The Salt Flats

We reaturned to La Paz to celebrate christmas in style- good food, good drink, good people and a jacuzzi! Then boxing day evening we got on yet another 12 hour night bus heading for Uyuni a little town at the bottom of Bolivia offering salt flat tours. Infact as soon as we groggily got off the bus at 7am we were approached by several companys and ended up leaving on our 3 day trek only 3 1/2 hours later. 6 of us clambered into a 4x4 and drove over the bright white salt flats, which were incredibly beautiful. We made several stops, one of which was in a small village where artesans made mini llamas, pots and keyrings from salt, and another was at the salt hotel where literally everything was made from salt- the walls, beds, floor, roof ect.. We ate lunch here on a table and chairs made entirely of salt. Before arriving at our salt hostel further on, we visited Isla del Pescado, a rocky island filled with cacti, bang in the middle of the irredesently white salt flats.

The next day we left at 6am and this time drove through different terrain. The roads were dusty and desolate and all around us were mountains, one with seven different colours. We passed lots of becoñas and llamas on our trip and stopped at Dali´s desert, the place that inspired him to paint the melted clocks. On this day we also saw five lagoons, the most beautiful was pink with 20,000 flamingos.

Day 3 called for an even ealier start... we left at 5am. The most amazing thing we saw was just before breakfast- geyseres... holes in the ground filled with steam and bubbling water of 90 degrees, ocassionally bursts of this water would shoot up into the air. A little further along the road were the natural hot springs. Here is where we ate pancakes, yoghurt with cereal and drank black coffee for breakfast, then changed into bikinis and jumped into the hot spring. Unfortunately the next thing we had to do was drop my friend at the chilean boarder, where we said goodbye (we´re meeting up again soon) after 2 1/2 months of travelling together.

We spent the night in Uyuni on our reaturn- it´s possibly the bleakest town I´ve been to on my trip and was glad to leave it the next day at 10am. The road from Uyuni to Sucre is really bumpy, I was thrown out of my seat most of the time and to top it off the wheel of the bus fell off- it´s all part of the experience though!