Bolivia Photographs

This was our first stop only 10 minutes from the Bolivian-Chilean border: Lagoona Blanca (the White Lagoon). The surrounding mountains were reflected particularly nicely in its still waters. The pink flamingos were very elegant as they wandered around feeding – even if they did run away swiftly as we tried to get closer for a photo! Cautious things.

Gary and me in the middle of the high mountainous desert region that stretches from Chile to Bolivia – and even northwards to Peru apparently. You get a good sense from this photo of exactly how remote we were during this trip.

The Lagoona Verde (another Green Lagoon) also reflected the surrounding volcanic peaks clearly as we arrived on its shores. The impressive thing about this arsenic-tinted lagoon was that as watched the reflective deep green waters turned a pale green, almost opaque shade. This spread from the far side of the lagoon towards us as you can see if you look at the two pictures of Gary and myself which were taken during the change. By the time the colour change was complete, the lagoon was a very startling shade of white-green, and there wasn’t a single reflection on its surface. Really weird!

You see… the pale green has definitely spread by the time this second photo was taken…

The high altitude ´Geyser field´. Not that there were any geysers here, but there we lots of nice bubbling muck pools, fumaroles, and pretty colourful mineral deposits. And no fencing or health and safety restrictions so you could wander where you liked!

These stunning flamingos lived by the hundreds on the Lagoona Colarada – a lagoon with strips of water shaded a vivid pink-red colour. This was apparently due to boron in the water… whatever it was I’ve never seen water anything like it. There were big chunks of salt deposited around the surface too…

… and plenty of llama grazing near the shores! This is where we spent our first, highly cold, but very scenic, night in Bolivia!

This rock is called the ´Stone Tree´. You can easily see why – it is rock, not petrified tree, but with the ´trunk´ and branching structures above it does look remarkably like a tree! There were lots of other weird rock formations nearby which were great fun to climb for an hour or so.

This is Villa Martin, the remote village on the edge of the salt flat where we spent our second night. Our accommodation wasn’t quite so basic this time… we had running water, yippeee! The small village itself had some fascinating terraces as you can see, complete with traditionally dressed women with long platted bunches dressed in bowler hats, colourful tops and unflatteringly bunched skirts.

This was the spectacular Salar De Uyuni (Salt Flat of Uyuni) at dawn. It was vast – we’ve never seen the sun truly rise on the horizon except over the sea. Beautiful morning sky, don’t you think?

As the sun rose the details on the salt became even more apparent. This section had a polygonal pattern repeated over and over, we’ve no idea why. The mountains in the distance looked wonderful too, and emphasised the size of the flat by being so tiny! Also, you can see in the foreground the wonderful cactus filled Fisherman’s island which we later visited (see below).

Perspective! I bet you didn’t realise I could balance on a giant apple so gracefully!

Or that Gary would encounter a giant rucksack on our trip – his escape wasn’t bad!

And below is Fisherman’s Island which had amazing views of the vast surrounding Salar De Uyuni, and terrific giant cacti! They completely dwarfed us!

And more perspective action – this time my jump ´over the jeep´ looks as if it’s about to result in the squishing of most of our travelling companions when I land!