Drama on The Salar de Uyuni Salt Flats

To reach the Salt Flats you have to go about 14 miles north of Uyuni. At the entrance to the flats there were a number of trucks harvesting salt from the little drying pyramides. Once you get a few miles on to the salt you start getting a sense of isolation and remoteness, maybe what the planet Mars would feel like. The sun beating down on the bone white salt makes sunglasses an imperative. We rode out to the Salt Hotel. The hotel seems to be a frequent stop for the salt flats 4x4 tours.

We were just as much a tourist curiosity as the salt flats.

The famous Salt Hotel.

We were planning to maybe go a few more miles out onto the flats but our first serious motorcycle problem showed up to change those plans. Of all the places to have a battery die this was not one of them. We tried fashion some jumper cables out of a residential extension cord but the wire would not carry enough current. Just as we were realizing we were in serious trouble of being stranded one of the 4x4 tour trucks showed up. The driver enthusiastically went to work try in help us solve the problem, first with trying to jump start off his battery and then trying to push start the motorcycle. When both of those failed we went for the least desirable option of towing the motorcycle behind his truck to try and roll start the motorcycle.

Fortunately that worked and we high tailed it off the salt flat. Realizing we still needed to solve the dead battery problem, our first priority was to get the salt washed off the motorcycles.

We found this high pressure truck washing operation and paid about 25 cents to get a thourough washing.

The following day Chris set out to find a new battery. With partial success Chris found a small battery, suitable for the local 150cc motorcycles, and had a shop make up some jumper cables. We discovered that the little weak battery with a jump from my motorcycle would get it started and running on its own. By then it was too late to leave town so another night in Uyuni. Uyuni, was well underway in the pre-Carnival celebration. The celebration consisted of an increase in the annoying water balloon throwing. Thankfully the tradition seems to exempt tourist as targets. Several poor girls were literally run down, picked up and thrown into the fountain on the plaza. The other activity involved hundreds of boys and girls running through the streets hand in hand chanting slogans and getting hosed by young boys with water balloons, giant air pump water guns and hoses.

Even though she was resisting the gang of guys that threw her in the fountain, afterwards she seemed to be a little happy with the experience.

The gull of the Chinese Motorcycle manufactures...I don't think anyone in Uyuni was falling for the blatant adverticing lie.