Bolivia Salt Flats & Altiplano – Oct 2025

After being collected from our overnight bus we were glad to get some make-shift breakfast in the form of tea and crackers at the tour company’s office. I had a bit of a nap on the couch in the reception and then after handing over the wad of US Dollars that had been burning a hole in my pocket for the previous few weeks we were off. We had chosen to do a private tour (rather than being squeezed in with some random backpackers) for 3 days/2 nights to the Bolivian Salt Flats and Altiplano ending up in San Pedro de Atacama.

We decided to roll the dice with just a Spanish-speaking driver – hoping with almost 7 weeks in South America under our belts we’d have got our Spanish to a point where we’d be ok. Well, I’m not sure we’d improved our Spanish at all as we’d not really been forced to use it up to this point (in fact it was probably worse than when we left Australia!). Willy, our driver, was great and with the help of google translate we muddled through.

Before we left the office we were presented with a snack bag each, which unfortunately I didn’t photograph. However, it was stuffed with snacks and they kept us going for the next 2.5 months! I think the final ones being eaten just before we got on the plane to go home.

The first day was packed with action, starting with a visit to the train cemetery. When the mining industry collapsed in the 1940s the need for these train lines went with it. Instead of removing the trains they were just left to erode in the desert.

From there we headed to the Colchani community where a lot of the salt processing is done. This wasn’t really our scene since it was primarily an opportunity to buy souvenirs – they were quite unique – large sculptures of flamingos made out of salt etc. There’s many different tour operators and they largely follow the same stops so the whole main street was just packed with 4WDs leaving me dreading what was to come.

Fortunately it seemed once we got onto the salt flats then the 4WDs were less clustered. Maybe since we were doing a 3 day trip rather than a 1 day trip our itinerary left the day trippers behind? One of the more interesting places for me was a spot where the water bubbled up through the salt crust.

We had lunch in the middle of the salt flats – it was great to have a proper meal. With the two overnight buses and the travel over the previous 3 days we’d eaten pretty erratically. Sadly since we were back at altitude (and sick) we weren’t indulging in any of the drinks laid out for us.

Post lunch we drove to one of the ‘islands’ within the salt flats which was covered with millenary cactus. We climbed to the top of the hill for amazing views. Many of the cacti were in flower.

The final stop for the day was a museum and some mummies. We definitely missed a bit at the museum not having an English-speaking guide but it was still very interesting.

We were excited to get to our accommodation and find we had vistas over the salt flats, and llamas grazing outside the windows. But our adventuring wasn’t over for the day – we drove back out onto the salt flats for sunset – unfortunately it was pretty cold and windy so we didn’t linger too long out there.

There were three couples staying at our hotel, and we each got a table with a different triple candlestick holder, and no other light in the dining room. Tom and I had a solid wood candlestick holder so we could have played battleships as we couldn’t see anything on the other side of the table!

Unfortunately my sore throat/lurgy had settled into a persistent cough, which meant not much sleep. At least we weren’t really hiking! Day 2 of the tour had us at Isla Incahuasi when it opened – as we were so early we were the only ones there. It was amazingly quiet. It was similar to the island we’d visited the day before except this one has been commercialised so we had to cough up an entry fee.

Then it was time for the photos which the saltflats are famous for – perspective photos. Fortunately Willy was all over the props and how to take the photos (though as it turns out my fiddling the night before with the llama keyring had turned out ok).

This time we had lunch at a restaurant on the far side of the salt flats. Unfortunately we’d driven half an hour from the restaurant when Tom realised he’d left his camera on the seat, so we had an hour round trip to go back and retrieve it. I assume that meant we missed out on a stop (Quinoa Museum??) but I’m not sure. Either way, we had a long drive for the rest of the afternoon climbing up to Laguna Hedionda and our hotel at 4,215m.

We had more wonderful views from our room – which was great as it was not warm! Once we’d warmed up and soothed our throats with some tea, we rugged up and wandered along the lake shore to check out the flamingos. We were very happy to retreat to the common room with a blazing fire after that!

We had an early start, and unfortunately I started the day by unexpectedly vomiting up my breakfast. My sense of smell had become hyper-sensitised to unpleasant smells over  the previous few weeks and often had me gagging but this was the first (and only) time it went beyond that.

With the unpleasantness behind me, we headed out past various lagoons and then stopped to photograph vischachas. Once we got out the car they swarmed us, so clearly they are used to getting fed!

We also had a stop at Arbol de Piedro (stone tree), and wandered amongst the other rock formations. Then it was onto the main entry to Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve and Laguna Colorada (Red Lagoon) with many flamingos. We were given 40 minutes to wander the lake shore but at 4,278m it was a struggle (and very cold)!

Our lunch spot was in a restaurant by the hot springs, which I would have liked to go in, but I was coughing so much it seemed that it would be a bit anti-social (and probably not great for my chest to be in my swimmers in the cold temperatures). Post lunch we drove through the desert de Salvador Dali (so called as the landscape is somewhat surrealist), Laguna Verde and Laguna Blanco.

Next minute we were at the Bolivian-Chilean border. Willy helped us through the Bolivian side – with no signs of any ‘shakedown’ which the internet warned of. We met up with our Chilean driver in no man’s land and transferred into his van. He assisted us through the very serious Chilean formalities – made sure I didn’t do anything dreadful like have my phone visible in the immigration office! We were pretty relieved that Tom got in with no issues – the requirement for Australians to have a visa had been removed only a few weeks before our arrival and until that happened the visa process had been causing us a bit of stress.

From there it was a straight and fast descent from 4,200m down to 2,400m and the town of San Pedro de Atacama. We’d only added this tour into the itinerary as there was no simple way to get from Cusco to San Pedro de Atacama, so pleasingly it ended up being something of a highlight (would have been better if we hadn’t sick of course).