Advertisement
Published: January 5th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Our last stop in Bolivia was a place called Uyuni, we arrived in the evening and went to book a tour onto the salt flats, 12 000 square kilometres of salt!!! We then went out to dine on what our trip leader described as the best Pizza in South America, and it was good, but we´d had better since we came out her. They also had expensive wine at cut down prices so it was a good evening all in all, with quite a lot of singing from what I remember! As we were leaving the restaurant I stopped to talk to a girl who had stayed at the same hostel as us in Quito. Andrea didn´t notice until she was outside & the door was shut behind her. She then banged on the door shouting "My Wheesus is aqui!" Which became quite a catch phrase for the rest of the trip.
At 10 am the next day we were picked up for a trip onto the salt flats. As most of our group was going there were two jeeps, so Nessie, Andrea, Vicky and I all bundled in one and the rest went in the other! The first
stop was the train graveyard, basically a load of old abandoned trains just left in the middle of the desert. We spent a good hour climbing on to them & having a good old explore then it was on to the salt flats.
We had the cook with us in our jeep and she didn't like driving on the road because it was too bumpy and so we ended up off roading and in doing so we covered twice the distance. It took twice as long...oh and it was still bumpy as hell!!! Eventually we made it onto the salt flats, they were amazing so flat & so white that my brain could not quite get to grips with what it was seeing. Even though our jeep was rocketing along, if you looked straight ahead it seemed as though you were hardly moving at all.
After quite a long time we finally caught up with the other jeep about 3 miles from fish island, where we all got out a decided to walk, which was fun but for ages the island never seemed to get closer. Distances are very misleading out on the salt flats.When after almost
an hours walk we finally made it to the island we were served a delicious and I believe well deserved lunch! Apart from just trying to take in the sheer mass of the salt plains, another cool thing to do is take photos, not your average photos though because it is so white & flat you can take photos that fool the eye. We entertained ourselves with this for the rest of the afternoon. Our photos weren´t perfect but it was great fun to do. They included us falling out of a pringles pot, And eating Ness & Vicky, & my personal favourite a tiny me sitting in And´s hands.
On the way back into town we stopped off at a point where the ice was cracked & formed interesting patterns. This place gave us an insight as to how the salt flats were formed. They were only a few inches deep & at points there were holes through the salt. it was a bit freaky to know that we´d been hooning around on such thin ice errrr salt. Andrea stuck her arm in to try & pull out some of the crystals which were amazingly formed into perfect
cubes (unfortunately the water was full of sulphur so And had a stinky arm for the rest of thr day)!
We ended the day at a hotel to watch the sunset. The hotel was completely made of salt and the only building for miles around. We bought beers & Bambino chocholate to keep us happy while we waited for night to fall.
On the final drive home we were told we would be home by 7:15 pm however again we had the whole bumpy road issue and so we eventually rocked back to the hotel at 8:30, and went straight out for more pizza & fine wine.
The next day morning we woke to find that there was no water. Which was annoying as the hotel owner had told us there was no hot water the night before so we had waited to have a shower & because we were about to head off on a very long journey over the high Atticama & so would be rough camping for the next three nights. We waited for ages to see if the water would come on. Maggie even refused to get out of her PJ´s until she
could shower (a very British protest)! but eventually we had to give up on the water especially when we realised that the whole block was out. And & I made do with very cold (ice cream headache cold) mineral water showers.
Then we all got on Rita to drive towards the Chilean border...
K x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.243s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 23; qc: 119; dbt: 0.1489s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
wachowski
non-member comment
big dorks
I've just looked at all the phots... You two.. big dorks