Our train was scheduled to leave Oruro at 3:30 PM Tues, Feb 8. However, it was delayed an hour due to clean up after carnival. When our engine arrived it had obviously participated in Martes de Cha'lla: it was fully decorated in ribbon, fresh flowers and bows.

As we got underway someone threw a bucket of water through one of the train windows. OOPS! I turned around and got a bit of water in my mouth. Thank God, it wasn't enough to make me sick!

The ride was splendid. Our first class seats were quite comfortable. We passed Uru-Uru Lake and saw Andean gulls, Andean avocets, Andean geese, Andean puna flamingos and wren-like rush-birds and white-tufted grebes. We also saw lots of little birds near the rushes. After seeing plenty of kids lined along the tracks at the ready with buckets of water at the next little town, we kept the windows closed as we passed towns.

Can't forget the pigs. I saw a lot of pigs grazing. One black one, in particular had long spiky hair raising straight up its back.

We passed by some little towns along the way; but mostly the scenery was a wide plane surrounded by Andean Mountain ranges on either side of the train. There were adobe huts, lots of the paja brava (kewpie doll-like grasses), donkeys, llamas, alpaca and planted fields. Sadly, near the cities there was a lot of trash in the fields.

We were offered a choice of drink and brought hamburgers. Some of the folks in our group had gone to the dining car and had dinner on the train. Sunset splashed colors across the sky and slipped into night. We arrived in Uyuni, population 13,000, at 11 PM.

Uyuni

Diter, our Uyuni guide, met us at the train station. He had good news: "You are here. There is water on the Salar. There is not too much water on the Salar. We will have reflections all around us in the morning."

The Jardines de Uyuni, our hotel for the next two nights was what I call "funky-rustic". Oh, the wonders of paint, cement, mud, stone, a few pieces of wood and a mattress! Image walls colored either Indian red, medium yellow-blue, deep blue green or eggshell against a deep reddish umber colored floor which in some places leaned more toward a deep bluish umber. Each wall in our room was painted a different one of these colors. Our room's furniture was all crafted from cement with wood or stone tabletop surfaces. Our bed was a cement box topped with comfortable mattress and warm blankets. Original artwork graced the walls of the courtyard and in our room. This was not fine art; yet, it was colorful art with Andean images. The painting in our room depicted snow-covered mountains with llamas and cacti. Cream colored curtains hung from a simple black rod. We had great natural lighting that came through the translucent fiberglass waffle-shaped ceiling.

Hotel Jardines de Uyuni - Uyuni, Bolivia (Tel/FAX: 591-2-693-2989)

Daylight the next morning revealed that we were in a dusty town with dirt roads. Uyuni is the sort of place where Clint Eastwood could stride out from any corner. In the center of town was a small plaza with some nice restaurants. Four wheel drive vehicles were necessary for our drive over the Salar de Uyuni and for many of the city streets!

Salar de Uyuni

Bolivia boasts the largest salt lake in the world: the Salar de Uyuni. Everyone was excited to hear that the giant salt plane had a foot of water over it. We were all ready to drop into a kaleidoscope world where everything becomes a reflection for 360 degrees. We left the hotel at 9:00 AM. Salar de Uyuni offered everything I had hoped for.

It is always great to travel with Ric Finch. Here is his explanation of why salt masses grow as large hexagon shapes on the surface of the Salar de Uyuni.

There are two things to understand. First is crystal form and the second is crystal structure.

Salt grows in crystal forms, geometric shapes. The crystal form of salt is the cube. It is difficult to grow perfect cubes because each cube would need to be suspended as it grows, free to grow out in all directions with no interference from other growing crystals. So, where these cubes become attached, they become imperfect. You will rarely find perfect crystal form.

During the wet season, when water covers the Salar, floating hopper crystals take form. Floating hopper crystals are truly the cases of individual crystals growing as if suspended: they indeed grow as cubes.

Crystal structure refers to the atomic structure. This is how the crystals are put together, sort of like Tinkertoys as they hook up by ionic bonding. In the case of salt, the ions bond with right angles between the atoms.

