La Paz, Salt Flats, Red Lagoons and Red Wine

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We arrived in La Paz around 10pm after our bus ride from Copa. We jumped in a taxi to our hostel, which surprisingly was very nice! Hot showers, double bed, wifi, tv and great buffet breakfast! The next day we spent around La Paz, doing a bit of shopping, exploring plazas, churches and parks. Elliot's love for saltenas grew and he also discovered a magical thing called a pizza cone. The next day we hiked to a view point over La Paz and spent the day exploring some museums such as the musical instrument museum, the gold museum and a costume/history museum. That night we had booked our bus trip to Uyuni which left at 7pm and supposedly took 12 hours. After a late lunch of chicken, chips and fried bananas, we headed to the bus station preparing ourselves for a long trip.

Fifteen hours later, and 3 hours after the estimated arrival time we arrived in Uyuni, our tour was due to leave at 10am and we barely made it to the tour office before the tour left. The tour consisted of a swiss girl, Andrea, a Brasilian woman, and a peruvian couple from just north of Lima. The tour guide, although stated in the tour brochure, only spoke spanish and very little came out of his mouth at that. We were a little dissapointed with the guide and information side of the tour but besides that it was quite neat scenery and unusual sights! The first day we drove to the train cemetary, salt flats, and through a rock valley (caused by volcanic rocks landing like rain). We drove a bit more and ended up in a town which could only be explained as nothing, one road, one store, a few hostals and cars, maybe 20 people. We stayed the night there in a hostal and drank some wine and chatted with some kiwis, aussies and other travellers which turned out to be fun. The next morning we headed off semi early to begin our drive past active and un active volcanoes, lagoons, many many flamingos, and more interesting volvanic rock. After driving through dessert we ended up at a coloured lagoon, red, caused by algae and microscopic organisms which when activated by sun and wind turned the water red, and heaps of flamingos! That night we stayed in an even smaller hostel, but with hot water, with all 7 of us bunked in a room. We played cards late, drank a bit more wine and played truth and dare with the group, overall it turned a bad situation into a good one! The next day we headed off at 4:30 am to see a man made gieser used for energy production, and natural hot springs and hot pools. Before breakfast we jumped into a hot pool to warm up, then ate and headed to the border of Chile where we dropped off the Brasilian woman, who was headed to Chile. We then had a confusing car change and drove back to Uyuni, making a few stops. Finally we arrived in Uyuni. Due to the troubles with the tour we received a slight refund with which we bought pizza and beer. Our overnight bus back to la paz took off at 8pm and arrived a perfect 13 hours later.

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