4 days in the South Lipez and the Salar de Uyuni, an absolute dream

Quick disclaimer to start. It is going to be very difficult to put words to describe what we just experienced, even the pictures won’t be as beautiful as what we saw during these 4 days. It has been, for us, the most beautiful trip we have ever taken in our lives (at least so far). The landscapes were absolutely breathtaking, the food awesome, we met great people, all that put together made for a magical trip.

We couldn’t have dreamt better for our last days in Bolivia (well, a slightly warmer weather wouldn’t have been bad…).

Day 1 – From Tupiza to Quetena Chico

The meet up at the travel agency is at 7:15 am for a 7:30 am departure. Just enough time to grab a great breakfast at our hostel before leaving.

At the travel agency, we meet the two French guys who will be with us during this trip, Julien and Fred. Then comes Cristobal, our driver / guide with the Jeep, and his wife Noemie, who will be our cook for the 4 days. It takes just 5 minutes for Cristobal to load our luggage on the roof of the Jeep and off we go for a 4 day road trip. We leave on time (rare enough in Bolivia for us to mention), BUT we have to stop several times to buy more groceries and pick up stuff at Cristobal’s and Noemie’s house!

We start going uphill towards the desert. First stop at the Canyon del Sillar, and its beautiful rock formations.

The drive is stunning, all the landscapes are beautiful and very different from one another. We are already in love with all these landscapes. As the drive goes on, we cross paths with some Lamas, Alpacas and Vicuñas.

We stop to take some photographs and we even see a few ostriches!

We stop for lunch in the little village of Cerillos. We already forgot to mention that on our first day, we are traveling on Bolivia’s independence day. So as we arrived in Cerillos, the kids of the village were parading in the street.

There was also a small celebration on the village’s main and only Plaza.

The village is really tiny but it is fun to see this little celebration in the middle of nowhere.

In Cerillos, Noemie cooked us a great meal, that is when we knew we were going to eat well on this trip!

On the Altiplano, we saw beautiful landscapes : huge plains,

 little frozen streams,

 and mountain summits that are 19,600 ft above sea level.

En route, we stopped at the Rio San Pablo mirador, where Maider took the opportunity to buy a pair of lama wool gloves. We are expecting really cold weather for the next few days…

We continue to climb, all the way up to 15,400 ft to Pueblo Fantasma. It is an abandoned miners town from 1610. During the colonial times, the Spanish built this city to extract the different minerals from the nearby mines (especially silver). But there were multiple epidemics and the people all moved out of the village. The guide at these ruins told us that the village was abandoned only 30 years ago… Which didn’t seem quite right given the bad conditions in which were the houses and church. And Cristobal confirmed, the village has been abandoned for a lot longer than that.

We leave to go to the Laguna Morejon. Until now, everything was going seamlessly, but as we were climbing in altitude, there was more and more snow…

And we got stuck just before getting to the laguna.

We all hop off to help Cristobal. It took us about 30 minutes (in the cold), the push the car, remove the snow, fall on our asses and finally keep going! A nice little unexpected adventure!

It’s late afternoon that we reach the laguna, at 15,930 ft above sea level.

The view on the laguna and its surroundings is fantastic.

The colors of the sky at this time are sublime. We are amazed by how beautiful the scenery is. It feels unreal.

It is dark when we get to the village of Quetena Chico, where we will spend the night. At 13,800 ft above sea level, the night is already very cold. As we settle in our room for the night, we will be sharing it with our 2 friends from the Jeep, we see that the blankets aren’t very thick. Thankfully the agency gave us a sleeping bag, and we also brought our own.

In the little hostel, there is another group from the same travel agency, and of course the 4 are French! Julien and Jessy, also traveling around the world. And Bruno and Mathilde, spending 2 months traveling around Bolivia and Peru. As we talk, we learn that Bruno is also from the Basque County, like Maider, and he even lives in Hasparen. Which is only 10 minutes away from where Maider lives, and is the city where Maider went to middle school. Unbelievable! Of course Maider and Bruno have plenty of common friends. Really funny to meet somebody from the town nearby, in a hostel, in the middle of nowhere in Bolivia.

