A Guide to the Bolivian Salt Flats
I have only have two of my photos framed in my entire house at the moment, and they are both from the Bolivian National Park. The Salt Flats tour is the reason why I wouldn’t suggest skipping Bolivia to anyone.
Everywhere you look is a photo opportunity. Especially if you like flamingoes, colourful lakes, volcanoes and optical illusions.
uyuni
Warning - this is going to sound very negative. But I promise it gets better from here.
The starting point to the tour, I recommend spending as little time as possible in this little desert town. Over-priced, awful food, no soap in any bathroom, rude hostel owners. We unfortunately got stuck here, with two separate incidents of food poisoning.
With both of us unable to get off the bathroom floor, a one-day stopover turned into four days. But once we were out of there, the days that followed made up for it.
The Salt Flat Tour
There are two types of tours you can take to the Uyuni Salt Flats:
One-day sunrise and sunset
3-day jeep tour where you’re doing a mix of the salt flats, lagoons, cactus islands, hot springs, and more.
I’d strongly recommend the 3 day tour, as you’ll get to explore Eduardo Avaroa National Park, which has so much to see in addition to just the salt flats. Plus this is where you can cross the border from Bolivia to Chile, as you end up in San Pedro de Atacama (which is part of the Chilean desert).
This tour was MAGICAL… it was like I died and went to flamingo heaven.
The Company
We went with Salty Desert Adventures and they were amazing. Rated as #1 on Trip Advisor and cheaper than the other companies that were recommended to us (Red Planet, Quechua Connections, etc.).
You can do an English or Spanish tour, and we chose Spanish because it was cheaper and thought it would be a fun challenge. Good thing we ended up having some fluent Spanish speakers in the group to translate :)
Our guide was great, and drove well, which is something you have to be cautious of. We passed a horrible accident on the last day, and saw people being taken into an ambulance in stretchers on the highway afterwards.
Can you do it without a guide? We researched how to do it on our own, but it's pretty much impossible. We even met people who have done most tours on their own but said they decided to go with a guide for this one because it's just too difficult to navigate and find places to sleep.
Day 1: Salt Flats & Isla Incahuasi
Spent the morning taking the classic optical illusion photos, which occur due to the lack of depth perception on the salt.
Then visited an island with hundreds of cacti, something out of a Dr. Zeus book.
Day 2: Coral Valley, Lagoons, Geysers, Hot Springs
As you drive through the desert-like landscape on day 2, you’ll stop at colourful lagoons with tons of flamingoes, see some adorable local wildlife and end up at the hot springs.
A highlight was waking up for sunrise the morning of day 3 and bringing my tripod out to the scene of the glowing landscape with dozens of birds bathing in the early sun.
Day 3:
You either spend this day driving back to Uyuni, or cross the border to Chile seeing more lagoons and volcanoes, etc.
Tips
Bring lots of camera batteries if you can. You can only charge your phones/cameras on night one, and night two they have one plug for everyone and it's only available between 6:30-9:30pm.
Bring lots of water because it's limited, and bring snacks because they don't really have any. But you can buy water at each hostel at night if you need.
Bring a bathing suit and towel for the hot springs on the last day!
Can also start in Tupiza if you're coming from the South, but we were coming from the North so didn't look into it.