Salar de Uyuni Tour-Lagoons, Wildlife, and Landscapes

Now that you’ve read my tips for visiting the Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats) in Bolivia, you probably want to know what to expect when taking one of these famous tours.  As stated in the tips, this is actually a tour of Southwestern Bolivia, taking between 3 and 4 days, with a visit to the Salt Flats only taking up one of those days.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, and I’m sure questions abound, like:

• What else do you do?
• What else is there to see?
• Is it worth it?

In short: lots, tons, and HELL YES!

This page, along with the Salar de Uyuni Tour-The Salt Flats page, will give a detailed description, with plenty of pictures of course, of the four day tour of the Salar de Uyuni, starting from Tupiza.

While the Salar is the definite highlight of the trip, there is so much more to see along the way, including weird and unique rock formations, lunar and other-worldly type landscapes, lagoons of various colors, some geothermal activity, and of course some new and interesting wildlife.

Lagoons and Wildlife

The great thing about the lagoons was that they were all different. Every one we saw had a certain uniqueness to it, which really became the theme to the four day tour. Every corner we came around, every direction we turned, it seemed completely different. I have never experienced anything like it before.  The different minerals, combined with the high altitude (some sat at nearly 16,000 feet-5000 meters) of the region, gave the lagoons the unique colors that made them so special.

Laguna Morejo- One of the first lagoons on the tour, during the second day, was the Laguna Morejo, which sat at 4855 meters, and was a great precursor for what was to come.

Laguna Hedionda- Another great thing about the lagoons was the wildlife that was abundant in them, particularly the pink flamingos. The first lagoon, named Laguna Hedionda (there was a second lagoon of the same name on the third day), had at least a hundred pink flamingos chilling out in the shallow waters, most sticking their heads underneath the water eating.

Kollpa Laguna- Soon after leaving Laguna Hedionda, another lagoon and the first salt flat of the tour came into view. It was kind of odd that one was called a lagoon and the other a salar, as Kollpa Laguna didn’t much look like a lagoon as it did a huge lake of salt, and Salar de Chalvari looked more like a lagoon.  As the pictures show, Kollpa Laguna almost looks like a frozen lake in the wintertime that has been covered in snow, but there is no snow, only salt. There were so many different colors evident in the salt as well, which created a very interesting and unique look.

The Salar de Chalvari was a stopping point for everyone to enjoy the naturally made hot spring along with a lunch break.  It was quite relaxing after sitting in a jeep for six hours, which is some hard work.

Laguna Colorada- Near the second night’s accommodations was Laguna Colorada, where flamingos were hanging out everywhere.  Mountains surrounded the area, with some reflecting in the lagoon. Salt was also all around, as the Salt Flats themselves became closer and closer, and some of the different minerals around gave parts of the lagoon a reddish hue. Again, the rainbow of colors was astounding.

Laguna Hedionda II- The second Laguna Hedionda provided flamingos that didn’t seem too scared of people, and at one point, I was about 10 feet away from some.  They didn’t seem to mind at all. While this lagoon wasn’t the most spectacular, it did afford the chance to get several up close and personal pictures of the flamingos.

Laguna Verde- The most spectacular of the lagoons, Laguna Verde, is visited on the second day of the tour. Verde is the Spanish word for green, so something out of the ordinary was expected. While turning the final corner towards the lagoon, I heard a gasp from my wife.  During the tour, turning corners became quite exciting because we knew a treat was in store every time we did. This was no exception.  The rich color in the Lagoon is caused by high arsenic and magnesium content in the water.

Landscapes

While the lagoons were impressive and provided some beautiful scenery for the four day tour, to me, the constantly changing landscapes and abundance of differing colors in the mountains and rock formations awed me most.

Now I’ve seen mountains many times over the years, in Colorado, the American Southwest, upstate New York, Vermont, Switzerland, India, New Zealand, and South America, but I have never seen the differing landscapes and colors that I saw over the tour of southwest Bolivia. Every corner we turned provided new landscapes, differing colored mountains, volcanoes, geysers, and even a rock that looked like a tree.

Mountains- The first day was very reminiscent of the American Southwest. The rock formations were very similar to a part of Arches National Park in Moab, Utah called the Fiery Furnace (only they weren’t red).

As we went along on the tour though, the landscape changed. There were mountains, and they reminded us a bit of the Painted Desert in Arizona, only much more dramatic.  It was funny to hear the different descriptions of the landscapes.  The plethora of different shades of colors on each separate sandy mountain was a sight to see.  One person in our group described it as one of those different colored sand things framed in glass. Megan described it as someone kicking several different colored cans of paint down the mountain. I described it as God taking a package of colored chalk, throwing it on the mountain, and stomping on it with his foot. All were apt descriptions. And the thing was that every mountain was different. Some had different shades of reds, oranges, and yellows, some had different shades of grays, whites, and blacks, some greens and blues. And it was all surrounded by desert, which provided a great contrast to the mountains.

Geysers- While the previous pictures provided us our scenery for much of the middle two days of the tour, it was constantly changing.  Towards the end of the second day, after visiting Laguna Verde, the next site was the Sol de Manana Geyser.  This area was 16, 400 feet (5000 meters) above sea level, and we saw the power of the Earth (or at least I think it was Earth) up close. This area was intensely volcanic and the temperatures within the bubbling, steaming mud pools can reach up to 200 degrees F (90 degrees Celsius).

Arbol de Piedra- Another interesting part of the journey was the Arbol de Piedra in the Desierto de Silolia, which is a tree shaped rock formation formed over the years by sand and wind driven against its sides to give it its distinctive shape. While the Arbol de Piedra was impressive itself, great views greeted us from every direction. The formation we came to see was surrounded by all different types of other rock formations, which was set in the middle of a desert, and then surrounded by differed colored mountains.

While I was continually impressed with everything we saw over the four days, the reason we came on this tour (and the one main reason we came to Bolivia, even though we soon found out there’s so much more to this wonderful country) was the Salar de Uyuni itself. But that deserves its own page, so check it out to see all about the Salt Flats themselves.