I'm sure that almost no one has heard of Isla Incahuasi, and for good reason; but we should know about. This is a small peak of an ancient volcano that rises up from the middle of the Uyuni salt flats, the largest salt flats in the world (at 10,600 square kilometers/4,100 square miles). And it is absolutely stunning.
One enters the "island" by aiming in its general direction and then driving/riding out into the great unknown... literally. There is nothing but white, flat salt for as far as the eye can see. I pedal for 30 minutes, then 60 minutes, then 90 minutes... finally, as I'm beginning to really wonder if I'm anywhere close to anything, a small dark triangle appears on the horizon.
Over the course of the next 30 minutes, the triangle mystically grows and becomes an "island". Details don't become evident until the last kilometer. It's unnerving how quickly my perceptions have changed and how bizarre my world has become... but that is the magic of the Uyuni salt flats.
Of course, we take a few of the 'mandatory' depth-perception' pictures, but the greater magic happens after the few tourist jeeps leave in the late afternoon. The try, and seldom seen, enchantment is when the sun begins to set. This is when vision and perception change radically.
Slowly and suddenly, everything above me is filled with a rainbow of colors. There isn't a single cloud in the sky, but somehow the colors hang against the sky in a way that I have never seen. The sun lowers it's sleepy head, but it looks like it is within arm's reach. My shadow finally has nothing to stop it and it grows and it stretches, for the first time in it's short life.
This continues for an hour, the world morphing in ways that I've never seen before.
Then the nearly full moon rises and my new world looks like a stunning frozen ice crystal. Everything glitters and twinkles and reflects. I run straight out into the flats as far and as fast as I can until my lungs fill like they will pop (we are still at 3,700 m/12,000 feet) and then spin around, staring at the sky.
Slowly I return to the tent and sleep, but wake again at 3 am to look at the wonderfully clear, and now dark, sky... feasting on the billions of stars until the cold drives me back into the tent once more.
One enters the "island" by aiming in its general direction and then driving/riding out into the great unknown... literally. There is nothing but white, flat salt for as far as the eye can see. I pedal for 30 minutes, then 60 minutes, then 90 minutes... finally, as I'm beginning to really wonder if I'm anywhere close to anything, a small dark triangle appears on the horizon.
Over the course of the next 30 minutes, the triangle mystically grows and becomes an "island". Details don't become evident until the last kilometer. It's unnerving how quickly my perceptions have changed and how bizarre my world has become... but that is the magic of the Uyuni salt flats.
Of course, we take a few of the 'mandatory' depth-perception' pictures, but the greater magic happens after the few tourist jeeps leave in the late afternoon. The try, and seldom seen, enchantment is when the sun begins to set. This is when vision and perception change radically.
Slowly and suddenly, everything above me is filled with a rainbow of colors. There isn't a single cloud in the sky, but somehow the colors hang against the sky in a way that I have never seen. The sun lowers it's sleepy head, but it looks like it is within arm's reach. My shadow finally has nothing to stop it and it grows and it stretches, for the first time in it's short life.
This continues for an hour, the world morphing in ways that I've never seen before.
Then the nearly full moon rises and my new world looks like a stunning frozen ice crystal. Everything glitters and twinkles and reflects. I run straight out into the flats as far and as fast as I can until my lungs fill like they will pop (we are still at 3,700 m/12,000 feet) and then spin around, staring at the sky.
Slowly I return to the tent and sleep, but wake again at 3 am to look at the wonderfully clear, and now dark, sky... feasting on the billions of stars until the cold drives me back into the tent once more.
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