right.
2. Cooking pizza, especially the dough, at such a high altitude is more challenging than it seems. Everything seems a bit harder at altitude- breathing, combusting gas, pouring beer, etc. and making a good dough and pizza is just another challenge.
Well in the end, despite Lyndi building this place up to be the Holy Grail of pizza places in SA, Chris didn’t disappoint and I must say, it is the best pizza I’ve had in South America.
The rest of the evening was spent enjoying a couple of beers with our travel companions, and then calling it an early night, because the next day we were headed to the highest city (so they claim) in the world- Potosi (4060M).
