We’re travelling this week to South America and in particularly Bolivia. Wow! What a place! If you have any travelling spirit in your bones you must in your lifetime visit any country in South America. If you had to choose only one…Bolivia is where you need to go. Not for its amazing and spectacularly beautiful geography [as evidenced below and in colour here] but for the people. They don’t have much money to spend on unessentials, but they are a happy people. Genuinely happy to be alive…happy to contribute to their fellow human beings and their communities.
Salar de Uyuni
Todays meander begins in the south-western parts of Bolivia located in the Potosi and Oruro departments near the crest of the Andes. I was heading south into Argentina via Chile from Peru after spending some time in Ecuador [you can follow the adventure in a handful of photos here]. The transport in this part of South America isn’t exactly reliable but you make do…so long as you know you’re headed in the right direction you’ll get to your destination eventually. I digress…
Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt plane in the world. I was travelling through in the wet season which meant that there was about 2-3cm’s of water as far as the eye could see. As a result, the horizon was a reflection of itself making it almost impossible to make out where the horizon began and ended. The most surreal open natural landscape you will ever experience.
MAN AND MACHINE is the title of the photo above and it has been featured in a number of exhibitions and hangs on 3 random peoples’ walls. It is such an amazing feeling to know that someone likes your creation enough to pay money for the right to have and hang it on their wall. I thank those strangers and hope that my photo takes you them to a place that would otherwise have been unattainable.
I’ll leave you with the caption I wrote to accompany the photo…but before I do…an enormous thank you to Eddy our driver and Paul, Frenchy, Ritchie, Martin and Jen, my fellow solo travelling companions for being a part of my memories forever.
As far as the eye can see, floating through an emptiness that is the largest salt flats on earth. Here, it’s hard to know where the sky ends and the earth begins, a world without a horizon. The Bolivian Salt Planes at Salar de Uyuni is an amazingly serene place where your only friend is a reliable piece of machinery.