The Uyuni Salt Flats, aka El Salar. The one thing I could not leave Bolivia again without seeing, as anyone who'd gone described them and the rest of the tour to me as positively surreal. Claiming Bolivia's southwest corner, just across the border from Chile's Atacama desert, they're the largest salt flats in the world, purportedly visible from space. To get there, I took a bus to Oruro, then a (rather luxe) train from Oruro to to the town of Uyuni, on the edge of the flats. In Uyuni, I joined a tour group that comprised six tourists (including myself), plus one cook and one guide, piled into a Land Rover, and drove for three days with a caravan of Land Rovers through the most remote terrain I've ever been to. The middle of nowhere, perfectly.
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This is the first time in my life I've had the urge to give a bona fide slide show: pile you all in a room and put these pictures up on some blank wall or hanging white sheet, just to give some sense of the sheer immensity of the landscape. Then, to really recreate the experience, there'd be no background noise of any kind, no one would talk, and we'd probably stay at each picture for a few minutes before clicking to the next one.
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(To this end, I did upload "large" versions of all these photos, as many are worth clicking on to be seen in their full pixelated glory, or see the set on Flickr.)
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You might or might not hate this entry: it's not as jovial as the others and might come off as pretentious or worse, as if I'm trying to be pretentious. It's certainly not intended that way. But it was a trip through an abstract landscape during which my thoughts were rather abstracted themselves, not really the time or place from which you garner cute anecdotes.
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There were many times on this trip I found myself standing, looking out at some gaping panorama, and hearing nothing save a few words, often alliterative or onomatopoetic ones, running in my head. These weren't moments where you could thoughtfully summon and sift through the last three times you saw certain words, the contexts in which they appeared, the connotations they held, and elect the most appropriate one. It was much more visceral. Landscape, word. Landscape, word. And silence.
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There were many times on this trip I found myself standing, looking out at some gaping panorama, and hearing nothing save a few words, often alliterative or onomatopoetic ones, running in my head. These weren't moments where you could thoughtfully summon and sift through the last three times you saw certain words, the contexts in which they appeared, the connotations they held, and elect the most appropriate one. It was much more visceral. Landscape, word. Landscape, word. And silence.
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Endless silence.
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on the train to Uyuni
French trains pass chateauxBolivian, flamingoes
flamingoes in flight 
metaphysical lottery numbers 8 20 21 34 46win you this life with this color palate!
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Day 1
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the train cemetery
why not die in the middle of the bolivian altiplano? i suppose.
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two emus ran across the road here
our tour guide told us the population of colchani is 200 families,
and i bought a pair of salt candleholders for $1.
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on the Salar
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twelve-thousand square kilometers of crystallized sodium chloride
scrape the salt into piles,
load the piles into the trucks.
(this tourist took a picture of other) tourists taking pictures at a salt hotel
salt tables, salt chairs
more saline furnishings
the unadulterated Salar
fish island (named from its profile from afar)with cacti
amid salt
every bit the elegant apocalypse
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we stayed the night in a salt hotel of our own in this village right on the Salar's edge
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quinoa fields
quinoa harvest
sunset on the Salar
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Day 2
sunrise on the Salar
leaving the Salar, heading towards the mineral lakes, flamingoes, et al.
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maybe a valiant attempt by builders at one time, maybe useless
maybe a valiant effort on the part of the shrub (can you find it?), maybe useless
a whole picture containing no living thing
nothing breathing, moving, emoting
and you realize that death isn't the opposite of life
because even death serves as testament to what was at one time
and you realize that death isn't the opposite of life
because even death serves as testament to what was at one time
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a hop, skip, and a jump later
¡qué verde!
here
Ollagüe volcano with nicely perched cloud
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"lunch near any lagoon," per our printed itinerary
vocabulary becomes irrelevant"lunch near any lagoon," per our printed itinerary
as there is no subtle underlying intricate balancing of tensions or ironies or nuances
to narrate
it is an utterly unambiguous place
just sweep
swoop
slope
esp. "4. a space devastated as if by a scythe"
and then – AH!
seemingly flung by some immense hand, dropped and plopped
and their placement seems to defy my understanding of geology
or maybe only my claim to any such understanding
but whither?
(these tracks ran perpendicular to our route.)
... nibbling the back of my knee as i take the above picture
i found the activity suggestion bottom row, second from left most existential
"No hunting."
But oh, how I like my flamingo flanks. Pity.
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La Laguna Colorada
maybe it was a tragic loss. maybe it was nature.*
Day 3
the geysers
primordial, at 5 am and just shy of 16,000 ft elevation
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a slurping sulfur pit at 200˚C (392˚F), per our guide
the moon over the geysers at sunrise
this one goes out to Patty
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La Laguna Verde
La Laguna Verde
And here, after a trip of near silence (despite the three pairs of travelers), we discovered our tape deck in fact worked, and this was the song that we played while leaving the Laguna Verde. It was arguably the most surreal moment of the trip.
¿a donde tu vas?
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the Tomás Laka rock garden
hello lizard. 
Aristotle's Head
(can i say between a rock and a hard place?) 
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home again, home again. jiggity jig.
the plaza at sunrise.
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