Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Fantastic end to our four-day journey! The salt flats were spectacular. We were driving there by 5:30am in the pitch black. The sky slowly became brighter casting a warm yellow glow on the small salt mounds pilled near the salt hotel. After shivering while watching the orange ball rise over the mountains, I joined my group inside for pancake breakfast.
When our stomachs were full, we headed deeper into the Salar to take photos of the brilliant white ground against the blue sky. Before going on the trip I’d seen lots of funny perspective pictures – people walking into Pringles cans, standing in shoes, sitting on hands, etc. Well, let me say, those pictures are REALLY hard to take. I started trying to get Alex and Faye on their llama and was failing miserably. In the end, I recruited Gonzalo to help us figuring he’d had plenty of experience. Turns out I was right. He was extremely helpful and even suggested more poses for us (given that we had over an hour there).
Our other stop was Colchani, a small village on the edge of the Salar selling salt-made objects. We had way too much time to hang out there and eventually had lunch at 11am. Bit early but that was all we had left to do. So after we finished lunch, Gonzalo and Jaclyn took us back to Uyuni and said farewell. Alex, Faye and Jon had all decided to stay the night in Uyuni and my train wasn’t until midnight, so we found a hotel to stay at for the night.
We’d read about a pizza place for dinner and decided to go there when they opened at 5pm, leaving us with a few hours to spare. We sat in the main square having a soda and wandered around town. I showered and got ready while the others went for a walk. The time eventually ticked by. Minuteman pizza is owned by a Bostonian; Jon had a long talk with the guy before we ordered our pizza. It was true American style pizza. Delicious! And I was finally able to get online to talk to my parents, very important since I’ll see them soon.
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| Last night with the group. Real pizza! |
Before my train, I sat with the group at the hotel watching a strange movie with Claire Danes about a woman who designed more humane cattle conditions. Really weird. Sadly I had to leave a few minutes after The Blind Side started. I hugged my new friends goodbye, left the hotel while the guy at the front desk was trying to get me to pay for the room (even though I wasn’t sleeping there) and walked across the street to the train station. Luckily I was not alone; one of the guys from the other jeep was on my train as well and we ended up with seats next to each other.
La Torre description of Day 4 (with a tiny bit of editing)
The Salt plains have a very particular ecosystem that is limited by altitude. The salt flats of tunupa (Uyuni salt flats) are the largest in the world at an altitude of 3650m. They have very unique weather condition. The air is thin and the sun’s heat transmitted almost exclusively by radiation because of the situation one can feel a large thermal difference when going from sunshine to shade.
Temperatures average 5°C (41°F) with highs over 30°C (86°F) in summer and lows down to -25°C (-13°F) during winter (June-September). Temperatures can reach wind chill temperature of -45°C (-49°F).
The rainfall in the region is less than 300mm per year. From December to April parts of the salar are covered with water from 10 to 60cm deep, creating a marvelous reflection of the sky on the salt floor. When the sky fills with clouds, the horizon blends with the water part of a great interior lake.
Through the years the evaporation of the water gave birth to the salt flats. The immense Salar de Uyuni is 12,100km2. This is the largest salt plain in the world stretching away in all directions as far as the eye can see.
With the uplifting of the Andes 25 million years ago, the altiplano, formerly at sea level, became an immense depression between two mountain ranges. Salt deposits scattered about the surface were dissolved and transported by water courses to the lower lying areas to the south. A series of flooding and drying cycles followed, the most recent of which were Lake Michin, which flooded the southern altiplano 40,000 to 25,000 years ago. The latter filled today’s Uyuni and Coipasa salt lakes as well as Lago Poopo for some 3000 years before drying and leaving the landscape we know today. Drilling in the Salar de Uyuni has revealed successive layers of salt and clay 120m deep and geophysical studies suggest alt accumulation 500m before the surface.
The evaporation of a lake left this salt plate. It has several layers which are formed by numbers of successive floods and evaporating cycles. The rivers carry sediments and salt with water into the lake and during the dry period, the water dries up causing the precipitation of the salt. Surface hexagon structures, due to the desicciostion and temperature variation the crust or top layer of salt will contract a fracture. The fractures will form small capillaries in polygon shapes, through which the salt water that has low density raises to the surface and crystalizes when reaching the surface, forming crystal rings that form in a polygon figures.
Recent studies say that this huge salt lake has eleven cycles registered belonging to 11 lakes that successively accrued. And besides rain and water drain along the sides of the mountains. During the rainy season the salt flats are flooded by rain water that covers the salt flats and during the dry season the water evaporates extremely fast (up to 6-8 mm per day) due to the suns radiation and wind.
Montones de sal (small salt mountains of salt) are created when salt is piled so the top part of the salt dries. That way it can be transported weighing less. Leaving the salt bed we will visit Colchani, 22km northeast of Uyuni. On the edge of the salt flats, the village of Colchani lies at an altitude of 3940m above sea level. With a population of 1,420 residents, most of whom work at extracting salt from the salt flats; locals use rudimentary tools such as pick axes and shovels in their work. The village also contains various salt treatment plants in addition to rustic workshops where artisan objects are made out of salt ground from the surface (but not from salt blocks due to bands produced by the different layers). The refined product is 4000 tons for livestock. This village is also known by the name Puerto Seco (dry port) because its access to the salt flat.
After this it will be time to say your goodbyes… and for us to say thank you for choosing to travel with us. Sniff, sniff…
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