Driving into vast scenery and nothingness makes you think, reflect and nurture creative ideas. Memories from long ago arise. The jeep was mainly silent for large amounts of the days as everyone pondered.
I put on "Origin of Symmetry" by Muse on my iPod and it added another dimension to the already epic experience.
We saw huge rocks shaped by the wind, had lunch on some rocks made from lava in front of another semi active volcano and drove past a big quinoa plantation near the salt flats themselves. The driver explained that the quinoa is worth so much as an export that Bolivians cannot afford to consume their own produce. The red plants are worth more than the yellow and many buyers simply turn up and demand huge quantities of it.
The previous night there had been a rumour that we wouldn't be able to see the salt flats as the drivers wanted to get back to uyuni for carnaval and were claiming they didn't have enough petrol to get us there. Luckily it was just a rumour and at the end of the third day of driving we finally turned onto the Salar, the mysterious salt desert where illusions and mirages are not uncommon and drove accross it towards our accomodation.
Due to it's vast emptiness, it would be very easy to become disorientated in the Salar and lose your sense of direction (as well as your mind) but our driver reassured us that he had 13 years experience driving this route and that he used the mountains to navigate.
Our accomodation was a hotel made of salt. Actual salt. One of the boys licked the wall to test it. I became aware of a cut on my foot when I walked around the hotel barefoot!
We got told that one of the jeeps has rolled over three times, sending the tourtists in it to hospital with broken bones.
I sampled quinoa beer and we were served a big last supper before going to bed at 9pm as we were getting up at 4am to see the sunrise....
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