Salar de Uyuni - Day 1

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The next stop on our agenda for Bolivia was Uyuni. This small, highly touristy town did not have much going for it other than the fact that it is the beginning point for the Salt Lake Tour, that we were desperate to do! We had a bit of a disaster in booking the tour. There are tour companies in Uyuni everywhere all frantic for you to sign with them and all offering pretty much the same thing. We were severely warned in our guide book to check a few out before you decide and to make sure no more than six people are booked on your tour. The tour lasts for a maximum of four days and you travel about by jeep. The driver/ guide plus cook would make more than six very uncomfortable.

We followed the advice of the guide book and checked out a couple of places. We were smitten with a place called Juliet tours. The guy called Luis sold the tour to us very well and we went away very happy. As you can guess; in the morning we found ourselves in a group of seven! We discovered that Luis had lied to all of us individually about who was on the tour. After a lot of arguing we got some compensation and set off anyway as we all needed to go that day. Many of the things Luis had promised did not measure up. The menu he had shown us was nothing like the revolting food we got and we did not stay in the famous Salt Hotel! (Don’t go with Juliet Tours if you go to the Salar).

Having said all this, the tour was fabulous! As a group we all bonded really well due to our mutual agreement that Luis was a complete idiot! On the first day we visited the train cemetery where we climbed over some very rusty trains. The dark reddish colour looked really effective against that sandy desert background. We ate lunch in a small town that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere! We explored some interesting shaped stones that our guide informed us, had some connection with the Incas. The highlight was the large rabbit/small kangaroo thing that darted out of a rock we were climbing!

The scenery was amazing. Many of the mountains looked as if they were reflecting in water due to the haze in the distance. That evening we were given a concert by a music teacher and her class. They sang some traditional religious songs and it was by far the best musical display we had seen so far in South America.

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Photos

Huge rock formations
These massive rocks were left behind after the water drained from what was all once a lake