Today was the day the highlight of our Bolivia trip began. We started on our 3-day trip into the Bolivian desert including the famous Salar de Uyuni. But first we went to a train cemetery. Before a German scientist invented a way to produce nitrate by fixing nitrogen from the air, nitrate was the biggest export of this area. And to transport the nitrate they built a railroad. And the railroad company simply parked the discharged trains on that field. It would have been an impressive scenery, wouldn’t there have been so many tourists.
After a stop at a former salt processing plant we had lunch in the Salt Hotel Museum which is made completely out of salt. The slight rain that had started during our visit to the train cemetery developed into a heavy thunderstorm during our lunch. And every minute it continued we got more convinced that we would not be able to take those perspective photos on the dry salt flats and the mirror pictures in the wet area, we were so eager to take.
We stopped anyway and tried to install our cameras in the rain, but it was pointless. We had almost given up when it suddenly stopped raining. We first couldn’t believe it, but then unleashed our creativity. We made a video where we walked out of a Toblerone, where Daniela and Eva came out of a cooking pan. We made photos where Daniela was threatening to step on me and where she was standing on my hands and kissed me. We were using our shoes as bobby cars and drank out of giant wine bottles. We had so much fun and completely forgot the time. Fortunately, our driver José and our guide Elia were not only the best we ever had, but also super patient and even supported us as good as they could.
Next stop was the wet area and it looked like a gigantic mirror. The whole area was covered with about 2-3cm of water and reflected everything that was on or above it. It felt like an absolute unreal place. And when the sun started to set it covered everything into a magical light and we couldn’t separate the sky from the ground anymore.
This day had been better than we had ever dreamed it and when we sank into our beds in our hotel made of salt, we tried to match our dreams with reality.
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