After numerous days of 10 hour drives, we finally arrived at the salt fields of Bolivia or Salar de Uyuni.  We started our journey in northern Chile and had driven on many miles of dusty roads and crossed mountains over 16,000 feet. We had been taking medications to minimize the effects of high altitude.  However, by this time most of us had either experienced food poisoning or altitude sickness.  I was down a day from dehydration.  We were dead tired from photographing stars through the cold mountain air and then driving for hours through mud hut towns to our next destination.  Now the fun was about to get into high gear….

The first hotel we stayed in while visiting the salt flats was the very best in town.  A large part of it is made from salt blocks harvested from the nearby salt fields. Much like an Eskimo would use a saw to cut blocks of snow for the igloo, the Bolivians cut blocks of salt and built a hotel.  Not all of the salt blocks used for building were totally dry when used in the construction, so salt stalactites are often hanging down from the ceiling.  Of all the crazy coincidences, I saw one of the photographers from my previous Antarctica trip sitting in the lobby of this hotel.  Guess it is a small world after all.

The Salt Hotel or Palacio de Sal

 

 

Getting to the Salt Flats, Salar de Uyuni

So what does one do when they reach the highest altitude of the trip?  We jumped out of the Land Rovers, scampered up a hill and held our phone as high as we could to check the altitude.

I grew up at a high altitude in Los Alamos, New Mexico, 7,500 feet.  Therefore, I thought it may be possible I would have no high elevation problems and did not wish to take the suggested altitude sickness medicine.  Would my childhood hometown produce any favorable effect 55 years later?  The worst situation would be to get sick and have a negative impact on the entire group.  So I went ahead and took the altitude sickness pills, acetazolamide.  You can either take large doses when you feel sick or take smaller doses for the entire duration as a preventative.

So what is up here at these great elevations?  I’m told this was a promised power plant generating power from the thermal activity in the area.  It has never gone online they say…  Power station for who?  (or is it whom?)  During several days of driving, I never saw more than ten houses and certainly no towns.

It is mostly an area to survive in, get through it and come out the other side where we will be working at only 12,600 feet, Oh what a relief it is…

Bolivian Rest Stops

As bad as the rest stops were, they were still a welcome sight from what we had been driving through for the past 8 hours.

 

 

Bolivian Restaurants and Food

It is a complete mystery to me how so many of our group got food poisoning from dining on fine Bolivian cuisine.  When we stopped for lunch, at times we would be the only customers.  Hummm, never a good sign.

Let’s think about what often happens when you have visitors from out of town.  It is likely you ask them what kind of food they would like for dinner.  You tell them they have their choice of Italian, Thai, your favorite Mexican spot, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, seafood or the always reliable Texas BBQ.  When living in Chicago we even had Ethiopian, French Vietnamese, Argentinian steak houses and Armenian restaurants to choose from.  Do you know why you never offer up a Bolivian restaurant?  Because their food is no good.  Also, there seems to be a lack of unique cuisine.  Maybe they are short of a fresh food supply.  The only farm produce we saw growing was Quinoa.  If the delivery trucks had to drive the roads we did… good luck.  The costs would be prohibitive to deliver fresh food.

While eating in a restaurant, poor people from the street would wander in and ask for our food.  Of course our leaders obliged and packed up a lunch for them.

 

Salt Flats Picnic

Driving along the seemingly endless salt fields, we saw from a great distant a small hill.  That was our destination for lunch.  The lunches provided by the tour group were somehow very good, much better than what the restaurants provided.

Finally, Let’s Photograph the Salt Fields of Bolivia

 

 

The Bolivian Night Sky

It is not like you get to go out at 10:00PM and wait for 1:00AM to start shooting the Milky Way.  Oh, no.  The serious night sky photographer goes out at 4:00PM, drives around to look for some composition and clicks away waiting for the right view of the Milky Way.  Most members in our photography workshop knew the constellations and would happily point them out to me.  Guess that is why they were on a tour of nighttime photography.  They would try to help me out… Harold, look at Lupus, Musca is right next to it and right there above it you have Horologium.  And of course you know the Southern Cross, it is that group of four stars right there…  What?  Four stars?  They are waiving their hands in pitch black while I’m looking through my camera seeing millions of stars.

The sky was so bright with stars a star shadow was cast.  No moon, just bright stars.  The water was reflecting them as well and I’m supposed to pick out four stars??  All of this is happening at 1:00AM and we would not get back to the hotel until about 2:00AM…. then do the same the next night….

Much of the goal of this workshop was to learn a very unique, difficult method of capturing the night sky.  We then spent hours trying to learn how to process the photos for maximum result in 812 steps.  I still have much work to do learning this process.  Prior to arriving at the salt flats, we had a practice session along the way, in the scene below.

 

 

Goodbye to Bolivia

La Paz, Bolivia

At the risk of having too many photos in this blog, here are some from our Bolivian departure city, La Paz.  By the time I got to La Paz, my main goal was simply to get home.  I was beat.  But La Paz was not a place for sleep nor relaxation.  However, the view driving into La Paz is stunning.  The approach by car is high above the main section of the city.  One starts to get a glimpse here and there of a big cliff and a massive city below.  The driving is not done by cautious, law abiding drivers.  Honking and constant ‘close calls’ was the order of the day.

The more well-to-do residents can pay to take a tram down into the city.  Others take a longer route by car or worse, walk.

 

No Restful Nights

We stayed in a very nice hotel in La Paz.  However, my room faced the street.  Turns out there was some celebration that weekend, as I think there is most weekends.  This loud, indecipherable chanting went on all night and stopped at daybreak.  I played this recording for the front desk employees, and they had no idea what the man was chanting, nor did they seem too concerned.

 

Bolivian Women and their Bowler Hats

In case you are interested in these unusual fitting hats, I wrote a blog on them during my visit to Peru in 2018,  The Importance of Peruvian Hats

Well I’ve had it with Bolivia and this post…. Next comes a great experience, seeing Iceland from the air.