Everyone rides across the Salar for fun - its a given. Riding across the salar is easy - its the worlds biggest parking lot. Its getting there, and leaving again that's the challenge.

This is the main 4-wheel jeep tour route. Its got all the good stuff on it, that the tourists are paying to see - arbol de piedra, salvador dali desert, the flamingos, lagunas, etc. Otherwise, not much to stop and look at. Lago Colorado has overnight accommodations - important if you don't have a sleeping bag that is good down to -20C - or a bike that will start after sitting out all night in that cold and the wind. Its 3 days to go from Uyuni out on the Salar and down to SP de Atacama. Day two from San Juan to Lago Colorado is a long, tough-ass ride.

There is no gas out there. Uyuni and San Pedro de Atacama are gas points and its over 350km between these two points. Other people have come from the north and west - there's jeep tracks across the salar from those points. but where do you fill up with gas? I can't answer that for you.

Don't know anything about Linsor - not on my map either. Can't be much of a place, since most of the places that are on the map "aren't much of a place".

I have no firsthand knowledge about SP de Napa.

There's an immigration station near Hito Cojones, but no aduana for the bike. TheBigJ turned in his bike paper here on the way out of the country; they said they'd take care of it - turn it over to the aduana people. I turned my papers in about 60 km before the border crossing, just north of the Geiser sol de Manana, at an official aduana office at a mine. There's a sign along the road to/from Lago Colorado for the mine (which mentions aduana as well) - the mine is about 8km "off route". They can issue papers on the bike there. If you get into the country without doing the temporary import docs at either the border or the mine, it may be possible to do it in Uyuni, but that's just something I heard, not something I can say for certain. Ask the immigration guy at Hito Cojones.

Again, in summary: Whatever route you take, you have to figure out where you are going to stay in the cold, what to eat, deal with the gas situation. The easy part is riding the Salar. The hard part is all the rest.


Here's some GPS points/elevations

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Salar de Uyuni (island)   S20.24091 W67.62763     3672m
San Juan                  S20.89965 W67.76643     3700m
Arbol de Piedra           S22.05193 W67.88298     4588m
L. Colorado (No huts)     S22.16737 W67.82033
L. Colorado (So huts)     S22.26378 W67.82033     4346m
Mine/Aduana Office        S22.44164 W67.80683     5035m
Geisers                   S22.43438 W67.75760     4860m
Hot Springs               S22.51405 W67.64818     4419m
Border (Hito Cojones)     S22.88102 W67.79839     4487m

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quastdog
Chiang Mai, Thailand