Remember the scene from the Matrix (the first one) where Morpheus and Neo are in the white room and it's completely silent and you have no idea if there's a wall somewhere behind them or the white just goes on forever? That's kinda what it's like in the salt flats of Bolivia.

I've never been to the salt flats in Arizona (it's Arizona, right?) But I just finished a tour to the largest salt plains in the world... the Salare de Uyuni. It's unbelievable. The white earth extends to the horizon where mountains pop up here and there. You drive for hours across it without seeming to move at all.

"What seems the middle of nowhere."
The tour of the Salare de Uyuni leaves from the town of Uyuni in what seems the middle of nowhere. Surrounded on all sides by miles of desert, one of the only things keeping it alive is tourism generated by its salt plain nearby.

I was waiting a day for a friend to arrive to take the three-day tour of the salare, as it's called. I decided I'd go running and took off into the desert.

A Jeep Waits to Cross the Salt Plain

Did I mention the place is somewhere around 12,500 feet high, too? Actually that wasn't much of a problem since I've been up rather high for a while and have managed to acclimatize.

"There's always the sound of crickets."
But I ran about two and a half miles into the desert and stopped on some railroad tracks for a quick break when the thin air started taking a toll. The silence was amazing. I'm not sure I've ever been anywhere that quiet. Even at home in Virginia, miles from a city and in the middle of the forest, there's always the sound of crickets, wind, or a distant truck. Nothing. Not a breeze. Not traffic. Just my own breathing. I sat there on the tracks for about fifteen minutes not believing how quiet a place could be.

"Two ladies of a certain age."
The tour to the salt plain was kinda pricey at $80 for two days and three nights,

The Flag at the Salt Hotel

ending in San Pedro, Chile. I waited for my friend Dick from Holland to arrive in Uyuni and we headed out, coupled with a Belgian couple and two ladies of a certain age from Ireland.

I should begin by saying what troopers the two ladies were. This tour involved long, bumpy hours crammed three across in the back of an aging Toyota Landcruiser, along with nights spent in unheated rooms at temperatures below freezing. One lady was actually Dutch but living in Ireland and was well into her sixties. The other truly Irish lady was probably pushing seventy-five quite hard. They were delightful, never complaining and enduring the hardship better than people a third of their age. One's name was Barbara, but I can't remember the other.

"But snow it did."
The drive across the salt plain took several hours of constant driving, although we took a few stops. Then it was on into the Altiplano, crossing the Andes into Chile. This took a couple of days and got very, very cold.

An Altiplano Lake

The final few hours involved an icy drive down from the mountains into Chile in a snowstorm. This was quite unexpected since this is the driest desert in the world. It almost never rains or snows here. But snow it did. It would have been nothing to anyone who live with snow in the US or Europe, but these guys apparently had never drive in snow and were quite concerned.

The whole tour was visually stunning, while not providing much to write about. The photos really tell the story.

"I found it dirty, claustrophobic and boring."
We finally made it across the Chilean border to a desert oasis town called San Pedro. This town is called a "backpacker mecca." A place where people visit and are unable to leave. I found it dirty, claustrophobic, and boring. Maybe that was because of the mud and construction equipment digging up the streets, but it didn't appeal to me at all. Dick and I hopped the first bus for Antofagasta and arrived last night. We're heading for Santiago this afternoon, a 18 hour bus ride where I'll spend a day or so before moving on to Buenos Aires and Argentina.