Salar de Uyuni

Degrees, but you still have to wear sunblock because the reflections off the salt are so strong

To choose an agency, you have to know how much they are worth, and also, if they can not fill their quota of passengers, then they will send you to another agency, simply taking a commission. Then you can try to see the references they have, what the people in the village say etc. but you can never know for sure, until you leave, which vehicle and guide you will end up with. If you come as a small group of 3 or 4 people, you can try to negotiate prices. We managed to get the price down from 80 to 50 euros for 3 people, but we left with 5 more.

Pick-axes lay next to mounds of salt which reflects the sun with a rare ferocity. Sunglasses are mandatory. When watered the flats transform into a mammoth mirror easily reflecting the clouds’ lazy movements and you would be forgiven for thinking some celestial being is checking his appearance behind the sky’s wall of blue. The ground is glass.

Jeeps have carved highways out of the salty crust and they zigzag over the old sea of white. No depth perception exists here. The cacti-populated islands that eventually emerge might be 10 kilometers or 100 kilometers away. Eyes cannot deduce anything from something this flat and white. Tourists descend from the jeeps bubbly and bouncy like children on a teeter-tower. They run blissfully out into the white; they do cartwheels; they perform jumping-jacks. They huddle together and take optically-deceiving photographs in which it appears an ogre crushes a handful of tiny peasants. Perspective and/or Perception are everything.

On the water-less, fish-shaped islands, Las Islas de Pescadores, we hike. Hundreds if not thousands of cacti stand erect over the rocky surface. Fuzzy and ruler-shaped, they stand perfectly straight as if the sun pulls them to its light like a starry ventriloquist. From the island’s apex, we can appreciate the grandness of the scene: white and blue, blue and white, forever.

Away from the salt flats, we drive deeper into the high Antiplano, a land full of colorful lagunas, perfect volcanoes and fancy flamingos.

In the middle of one turquoise salt laguna, under cascading volcanoes dripping with endless shades of red and lying on a shrubby-desert floor beaten by raging winds, dozens of gloriously pink flamingos feast. They scarf down algae, invertebrate and other small particles. With twig-like legs, candycane-coloured necks and a barreled-body, these birds are magnificent to behold. In such a wind-swept, dry and desolate locale, they survive.

We pass Dali-esque rock sculptors, massive boulders exquisitely formed supported by the thinnest of legs. Steam rises from non-descript geyser fields; the land bleeds. We are utterly alone.

At Laguna Colorado, layers of colours assemble neatly across the water like a knitted sweater made of Llama wool. Painted by red algae and other robust microrganisms, the vibrant colors can change at a moment’s notice. Pulled and pushed by winds, the rich sediments and minerals may deepen or lighten throughout the day. White pools formed from borax contrast the violent red perfectly. The shallow lake quakes with color, volcanoes stand above eerily quiet.

At Chile’s border, we find Laguna Verde. The emerald waters hold the ominous reflection of Licancabur. Inactive yet still daunting. At the calm shoreline, I step on its summit. It looks insurmountable and instills insignificance. And we are.

There is a stillness here that exists in few other places. It feels otherworldly, a distant galaxy or solar system.

Humans do not belong. Life seems gone. Extinct.

Everywhere on the Antiplano, the environment reads post-apocalyptic.

Yet the flamingos still dance and the llamas still trot.