Salar de Uyuni (very short)

[PocketHead]

After having owned my Bolivian motorcycle for three weeks I was eager to head to 'Salar de Uyuni', the worlds largest salt flats. Not wanting to ride solo, I left a message here on the Hubb and met Bjorn who wanted to ride with me. Salar de Uyuni is located next to the Andes, within Bolivia and bordering Chile. According to Wikipedia it is 10,582 square kilometres in size and believed to have been a large lake many years ago.

Three days and eight hundred kilometres later I had taken the following photos.



Here I am posing with my Brazilian made Honda NX Falcon 400. This bike is a fantastic choice for traveling South America, a great mix between off-road/on-road, reliability and power delivery.



We rode 120 kilometres into the Salar and camped very uncomfortably in sub-zero temperatures. Unfortunately whilst setting up our tents we missed the sun setting, it had disappeared very rapidly behind the mountains and volcanoes however due to difficulty sleeping in the cold I was able to photograph the sun rise in the morning.

Here are two more photos of the Salar at sunrise:





From the evening prior:



Once we realised the sun had already set we were able to take some photos with one of the most amazing skies I have ever seen.



Bjorn is a professional photographer, here he is doing a night time-lapse.



Heading off in the morning. Riding at 120kms per hour in these low temperatures caused excruciating amounts of pain in my fingers and toes but they're okay now

In all and although I'm still sore from the long distance off-road motorcycling I consider our trip to have been a success and look forward to my next one, which will be either 'La ruta de Che' or deep into the Amazon.

[bigalsmith101]

That is Awesome. I only wish I had had the presence of mind to buy a Bolivian motorcycle when I was backpacking there. The pictures of Salar de Uyuni are fantastic, and very good. Much better than any that I ever took.

Thanks for the photos. My vote is for "deep into the Amazon" You will never regret it. Have you considered the outrageous drive to Rurrenabaque?

Keep kickin ass.

--Alex

[PocketHead]

Originally Posted by bigalsmith101

That is Awesome. I only wish I had had the presence of mind to buy a Bolivian motorcycle when I was backpacking there. The pictures of Salar de Uyuni are fantastic, and very good. Much better than any that I ever took.

Thanks for the photos. My vote is for "deep into the Amazon" You will never regret it. Have you considered the outrageous drive to Rurrenabaque?

Keep kickin ass.

--Alex

Cool, thanks for the advice and the compliments. Buying a bike here wasn't very difficult to be honest, last year I bought one in Chile and that was a real pain!

Also Rurrenabaque is definitely high on my list, I think I'll head there via Santa Cruz and Trinidad, do it all in one go.

[Milimut1]

Your photos are stunning

[BlackBeast]

(Short) but Amazing pics.

[PocketHead]

Cheers guys, though it would be kind of difficult to take bad photos of the Salar!