Most tourists to Bolivia come to see the enormous Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. Many of my friends who have visited have told stories about excellent “multi day Salar tours” that let you experience the flats and the surrounding landscape. What neither of us realized is that these tours are mostly about the surrounding landscape and you really only spend one day on the Salar (though it is the highlight).
There are loads of companies offering tours of the Salar and you can start these tours from any number of places in Chile and Bolivia (the flats are near the border). We had heard mixed things from other travelers about the quality of these tours and we quickly arrived at the conclusion that paying a little extra was well worthwhile. Tupiza Tours and La Torre Tours quickly surfaced as the leaders for tours originating in Tupiza, Bolivia. We ended up booking the 4 day, 3 night tour with Tupiza Tours for about $160 per person (included transport, food and accommodation).
Logistics for the tour was as follows. We traveled in a group of four plus a driver/guide and a cook. In our case, the driver and cook were a very pleasant husband and wife team. We opted for a Spanish tour, though English ones were available for an extra fee. The company paired us up with a couple from Holland, also in their late 20′s, and we turned out to be a great match. Transportation was in a Toyota Land Cruiser with a third row of seats and our backpacks were loaded with the cooking gear and extra gasoline on the roof. Accommodations, though rustic, were completely adequate. We stayed in small villages along the way where they had beds, electricity, and shelter (though not always running water). Total driving distance for the four-day trip was about a thousand kilometers and 90% of that is off-road.
The first day of our tour took us from Tupiza to San Antonia de Lipez. Shortly after we left Tupiza we checked out some nice read rock formations (iron content, I think they said) and then started our climb into the mountains. The average altitude on the four-day tour was 4,200m (13,800ft) and it wasn’t long before we were cruising away at altitude.
Shortly after we got up into the mountains we spotted a group of a dozen condors. As it turned out, they were all feasting away on a vicuña carcass! We stopped for a while and watched them watch us. After the condors we found a nice place for our lunch in the middle of a large dry riverbed. The highlight of the meal for me was some llama tamales. At the first meal the cook seemed a bit surprised that Amy was a vegetarian despite the fact that we had explicitly told the office where we booked. Apparently they neglected to relay this on to the cook! Fortunately, our cook was able to adapt to this request and later meals in the tour were more vegetarian-friendly.
In the afternoon we stopped in to visit the village of San Pablo de Lipez as well as a few nice mountain vistas along the way to San Antonio de Lipez, our stopping point for the day. We had an afternoon tea/coffee/mate break when we arrived and finished just in time to see the first snowfall of the year. An excellent dinner was served a short while later we called it an early night (8PM!) due to the altitude and having to get up at some crazy time the next morning.
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