The 8 of us spent a great evening together! Without forgetting the hot tea Noémie had prepared for us to warm up when we got to the hostel. Followed by an amazing hot meal. Sorry but we have no pictures of our diners, we were all way too cold to take pictures. We spent all our evenings wrapped up in as much clothes as we could and that included our gloves. It was unthinkable for us to remove our gloves to take a picture because of the cold. As everywhere in Bolivia, there was no heat in the hostels, and at night at 13,800 ft above sea level, the outside temperature easily drops down to 5°F…

Good thing we have 2 sleeping bags for the night. Once in bed, our feet are freezing, and they will take a while to warm up despite the number of layers we have. But we finally warm up (Matt will even be too hot) and spend a nice night after this amazing first day.

Day 2 – From Quetena Chico to Villa Mar

The alarm clock rings at 6:30 am and it is FREEZING COLD! It is really, really hard to get out of the sleeping bags and change back into our clothes from the previous day. Noemie is already up preparing us a great breakfast to warm us up and give us energy for the day ahead.

At 7:30 am we leave for our second day in the South Lipez, and particularly the Reserva Eduardo Avaroa. This natural park is located in the far south west of Bolivia, right by the boarder with Chili.

Our first stop of the day is by a lama pen. Here, the young lamas sleep at night and are protected from the foxes. By the way, there are no wild lamas, all lamas and alpacas belong to farmers.

We head out then to the Laguna Hedionda, known for its sulfur. In summer, this laguna is home to hundreds of flamencos. But during these times (remember we are in winter in Bolivia right now), the lake is completely frozen so there are no flamencos. The laguna is still beautiful.

The second laguna we stop by is the Laguna Kollpa. This one as well is rich in minerals, here they even use the white mineral to make shampoo.

This one too is frozen, and with the sun shining, the colors are amazing.

We continue our route to the Laguna Chalbiri. Here, the white stuff is a different mineral, it is borax, used to makes ceramics.

After that, we are on the Salar de Chalbiri, and again the surrounding landscapes are incredible. Cristobal sees some flamencos from afar and drives us to see them.

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to get too close but enough to capture nice photos.

Our last stop before lunch is at the Laguna Verde. This laguna is supposed to be the highlight of the day, with its green waters that turn turquoise blue with the wind. Cristobal warns us that the color of the laguna is unpredictable because of the variability of the weather in the region. And the recent snowfall certainly had an effect on the laguna’s color. On our way, we stop to help a Jeep that has some problems and take the time to take pictures of the snow capped summits,

and the Licancabur volcano. This volcano marks the boarder with Chili, since half of it is in Bolivia and the other half in Chili.

We even saw a fox. Cristobal and Noemie fed him some Oreo cookies! Apparently he really likes those…

We arrive at the laguna, and as Cristobal predicted, it is not green nor blue like we hoped. But it is nonetheless beautiful.

A large part of it is frozen and the colors are amazing. AND we can even see a few Vicuñas.

We aren’t disappointed at all, the scenery is still fabulous. Sorry if we are a little redundant in our adjectives used to describe the different landscapes. But we are really in front of the most beautiful sceneries we have ever seen. Mother nature can be an artistic genius when she wants!

We continue and on our way, we go from snow capped summits and volcanoes to a dry plain. We pass by the Salvador Dali desert, named this way because the colors and the shapes of the mountain look a little like some of Dali’s paintings.

Just before lunch, a nice surprise awaits us : hot springs at 95°F. So we have to admit we weren’t too sure it was a great idea to undress and put on a swimming suit given the cold (it’s around 40°F outside). But we had to go for a dip in these warms waters! And it was great. After a very cold night, and without having taken a shower, this warm bath was a blessing.

Being in these thermal baths, over 13,100 ft above sea level, surrounded by an amazing landscape made of volcanoes, mountain summits and lakes, was once again unreal. As if we were living in a dream!

We stayed about 25 minutes, and Cristobal even came in with us.

All of this while Noemie was cooking lunch. If this isn’t paradise, it’s as close as it gets!

After another delicious lunch, we hit the road, off to geysers that are at 16,400 ft above sea level. These geyser are fascinating.

The water reaches 170°F, sometimes it even boils and creates a lot of white smoke. We spent a few minutes taking pictures and simply admiring the colors. As we get in the car, Cristobal tells us that one year a tourist wanted to go too close to the geysers and fell in them. He burned to death…

At 16,400 ft above sea level, there is a lot of snow. And we are afraid we are going to get stuck again,

But Cristobal is very careful and we manage to drive back down without issues. We drove down to the Laguna Colorada, last stop of the day (at least we thoughts so), at 13,800 ft altitude.

