If you are headed north through Chile, or south through Bolivia, it’s almost impossible that you are not breaching the border by way of one of the ubiquitous Salar de Uyuni jeep tours. Everyone does it.. And at about $140 per person for 3 days, 2 nights, all meals included, it’s easy to see why.

Though the punch line to the trip is indeed the famed Uyuni salt flats, you’re really only spending a few hours of the last day on it. The rest of the trip is a pretty deep safari through the altiplano of southern bolivia, its expansive deserts, its flamingo covered prismatic lagoons, its volcanos, geysers, hot springs and rock formations.

We would meet our 4 tourmates on the bus that would take us to the Chile/Bolivia border: the Spanish couple, Roger and Montse, and the French sisters, Margaux and Celia. You never know who you’re going to be boxed up with in these situations, but we were lucky to have a friendly, pleasant and interesting group – definitely the right balance of conversation and distance, such that everyone had opportunities to experience the sights together as well as privately and on their own terms.

After an easy immigration and customs crossing followed by a quick breakfast at the frigid heights of the border, we would meet our enigmatic (unfriendly) guide “Wilson”, strap our luggage on the roof of a Toyota Land Cruiser, and be on our way north into the vast.

Day one would take us through a rapid fire succession of natural features, starting with Lagunas Blanca and Verde, though, as Wilson would explain, Verde wasn’t verde at that time. Something to do with the time of day and the algae. These first mountains lakes would somewhat typify many of the other lakes we would visit on the tour – large, silent, colorfully algae laden, and in many case half frozen. Of course they’re half frozen… They’re at 13k feet.

The rest of the day would wind itself along dusty roads, bouncing and bobbing on “roads” that were sometimes well defined, sometimes just a set of tracks in the dust, cruising through sporadic canyons and rock formations. I spent a lot of time wondering what kind of waypoints these drivers use — time and training, I imagine, is what sets most of their compasses, but I think also there’s a wider set of reference and context they are using, a broader understanding of position based not on roadside features, but on the distant mountains and hills that spread out panoramically around them.

It has been fascinating to be, over the last several weeks, crawling along the Andean Volcanic belt along the famed “Ring of Fire” — pure geomechanical workings in action. You can almost visualize the Nazca Plate slowly sliding beneath the South American techtonic plate, but really one doesn’t need to imagine — it’s there to see and to witness, that precise line of volcanos, Chile’s recent magnificent volcanic activity, and of course the many many manifestations of those subterranean magma pockets, stirring the surface into agitated, bubbling, steaming geysers, mudpots, and hot springs. We would witness, robed in sulfurous steam, a delightfully active cluster of magnificent geysers followed by a small hot springs looking out across another pristine mountain laguna. As magnificent and stirring a meditation as these workings were to course through the mind, it was mainly the escape from the oppressive and ever-present cold of these high altitudes that were top of mind when we slipped in to the warm waters. A cold that would only get colder.

The Laguna Colorado was magnificent. Massively sprawling, rust red, and smothered with a variety of flamingos. They walk in and along the frigid waters, often atop a thin layer of crusting ice, dipping their beaks into the lake to extract their meals if brine shrimp and microscopic seafood. Ice. 15k feet. It’s a long way from memories of the Miami Vice opening titles. According to the Internet, not a lot is known about the migratory patterns of these fellas except that, indeed, they do migrate to lower altitude wetlands during the harsh highland winters.

All of the jeeps, no matter the tour operator, converge on a small set of hovels in the absolute middle of nowhere that would provide us our first nights stay and a set of warm meals… Warm meals like: pile of hot dogs split longways and deep fried. The topic at hand, at every meal, at every gathering would be the same: the absolute penetrating cold. The 6 of us would spend this night shivering under thin blankets in temperatures that would freeze clothes on the line. Each of us would fight for air through the night, our bodies coming to terms with new demands on our breathing patterns, waking us jarringly with gasping apnea.

The next day came off a little uneventful, though some of the drivable terrain was a little more varied. A series of smaller flamingoed lakes with unmemorable names (save for “stinky lake”), an underwhelming stop to gaze at the thin wisp of steam from a distant volcano… We did have fun climbing the jungle gym of stones that were part of the “Arbol de Piedra” (stone tree).

And then there were these guys. The ears and body of a rabbit, but with a long coiled tail. No idea what they’re called, but I’m disappointed the we don’t have them back in the states.

Thankfully, the next night’s stay was considerably lower in altitude, considerably warmer through the night, hot showers, good meals, and with a surprising amount of hospitality. Clearly the “hostel de sal” or “salt hostel” had little functional need to be built from salt, and though the grainy salt floors were something of a hassle to clear out of your shoes, clothes and packs, the experience was altogether nice and comforting, though short lived as we would wake at 4am to make for the Salar de Uyuni for sunrise.

The jeeps fled silently like phantoms across the salt the next morning, the drivers guided perhaps by some far-off detail on the horizon. The light would slowly creep up, a delicate glowing across the pan that would barely distinguish the outlines of other vehicles as they glided across the smooth Salar, often their headlights extinguished, further expressing the featurelessness of the surface.

We would arrive at an island in the massive dry salt sea. A gorgeous upshoot of rock and Cardón cactus. The tours converged here, hundreds climbing paths fast and urgently to warm their bodies in the predawn chill. The lot of us spreading across the rock terraces, desperate for the warmth of the sun.. A sun that would never really arrive from behind a thick layer of clouds, but slowly it would light the world around us, revealing the endlessness of salt in every direction.

Wilson warmed up a little, finally, when we pulled up to an unnamed, featureless plot of salt to take the obligatory forced-perspective photographs on the salt plane- the distances of white which surrounded photographed subjects in featureless void helping to sell the photographic trickery.

The day wrapped up after a series of stops that included “The Museo de Sal”, which was really little more than a gift shop, an artisanal village, and a stop finally within the town of Uyuni itself at the “Train Cemetery”, where old steamers were left to die and rust beautifully in the desert emptiness.