Desert salt, desert wind

It was only an hour into the trip when, after a brief stop, our driver, Raul Quispe, ordered everyone out of the SUV. He fished through a tool kit and spent a few minutes turning the key and pumping the gas, without effect. He decided on a low-tech solution to what appeared to be a dead battery.

“Everyone needs to push,’’ he commanded us, a group of sandal-clad tourists from Europe and the States.

On a journey without roads, even unpaved ones, it was the first glimpse of the risks and occasional improvisation involved in driving across Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, and through a surrounding desert that rises more than 15,000 feet above sea level. We would pass emerald-colored lagoons filled with flamingos, and herds of llamas and guanacos moseying through the mountains. But there were no gas stations, no cellphone signals, no help other than Quispe and other Bolivian guides, who had to be as knowledgeable about their vehicles as about the daunting landscape.

“I know every part of this car,’’ Quispe boasted, after we shoved the SUV a few feet and the muffler chuffed to life.

Our trip late last year began in La Paz, the capital, where my fiancee, Jessica Leffler, and I had booked the three-day tour through a local travel agency for $110 per person. They advised us to keep our expectations low, particularly for accommodations, meals, and transportation.

The agency’s website was surprisingly blunt, even noting that tourists had died on previous trips. “Due to the harshness of the terrain, vehicle breakdowns are common,’’ it warned. “We would like to make it clear that things are not as reliable, comfortable, and professional as we would like. . . . If things go wrong you are faced with the reality of travel in a remote area of a developing country.’’

After a day wheezing through the high-altitude streets of La Paz, where markets crowd nearly every corner and vendors sell everything from large sacks of nuts to bottles of imitation Viagra, we boarded an overnight bus to Uyuni, a bygone railroad junction about 12 hours south.