This laguna is definitely our favorite, and will remain as a highlight of the trip. Its large red surface, all the flamencos, and the surrounding mountains make for a truly breathtaking spectacle.

We took about 45 minutes to wander around the lake, take in the beautiful views and of course, take (too) many pictures. It’s unfortunately too hard to show all this with simple photographs.

The Laguna Colorada was supposed to be our last stop of the day before getting to Villa Mar where we will spend the night. Julien had an awesome playlist of French songs that we sent blazing through the speakers of the Jeep for the last few miles. But 15 minutes before arriving to the village, we blew a tire! Second day and second unexpected adventure! Once again, the sun is already down and it is really cold outside, but the view is still amazing.

Nobody complains and we help Cristobal the best we can. The material he has to change his tire with is really bad and not at all adapted to his Jeep, so it takes us easily half an hour to change the tire.

It is completely dark when we reach the village. We are tired, but absolutely amazed by the day we just spent. The village of Villa Mar is a little larger than the one we slept in the night before, and 75% of the houses serve as hostels for the tourists visiting the Salar de Uyuni. Tonight, we sleep at 13,100 ft above sea level, and it is a little less cold than the previous night. We spent another great evening with our French friends and get served a delicious Pique Macho (a typical Bolivian dish made with sausage, eggs, beef, French fries, onions and pepper), made by the lovely Noemie. Still no pics because once again, it was too cold to take any.
At this hostel, we had the possibility to pay to take a hot shower but we decided to stay dirty for the 4 days! We’ll have plenty of time to take a shower when we come back. In this hostel, there were plenty of blankets so nobody was cold.

Day 3 – From Villa Mar to Puerto Chuvica

This morning feels even colder than the previous one. But certainly because we woke up at 6:30 am to leave only 2 hours later (instead of leaving at 7:30 am). Indeed, some Jeeps wouldn’t start, and were in the way. So we spent an hour outside “visiting the village”. There was nothing to visit so we actually just stood there in the cold. Thankfully, Noemie had prepared us an amazing breakfast with pancakes (probably the best pancakes we ever had).

Today we started by visiting several rock formations. The first one called the Copa del Mundo, because it looks a lot like the soccer world cup trophy.

We then headed to an other rock formations called Italia Perdida. It looks like a small canyon and is a great area if you like to climb stuff.

We spent almost an hour climbing around these huge rocks.

Matt loves it and climbs on several rocks, some very very high…

After the rock formations, we headed to another laguna, the Laguna Vinto.

We wander around the lake, again the scenery is splendid. We even saw some flamencos and lamas.

Second highlight of the trip with the Laguna Negra. We have to walk a little bit to reach this one. We walk along some small frozen streams and see a few viscachas (a sort of rabbit) in the rocks.

The hike is really nice but nothing compared to the laguna. To have a better view, we climb up in the rocks.

From there, we have an incredible view of the lake and its surroundings. We stayed a while at the laguna to take in this beautiful and peaceful view.

Last stop of the day before lunch : the canyon de la Valle Anaconda.

From the top of the cliffs, we have an amazing view of the river in the shape of an anaconda. Once again, this is magic for our eyes!

Today we picnic outside by the river. We have a great time with our group and Cristobal and Noemie. Noemie prepared some veggie croquettes that are absolutely delicious. We are simply eating our best meals since we are in Bolivia!

After lunch, we went to an abandoned train station where we stopped to taste some local beers. One was made from quinoa, the other one from coca leaves. Excellent! A nice little break.

This day is a little more relaxing that the two previous ones, but is at least as pretty!

Only 45 minutes left to get to our hotel made out of salt! But 15 minutes before getting there, we get another flat! We are lucky that Cristobal had just repaired the wheel with a flat from the day before while we were drinking beer! Some might think we are cursed but we prefer saying it spices up our trip! So there we go again, all out of the car. We help the poor Cristobal to change the tire yet again. He is already exhausted from all the driving and now he has to change the tires everyday! This time it goes a lot faster and after 15 minutes we are on the road again.

We are getting really close to the Salar de Uyuni that we can see from time to time behind the mountains. Around 5pm, we get to our hostel all made out of salt, right by the salt flat. Cristobal has a surprise for us! Since it isn’t dark yet we will be able to go drive on the Salar to see the sunset! Awesome!!!

