EC-Rider Travels

OMG what a sight to wake up to. I love arriving somewhere in the dark and then opening the curtains in the morning to see where I am. But I am not sure I have ever been so blown away, as this morning – I physically grasped – or maybe it was the altitude!

My morning started with so many lovely birthday messages from you all for which many, many thanks. Noel arrived promptly to pick me up and take me first to the local village of Colchani where he showed me how the salt is processed from the raw salt off the flats. Needless to say it is all done by hand with the exception of one simple machine. The raw salt is scraped off the top of the flats and brought into a little out-house by barrow and dried outside for a couple of weeks. It is then heated on a flat oven by a fire in a tiny hole under the building which constantly has to be stoked with tola tola. The salt is turned constantly for about an hour until it turns pure white. A tiny amount of Iodine is then added, using the one and only machine (this apparently prevents goitre). It is then put into 100g bags and sealed, by hand, over a naked flame. 50kg (500 of these bags) is sold for 25 Bolivianas which is about £3.00. It is exported all over the world from this funny little out-house, sometimes mixed with herbs, oregano, paprika etc.

We then headed out into the salt flats which are enormous, 10,500 sq km. At its widest points, it is approx 180 km from East to West and 80km North to South. It looks as though you are on the moon or in acres of impacted snow – just white as far as you can see. Absolutely beautiful.

60% of the worlds lithium is located in this lake. Unsurprisingly Elon Musk is keen to set up his next Tesla factory here. Lithium comes in the form of flakes (a bit like the ol’ Lux flakes) which as you dig a square into the salt water bubbles up and a layer of lithium flakes float to the surface. Why they thought these might charge batteries, I can’t imagine.

We first stopped at the original Salt Hotel the Palacio de Sal deep into the flats which was built in 1993-95. It had twelve double rooms and a communal bathroom! Located in the middle of a desert, however caused sanitary problems and eventually serious environmental pollution and the hotel had to close in 2002. It is now a little museum and, from 2009-2019, it was a staging post in the Dakar Rally when it took place in South America.

We then drove deeper into the centre of the flats and I was sent off on a little walk while lunch was prepared. This just has to be one of the most stunning and peaceful places in the world, you cannot hear a thing, except, as you walk across the salt, it sounds like broken glass. Is it sparkling everywhere and more beautiful than words can say – just miles and miles and miles of flat white and not a soul or a living creature, not even a bird. The sound of silence was quite breathtaking.

Meanwhile, back at the Jeep, Noel and our new driver, Timothée, were not just preparing lunch but cooking it, just for me. The whole thing is a little excruciating, but very lovely and very spoiling. It is certainly a different way of spending my birthday.

When I returned, the table was all set up with table cloth and napkins, soup heating on a little gas burner and a delicious lunch was served. We came to the end and I started to help clear away, much to their horror as the ‘pièce de résistance’ was still to come. The table was promptly relaid, table cloth replaced and out came the most beautiful birthday cake and candle, topped off with Noel singing happy birthday in both English and Spanish! And for my present, one of his CDs! It was very touching.

Noel and Timothée insisted we did some fancy photos – you know how much I like having my photo taken but … they were quite fun…

We then headed to Incahuasi Island where we met Aurelia (Noel knows everyone!). Aurelia has lived on the island for 50 years, for the first forty totally alone until she met Alfredo and married him ten years ago. She is now 83 and for four months of the year, when the lake is flooded, she is unable to get off the island. When it is dry, it is 40k across the salt fats to the nearest town. She runs a little shop selling drinks and sweets for the tourists. She and Alfredo gave me a lovely poster of the island as a birthday present.

The island is I.7sq km, and rises 87m above the flats which are already pretty high at 3,660m. The island is covered with various different kinds of tola tola and over 6,000 pasacana cacti. Some with a single stem, the males and the females with many arms. Many of them were huge and must be hundreds of years old. In the centre of the island there is a cave where the Inca kings used to come to pray to the sun and the moon.

We headed back towards the hotel stopping at a small lagoon where Noel insisted on taking photos of my reflection in the water – he is also a professional photographer! Meanwhile Timothée had set up the table again with wine, nuts and can you believe it raisins to watch the sunset – what a birthday treat. The temperature however had dropped from 24 degrees to 3! So we decided to head back to the hotel.

The hotel really is rather amazing, as I said all made of blocks of salt, including the table I am currently sitting at and the chair I am on which I keep on unsuccessfully trying to move! The salt bricks are most attractive with grey striations going horizontally across them from which you can tell how old they are. The floor in reception is thick granular salt. There are wood burning stoves everywhere so it is toasty warm. Extraordinary to be going from full on air conditioning in Sucre to full on heating here.