Salar de Uyuni Tour

So we set off for Uyuni from Tupiza after waiting in a que at the bank for ages only to find my card didnt work and there was no other way of getting cash...

((Im doing this from memory so theres loads ill forget right now but...))

We got on well with the Aussie couple who were very much the beautiful people with perfect lives who loved to ski etc... much like us obviously. The scenery was amazing and the route went through valley and deserts, villages and hills, we saw wild vicuna (like skinny llamas) and llamas with pink ear tassles (to shows which farmer owned which).

For lunch we stopped on a hillside and munched humitas which are cornballs with spicy meat inside wrapped in a leaf, supplied by our cook Julie. Mid day we paused in a tiny mud vialle with crumbling buildings, later we stopped over night at a small village on a hillside at which there was very little exept a church, basketball court and lots of small indigenous kids trying to sell us the odd llama hat or glove. If you accidentally got them in a picture they wanted to be paid, but most of them hid or scampered away the minute you looked at them. There was a grave on a hilltop and the sunset was incredible - like a sort of dawn-of-time dinosaur movie with lush valleys and snowcapped mountains and a sweeping sun. Dinner was soup and it was freezing! There were 2 or 3 thick felt blankets on all the beds and we needed them!

The photos are the best source for what the place was like but day 2 we got up about 6 and nipped off in the jeep, driving past giant moutains and lakes with crazy sulphourous edges and really bright pastels shades in the desert sands and rocks eveywhere. Laguna verde was toxic with chemicals and we saw flamingoes some of the lakes. A thermal pool was at the spot for lunch and we dipped our feet in amongst the gang of travellers and stared out at the amazing landscape. The bubbling mud and thermal pools was next and reminded us of Rotorua in New Zealand but the landscape in South America is absolutely MASSIVE. One was bright red, and looked like a huge bubbling bowl of tomato soup.

Next morning we got up in the freezing conditions and headed for some ruins which were built by the Inca and haunted by devils and phantoms - the local villages make sacrifices to keep them away from their doors at night..! After this we zipped off through more unbelivable scenery and mountians, lakes etc, to see Borax miners set up in the Salar and the huge lakes of flamingoes and crusty white shores we stopped at Laguna Colorada and braved the icy wind the wander the hills a bit before buying some much needed bottles or red wine from a small door in the village and playing the obligatory travellers cards. Eventually the electricy was cut and we went to bed!

Laguna Colorada was the most amazing place!! The refelctions of the clouds in the salty water was incredible and lines of pink flamingoes walked about over the views. The most dramatic scenes since farewell spit in New Zealand. We visited the desert of Dali rock formations where I did my celebratory forward roll. We crossed the second biggest salar in Bolivia then arrived at our stop for the night at San Juan, where we attempted to get to the hills to see the burial mounds but were defeated by a mightly sandstorm that came out of nowhere and hammered the village with sand for a few hours. Our guide stayed outside the whole time trying to fix our jeep!

Next morning we got up about 5am and shot out to the salar to see the sunrise. The salar if you were wondering is a gigantic salt lake that you can see from space, the biggest in the world and is the remains of a giant lake that once filled the whole of the Alti planos (high plains) of the andes. Now it is a vast white crusty desolate desert of white salt, which we skimmed across in our jeep as morning broke. (You can see it in my pofile pic on Facebook). The whiteness goes on forever, but in the middle is fish island a fossilized marine hill where huge cacti now grow. We drove out over the salar and broke open small holes to put our hands under the crust and find salt water salt crystals that were huge and perfectly square- like sharp edged cubes!! After this we saw salt sulptures in one of the salt hotels that used to be here and spotted farmers piling up and takig away salt for porcessing. That night we stopped in Uyuni which isnt the prettiest place, but has interesting markets and squadrons of military who jog about chanting ihn the morning...