OK. So, if salt grows in cubes, why don't we see a cubic pattern on the salt plain? Why do we see hexagons?

Crystallization happens randomly and uniformly. Crystallization starts at randomly scattered, but more or less uniformly scattered centers of crystallization. Crystallized masses tend to become circular as they grow out equally in all directions from the center of crystallization. But when they impinge on one another they interfere with each other's continued growth. Since the growing mass can't go anywhere once it runs into an adjacent growing mass, the circular shape begins to be lost as the sides, interfering with each other, become flattened and linear as opposed to curved arcs. Eventually, when all the available space is used up, the masses become straight-sided polygons. Hexagons happen to be the most efficient form: they approximate a circle, and leave no unused space between the formerly circular masses.

In the dry season, you will notice ridges on the Salar de Uyuni where the edges have been forced up because all the empty spaces were taken and there was no place else to go.

We made several stops as we crossed the Salar and it took better than four hours to drive the 80 kilometers to Isla Pescado. Here we lunched and hiked around. We saw black and yellow-orange birds sipping cactus nectar. The local name for the bird is "chojtala" and the South American bird book identified it as a black hooded sierra finch.

The cacti on Isla Pescado give the island an otherworldly look. These cacti grow at rate of one centimeter per year. With some of the cactus reaching heights of 26 feet tall, many are over 1200 years old. It was a three-hour return journey, which included a couple short photo-stops. On the way back we discussed the practicality of using airboats on the Salar. They could be designed to look like flying saucers and we'd call them "Saline Fliers". (Just a thought. And, perhaps you had to be there to appreciate the humor.)

Three tips for a visit to Salar de Uyuni: flip-flops are good shoes for walking on the Salar, the best reflective photos are taken when the photographer has his back to the sun, ultra-dark sunglasses help control the brightness of this amazing world.

We also toured a hotel which was entirely made of salt and visited a small community and saw how they iodized and bagged the salt.

In the evening Ray and I walked the three long blocks along Avenida Potosí from our hotel to the plaza. We enjoyed watching the street activity and had a good meal at Restaurant 16 de Julio. The streets around the plaza was pleasing and included sidewalk cafes, benches and lots of strolling people. Evenings in Uyuni, a small town of 10,500 people, seemed to be a time to relax, stroll and visit with friends and neighbors. A small plaza was set up with a touring carnival complete with Ferris wheel and similar carnival rides. For a town in which 75% of the people make their livelihood from tourism, it was anything but glitzy. Quiet, dusty, rustic and homey are more apt descriptions.

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Come visit with me at http://travelerstogo.com/ by posting your follow-up questions in the Carribean, Mexico, Central & South American forum. My alias is Sharon Mc1, and I am the destination moderator for that forum -- I love talking about travel!

I recently wrote a practical travel guide for the Peruvian and Bolivian high Andes. I had a great deal of fun writing it, and particularly enjoyed writing the restaurant reviews. Here is the link:

http://p104.ezboard.com/feuropetogofrm21.showMessage?topicID=40.topic -----------------

Articles in this series include:

Miami, Jupiter, & the Everglades (Florida) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/141804/index.html

La Paz, Tiwanaku & Valley of the Moon (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/141500/index.html

Oruro Carnival (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/141977/index.html

Sajama National Park (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/143197/index.html

Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) http://worldisround.com/articles/143714/index.html

Train Graveyard - Uyuni (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/141742/index.html

Train Graveyard - Pulacayo (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/141647/index.html

Along the Road from Uyuni to Potosí (Bolivia) http://worldisround.com/articles/143868/index.html

Potosí (Bolivia) http://worldisround.com/articles/145509/index.html

Sucre (Bolivia) http://worldisround.com/articles/182068/index.html

Tarabuco (Bolivia) http://worldisround.com/articles/182063/index.html

Jatun Yampara (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/169005/index.html

Lake Titikaka (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/261030/index.html

Copacabana (Bolivia) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/261498/index.html

Along the Road - Copacabana (Bolivia) to Puno (Peru) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/261584/index.html

Cusco, Sacsayhuaman & Lima (Peru) http://www.worldisround.com/articles/270254/index.html