The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

Instead of riding in the back of the 4×4 Kerri decided to hang out on the hood instead.

The whole lower half of the car was completely coated in salt and this was only the halfway point across the flats.

The car looked like it was turning white.

When we got far enough out into the flats you couldn’t see the ground beneath anymore and the hex pattern disappeared.

This left only a flat white surface for as far as you could see.

Here Matt examined one of our South American staple foods for bigger chips. Sadly only cars were inside.

We decided to try taking a walk anyways, maybe we could find one last chip.

After realizing all the chips were gone Kerri decided there could be only one course of action.

Squash those that ate her chips.

And eat them instead.

In the end Matt was forgiven.

And what would group travel be like without a jumping shot. There were a lot of cameras so some of these were more enthusiastic than others.

The flats were part of the ocean. In the ocean the bottom is not flat. In this case a small island was formed.

It is now no longer on the bottom of the ocean so instead of fish and coral it now has cacti, birds, and the tourists that visit during the day.

It is weird seeing coral exposed on an island at over 3000 m above sea level.

Although the cacti living on top of that coral look even stranger.

There are still pits and cracks formed as the sea slowly dried up around it and this would have had waves crashing against the rocks and coral. 

The views were stunning from the top and you could really appreciate how large and flat this bed is. The clouds were also moving pretty quick and making the shadows race across the white backdrop.

These cacti take a long time to grow and this one may make it all the way out of the crack in a few decades or so.

This was a really cool stop as we crossed the flats to make our way to Chile.

One of the highlights of Bolivia was making it out to the salt flats. They really mean flat. Kerri was ecstatic to be able to jump over the mountains here.

The landscape is so flat that objects start to look weird through a camera.

Like a tiny Matthew hanging out in the shade.

Or other cars driving along side. At first they seem normal.

But then they look like little toys. Even more so as the salt is cleaner and just white as opposed to seeing the brown of the clay bottom.

The locals scoop the salt out of the salt flats.

Bake it to purify it, iodize it, and sell it to tourists and locals for use in food.

The salt is sold for $1/kg, which means that even though the people are allowed to mine the salt for free, it’s not worthwhile to export.

They also carve out big blocks, which are used to build buildings.

With more salt stuck in between the blocks as mortar.

There is a lot of salt.