Salar of Uyuni

As life was unsettled in Sucre, schools were closed and it was difficult to get on with work, we decided to undertake one of our planned trips. We started in Potosi and visited one of the colonial mines which is still operating today. We were all impressed by the physical duress the workers are under. For ten hours a day, or more, miners crawl through minute, unprotected, passages carrying weights of over 50kg. During this time they have no food and only coca leaves keep them going. Separating minerals is done chemically in large open bubbling containers, which are manned by completely unprotected workers. After just an hour in the mines we came out dripping with sweat and barely able to breath from the dust! To perk us up we were allowed to hold a burning dynamite stick before it went off five minutes later into a massive explosion!

We went on to the Salar of Uyuni, a massive salt lake in the south of Bolivia; a tremendous experience standing on this vast white plain, which looks like ice, in the heat of the midday sun! One part of the Salar was covered in rain creating the appearance of a giant mirror or flying through the clouds. Close to the Salar, at altitudes of about 4km, are several lakes in which flamingos live. The chemical composition of one, the Laguna Colorado, gives it a red appearance, whereas the Laguna Verde turns a beautiful turquoise green when stirred by the wind. At about 4700 are steaming geysers and endless deserts, in which it has not rained for 30 years. A magical environment, which to me was also slightly menacing, as I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling suffocated from altitude and to attend to a vomiting Laurence.