We hurry to unpack our stuff and are really surprised by how pretty the hotel is. It is almost entirely made of salt, the walls, the ground and even the tables and the bed are all made out of salt.

And icing on the cake, we have a private room!

We hurry back to the Jeep and drive to the Salar where we start taking the usual funny pictures using perspective. And we have plenty of ideas!

Cristobal had thought of everything and even packed some hot water and biscuits for us to enjoy on the Salar.

Drinking hot tea, and enjoying a few biscuits with such a view is magical!

The sunset offers magnificent colors. And we stay there a while, to admire these breathtaking views once again.

Back at the hotel, we take some time to emotionally recover from this amazing day. And Maider is delighted to find a cat and of course spends time petting him.

For this last supper, Noemie prepared another delicious meal. A veggie and mushroom soup to start, then exceptional lasagnas and finally an apricot based desert. We even had a bottle of read wine from Bolivia. It’s a magical last night that we spent together (unfortunately this time our 4 French friends from the other Jeep were in a different hotel), learning more about each other. 4 days spent all the time together creates a special bond 🙂 .

This last night is a little warmer than the two previous ones since we are now only at 12,000 ft above sea level.

Day 4 – From Puerto Chuvica to Uyuni (before returning to Tupiza)

This morning, we wake up at 5 am to leave at 5:30 am sharp. It’s a little difficult to wake up so early but we know we are in for another amazing day.

Indeed, we hit the road and drive to the Incahuasi island in the middle of the Salar to watch the sunrise. Cristobal goes fast so we arrive amongst the first at the island. From there, a 15 minute walk to get to the other side of the island, where we can best see the sunrise. There are only 2 others girls when we get there, and have the place to ourselves for a few minutes. The color of the sky is already amazing.

It is absolutely FREEZING cold but we are really happy to witness this incredible sunrise. We stayed about 40 minutes to admire it. Absolutely breathtaking.

From the top of the island, we can really see how big the Salar is, about 4,600 square miles.

After the sunrise, we take some time to wander around the island and take pictures with some of the 5,000 giant cactus.

Some are even 26 ft tall!

Back to the Jeep, we take our last breakfast. Noemie had baked a yogurt cake with Oreos on top. Absolutely delicious!

On the parking lot, there are plenty of flags from different countries. We had to take a group photo with the French flag.

And of course, a pic with the French and the American one.

We left then to go take some pictures on the Salar. With the weather conditions from a few days ago (snowfall), we are lucky to have plenty of water on the Salar. This water acts as a mirror, and that makes for absolutely beautiful pictures.

Indeed, we could see our reflection in the Salar. Magical!

Usually at this period, the Salar is perfectly dry, with absolutely no water. Cristobal told us that he hasn’t seen water on the Salar at this time for over 8 years. We are really lucky, and on top of that, we had an incredibly beautiful blue sky for all 4 days of the trip.

We had plenty of time to continue taking funny pictures using the perspective on the Salar. We spent almost 2 hours, like little kids, taking picture after picture.

Cristobal and Milton (the other group’s guide) happily help us.

Even Noemie let us “borrow” her braids for a picture!

Last stop before lunch at the very first hotel made of salt. It’s also there that we find a bunch of different flags.

Bruno and Maider take the opportunity to take a picture with the Basque flag!

And another picture with the American flag.

In the same area, we can see the famous “Dakar Bolivia” sign. The Dakar is a very famous race that used to start in Paris and finish in Dakar in Senegal. But since 2015, the Dakar takes place in South America and it even went through the Salar for the first edition. And of course, we had to take a group pic!

Last lunch all together before going our different ways. Noemie made us some delicious chicken and rice with cheese! Up until the end, we had amazing food. We then drove to the bus terminal in Uyuni to drop off those taking a bus for other destinations. And said goodbye to the great people we met on the trip!

As for us, we stayed in the Jeep with Cristobal and Noemie to go back to Tupiza.

Back in Tupiza, we are still stunned by how beautiful everything was. We almost can’t realize that all of it was real! This trip will most definitely stay as one of our highlights during this trip around the world, and probably for the rest of our lives! If you ever come to Bolivia you HAVE to do this tour.

It’s after this incredible high that we leave Bolivia and are heading to Salta in the north of Argentina.