Add options:  method=‘c14n2’, strip_text=True  

When you serialize the output. 

( pretty_print should also be the default False ) 

>>> print(etree.tostring(etree.fromstring(ss),method='c14n2', strip_text=True))

b'<wpt lat="46.98520" lon="6.8831"><name>blah</name></wpt>'