BradshawsinBolivia: #27 Uyuni Salt Flat Trip #1

This is a silver statue of a miner standing on a
large anvil on a street in Uyuni

An old time ore car. There is a lot of mining for gold, lead and silver
in Southern Bolivia.

The first place we stopped on our day tour of the salt flats was a
train graveyard. Here is one old engine.

There was two long rows of old engines.

You could hardly move these wheels. They were very heavy.

Lloyd rode on a train like one of these on his way home from
his first mission. He rode from Tupiza to LaPaz. He tells the
story of how it derailed on the way and they spent the cold
night out on the high plain.

Someone made a good swing.

Here is the Tupiza Zone. Great group of missionaries!!?

They took us to a small town where the salt is packaged to sell
at stores around Bolivia. There are three ovens on the wall where
they build fires inside to heat the salt. This process dries it and takes
out all the water.

This is a pile of dried salt. Stephen our young guide is sitting
by a grinder they put the salt through to make it finer.

Lloyd is standing by the area where they dry the salt. The ovens
are underneath the platform where they put the salt.

This Mother and her five children are putting the salt in small
plastic packages. They have a flame between her and her daughter.
After they fill the bags with salt, they run the top of the plastic bag thru the flames and melt it enough to seal the bag. They do about 5000
bags a day. You can see the stacks of bags behind them. It was a
dark room with no windows. What a job!

This is what it looks like driving on the Salt Flats. It looks like
snow and the rode looks slick.

We could see some mountains in the distance.

We stopped at an area to have some lunch. They had flags from
many different countries. The United States flag was not there.
They said the President of Bolivia did not want it displayed, because
he does not like the United States and all their laws against drugs.