'Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"
How apt that Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, should play at the end of an epic day spent exploring Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt pan.
Situated at 3,656m, it has the most incredible landscapes. My adventure started in La Paz, Bolivia. At 3,500m, La Paz is the highest administrative capital in the world and a great place to acclimatise to the altitude - vital to avoid nausea.I'd arrived in Bolivia armed with acetazolamide (medication used to reduce altitude sickness) and paracetamol. I also happily gulped down the coca tea provided by my hotel. Still I succumbed to the sickness. After only 30 minutes exploring La Paz, I felt the onset of a pounding headache.I spent two days acclimatising there before jetting off to Uyuni, a minuscule town that serves as a gateway to the salt pans. The town is comprised mainly of restaurants, basic accommodation and numerous travel agencies. Finding a tour that suits your pocket and timeframe is a breeze. I simply strolled down one street and interrogated the various travel agents.
SMALL GROUP, BIG ADVENTURE
I settled on a three-day, two-night tour with a maximum of five people in a group. The trip begins, rather oddly, in an abandoned train yard. Set in the vast expanse of the salt pan, it is an eerie and surreal sight, the perfect setting for a zombie apocalypse. We clambered out of our 4X4 and scaled the rusted chunks of metal for the perfect Instagram picture.Next up, a stop at a salt-mining workshop, where a worker demonstrated the intricate art of packaging salt.
After more driving, we found ourselves at Isla Incahuasi, an outcrop covered in giant cacti and fragile coral-like structures. It's a great place to stretch your legs, ponder the origins of life, and empty your bladder.
LLAMAS AND FLAMINGOS
Day two was spent staring at colourful lagoons, cavorting through marshes, and photographing llamas and flamingos.
A quick Google search of Salar de Uyuni brings up thousands of pictures of tourists creating optical illusions against the flat landscape.
This is as fun as it looks but for me the highlight was watching the sunset. We were surrounded by a never-ending sky of pinks and purples and simply stood in awe.
We were reluctant to leave. Like spoilt children unwilling to go to bed, we begged our guide for five more minutes. He patiently explained that, due to the lack of landmarks, it would be difficult to navigate "home" in the dark. And so with heavy hearts, we slunk back to the car.Our disappointment was soon displaced by the joyful sounds of Bohemian Rhapsody. Michael from England decreed that we should all sing along. We were happy to oblige.
Back at our hotel, which was constructed of salt, I gorged on pancakes drenched in dulce de leche. Dinner was followed by a dip in the hot spring. Disrobing on that freezing night required a Herculean amount of courage.
I was cold with three layers of clothes, so slipping into a bikini and walking 5m to the pool seemed like torture.
In the end I was happy I'd done it. With the lack of light pollution in Salar de Uyuni, the night sky was a sight to behold and soaking in hot water while counting shooting stars is definitely a top 10 moment.A REAL-LIFE SURREAL PAINTING
Up at dawn and onto Sol de Manana, a geothermal field where steam gushes from the earth. Conscious of the devastating consequences of falling into a crater filled with 200°C mud, we tiptoed through.
Last on the agenda was Dali's Desert, a barren valley reminiscent of the surrealist's paintings. As we stood before the pastel-coloured mountains, our group was unusually quiet. Reverential.
In a few minutes we would part ways. Some of us were heading to the Chilean border, others back to Uyuni. It was hard to believe that in just a few days we'd become so attached to one another. That soon, all we'd have left would be beautiful memories and Instagram handles.
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