2nd May - a Dali Desert and More Rocks

We drove back from Laguna Verde along the road we had taken and soon started to see the fabulous coloured mountains we had noticed on the way out. I was anxious that we were not going to stop but Pauli confirmed we would and eventually we drew to a halt on the strangely manicured grit. The road looked as if it had been raked. Perhaps it had?
We only stopped the once. No traffic passed while we were there and we were in perfect silence while we looked at the strange mountains, eroded and streaked with reds, browns and whites.

The road in into the Dali Desert

We were in the Dali Desert, named for its exotic, surreal scenery. These were not the only mineral rich and coloured mountains in the desert but they were the ones we stopped by.

On a hill to one side stood strange rock pillars, scattered like chess pieces across the slope.

It was still only 9.00am, but it felt a lot later and we still had miles to go before we got back to Uyuni.

We took the road back towards Laguna Colorada but turned off north east just before we got there, driving out of the National Park. 

On the left we saw a lake that was nearly dried out and encrusted with salt. It was Laguna Capina which had machinery on it extracting borax.

Laguna Capina

Machinery on the lake

Further down the road a volcano, Uturunco came in to sight (seen on the right hand side of the picture below). Uturunco is the highest peak in south west Bolivia at 6008m. It has fumeroles and the ground around it is rising at the rate of an inch a year showing that there is magma moving underneath it!

Uturunco, on the right of the picture

What a bizarre place this is!

At last it was lunchtime. Pauli had run out of fresh food by now so we had tinned tuna with potato salad and fruit again. We ate by a stream in a small town called Villa Mar. It is too high to grow very much here but the people do manage to raise quinoa. I never saw much quinoa on the menu in Peru or Bolivia so I guess it is mostly exported. Although small, Villa Mar still had a school.

Villa Mar

Pressing on after lunch we came to the Valle de Rocas, an immense rocky area, with great photographic scope, and again many clambering tourists, even though this time there were notices asking people not to climb on the the rocks. Fortunately they were mostly leaving the area as we arrived.

This was another twenty minute stop, although, as with most of the places we had been, we could have spent a day there.

By now it was 1.00pm and we had been on the road for eight hours. Rather than dirt track we now entered a proper metalled way. We glided over it. Pauli insisted we shut the windows to prevent drag! In another four hours we would reach Uyuni. We passed a small mining town and then saw the mountain which is being extracted. The towns around it have been built by companies to house the workers. The next place down the line was San Christobal and was initiated by the foreign owned concession that exploits open cast mines for siver, zinc and lead. Pauli stopped here for a little while and we had a look round, although there was not much to see. Just a regular dusty place.

In San Christobal

We eventually got in to Uyuni at 5.00pm. Pauli had been driving for twelve hours, less the breaks, and had made lunch for us. He listened to the radio for the last part, as he said it helped to keep him awake! I hope he had the next day off when he returned to his family!

We picked up the rest of our gear from Tunipa Tours, the agency we had arranged the trip with, and then had a beer. Not content with twelve hours on the road, we caught the bus at 7.00pm to Potosi, where we were to have our own experience of mining!