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Salar Uyuni wihout GPS: A warning Salar Uyuni wihout GPS: A warning
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Photo by George Guille, It's going to be a long 300km... Bolivian Amazon

I haven't been everywhere...
but it's on my list!


Photo by George Guille
It's going to be a long 300km...
Bolivian Amazon



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  #1  
Old 26 Jul 2008
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Exclamation Salar Uyuni wihout GPS: A warning
In short if you are going to ride across the salar without GPS stick to the main routes..
The idea:
Enter from Colchani, 20ks north of Uyuni, then pretty much west to the Island in the middle and then straight north to the Volcano. .........Easy.
_____________________
It was what I had planned, but of course it went wrong, it all went wrong.
I was cruising along on the salar at 120. When I left the salar at the north just below the Volcano I was back on rocky winding roads not even doing half that speed. I thought I'll just go back on the saler and continue further east and then come off again. I asked one of the tour 4X4s was it possible to exit at Jirira and the towns further to the east
"Sure!"
So off I went on the hard flat salt at 120 again.. Plain sailing, like it had been all day. A pure joy to ride across. but it all went pear shaped.
The ground got wetter and wetter.
I decided to head a bit further into the Salar, away from the side of the volcano that I was hugging as I headed east by northeast.
As I got further away from the edge of the salar, I go drier again
.. for a while, then it just got worst until I was driving through lakes of salt water. The bike was being completely caked in salt water and I feared getting stuck in a sink hole. I turned around and abandonded my Idea of leaving to the north of the salar, I had to get back to Uyuni to get the bike powersprayed immediately.
I went back the way I had come and soon I was out of the wet part. Uyuni is in the south east corner, I decided to head south by south east. I had a (cheap) compass that I used combined with the sun going down in the west to navigate. I rode for miles and miles and soon I was against the east side f the salar. No sign of Uyuni. I had headed more east than south east. It was tough going navigating out there against the clock, sun going down...So now I was headig due south along the east side of the salar. I had not seen any 4X4s since I had been at the Vocano. Alone, I had no Idea how far north of Uyuni I was. It is seriously disorientating out there when your not on the established tracks. At one point I even wondered if I might be south of Uyuni. As I headed south the ground below me got real soft. The bike was sliding from side to side and digging in, huge arching fishtails. Soon the back wheel was half buried in mud and the next 40 mins was spent unloading pushing the bike from the pannier frame at the rear and reloading. ( Argentina2Alaska's Photo Albums at Footstops.com - Free Travel Map & Photo Blog for Travellers )When I was ready to head off again it was almost dark. Although I wanted to get on to Uyuni to powerspray the thick salt off my bike asap I resigned myself to spending the night on the salar, set up tent, bury snow flaps etc. brew up some mate..Try to sleep. it was a cold night, then next morning I found a track back along the side of the salar. I was 50ks north of Uyuni and the ride south to Uyuni was deep sand and difficult.
Anyway I have waffled on a good bit now so I'll end by saying.
The salar is definitely worth it but if u go and u dont have GPS ... keep it simple, dont try shortcuts and try not to have to camp out there, its cold.

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Stephen

For adventure, crashs and breakdown stories go to www.footstops.com/argentina2alaska
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  #2  
Old 28 Jul 2008
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hey, I think I got stuck somewhere near where you did but further north. I could be wrong without having a map in front of me.

I was trying to cut across from Salinas de Garci-Mendoza (some pretty cool ruins out there if anyone is dropping by that way, worth a visit if you are interested with mummified remains still there....) to Uyuni. I think Jirira is near Salinas. The day before I took the rough rocky tracks to get there but decided to take the salar the next day as a smoother option. but the top north west corner was still very wet.

To make a long story short I ended skirting around the lake until the water started to get too deep and I decided to try riding up onto the sand (read salt) bank only i didn't ride up but straight into it. Took a couple hours digging it out with my small billycan and then back to Salinas for the night.

Quite the experience but a bit of a nightmare at the time..
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Old 28 Jul 2008
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Be carefull mate, what if you had crashed and broken your legs? Very few drive off the regular "paths" on the salt so you could have ended up a salt mummy...


When I was there, I talked to all the tour companies and asked them which exits were usable to motorcycles. The anwer was that the only two 100% safe exits were the one north of Uyuni and the one directly south of Fish island.
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  #4  
Old 29 Jul 2008
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Oranges
It could have been worse Steooo.
You could have had nothing to eat but an ORANGE!! A juicy juicy orange
Wha wha wha wha

Stick to the tracks folks, thats why they're there. Some nasty sink holes that you won't see until its too late....
Arthur
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  #5  
Old 29 Jul 2008
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awesome! i know the feeling - glad that everything turned out ok!
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