Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
uni-wasamorouslyinvolvedwithbothThunupa,thevolcanoonthenorthshoreoftheSalar,
and a second volcano named Q'osqo. When she gave birth to a child, the two male volcanoes
fought bitterly over who was the father. Worried for the child's safety, Yana Pollera sent it
far away to the west. Then, concerned that her child would not survive alone, she flooded the
plain between them with her milk so it could feed. Eventually the milk turned to salt, and the
lake - traditionally known as the
Salar de Thunupa
- came into being.
Colchani
Tours generally enter the Salar via
COLCHANI
, a salt-processing village on its eastern
shores about 20km north of Uyuni. Here you can see how locals extract salt, scraping it off
the ground into small mounds, which are then carried off for processing. Until relatively re-
cently, communities like Colchani exploited the salt primarily to exchange with other indi-
genous communities. Every year dozens of pack llamas would set off carrying salt as far
away as Tarija, returning with maize, coca and other goods not produced in the Altiplano,
though such caravans are a rarity now. There's a small museum (Bs5) about salt in Colch-
ani, as well as several places to buy souvenirs fashioned from salt. A few kilometres west is
the
Hotel de Sal Playa Blanca
. It used to be possible to spend the night but this has been
curtailed due to well-founded environmental concerns - indeed, there is talk of removing the
hotel entirely; travellers are advised to boycott the hotel should their tour stop at it.
Isla de Pescado
Bs15
Tours then head 60km or so west across the Salar to the
Isla de Pescado
or Fish Island, one
of several small islands in the Salar, more properly known by the traditional name of Inca
Wasi (“Inca House” in Quechua). From its peak, a short sharp climb up from the shore on
a well-marked trail, the views across the immense white expanse of the Salar are unforget-
table. To the north is a series of snowcapped peaks, including the imperious Thunupa, the
extinct volcano that is considered the region's most powerful
achachila
, or mountain god. To
the west you can just make out a straight line like an old agricultural terrace running along
the mountainside that rises from the shore: this is the ancient shoreline of Lago Tauca, 70m
above the surface of the Salar. On the island itself, the rocks are covered in
fossilized algae
.
The island is also covered by
giant cacti
, some more than 10m tall and thought to be hun-
dreds of years old; in January and February they produce bright white flowers that attract gi-
ant hummingbirds. The trunks of these giant cacti are about the only locally available source
of wood, and you can see their distinctively pockmarked timber in doors and roofs all around
the Salar.
In the rainy season this part of the Salar is sometimes too deeply flooded to be crossed by
car. When it's dry enough, though, tours head straight down from Isla de Pescado via Colcha
K and the island gets very busy with tours during the high season.