Actually, it's from Calama, Chili, just South of Bolivia! After La Paz, I headed down to Oruro, where I got an overpriced hotel room, and an excellent steak for dinner. The next morning, I got up early and headed for the pueblo of Uyuni. Uyuni is the starting point for most of the tours that go out on the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt plane on the planet. The road there was one of the most remote places I have ever been! It crossed the altiplano, most of which was over 12,000 feet, and other than the llamas and alpacas, it was me, a really rough dirt road and the mountains, for close to 200 miles! No sign of other people, no sounds other than the wind, and no signs of civilization other than the colorful decorations the Indians had put on the llamas! What an adventure!

I pulled into Uyuni just before dark and got a hotel where they asked me to pull my bike in the courtyard, which was a challenge because the entrance and doorways weren’t very big. I got in and booked a tour for the next in the salt flats. I originally wanted to take my bike, but decided against it.  I didn’t want to chance exposing my motorcycle to all the salt. It turned out to be a good decision, as they use 4 wheel drive jeeps and have an entire crew waiting to hose them down the second they return. (try finding a working hose in the desert! You had better know somebody…). It was really nice, like being in the snow, although it was quite hot because the sun reflected off the white salt. Everybody on our tour (4 Argentines, 2 Italians and me) were sunburned within the first hour. Our first stop was the “salt factory” where they “harvested” the salt for consumption. Yawn. Next stop was a few miles into the flat, where they had constructed an entire hotel out of salt. It reminded me of the ice hotel I once saw on a National Geographic episode. It was pretty spectacular, some of the tourists were licking the walls to make sure it really was slat. It was.

Afterwards, we ventured out further into the white wonderland, to an island close to the middle. On this island, they had a nice hiking trail that led to an overlook where it was possible to see the distance we had traveled. Other than a few volcanoes way off in the distance, the entire horizon was salt flat. In all directions! It was pretty incredible to see, I am really glad I went. In addition. the island had some of the tallest cactuses I had ever seen. Afterwards, it seemed like forever to return, we had really driven some miles that day, all on salt. That evening, we got back and I helped these girls (I met them on our tour), one of which had been sick, to catch the evening bus. I they were from Buenos Ares and I hope to catch up to them when I get there.

After Uyuni, I was pretty much done with Bolivia. I didn’t care for the food there, and despite the cheap accommodations, I was longing for a little more “civilization”. Off to Chili it was. The road from Uyuni to Calama was nothing short of spectacular! There were so many volcanoes that I lost count. Some were still billowing smoke from their snow capped craters. The road was dirt, and very difficult to negotiate, as the terrign was constantly changing. The real danger was that it would lure me into a false sense of safety. As soon as I got comfortable with it and increased my speed a little, it would change and there would be a big patch of sand that would send an average rider head over heals. Me, of course, being way above “average” survived without a crash.

As always, the biggest adventure was the border. I reached it sometime around 2pm that day. It was sunny, beautiful blue skies, and very windy. There were at least 7 volcanoes towering above us and the altitude was somewhere around 14,000 feet. It had to be one of the most isolated borders have ever seen. The customs office on the Bolivian side was across the railroad tracks. I knew I was at the border because of my GPS, but I couldn’t believe it. There was a small block building with a Bolivian flag, but that was it. There was no road to the building, no electricity, no nothing, but there was a guy in an official baseball hat waving me across the tracks to his little block building. I rode across the tacks (ka-thump, ka-thump…), pulled up to his little block shed and handed him my papers. He didn’t even look at them, he just smiled an indigenous looking toothless grin and said gracias and stamped my passport. A quick ka-thump, ka-thump back across the railroad tracks and I was off to Chili.